Marching About

20 bucks if you can say the name of this city correctly. If you didn't didn't pronounce the W at the beginning, I get to keep my money. If you managed to contort your mouth into being able to make it over the first two letters to the vowel and then not trip over the second consonant jumble, I'll give you have. It's something like Vro-tslav. Actually, I have come to the conclusion that the Polish language is like a terrible scrabble hand. If you were to draw a D-Z-R-J-W-Y-P, I think you could easily make 50 individual 7-letter words and crush your opponent. Although I'm sure in Polish scrabble these letters are worth 1 point each since they appear in some random order in almost every word. Hidden between mashed up consonants that somehow form syllables. Take "zrupne zienczsa" for example. This is my phonetic approximation for how people have told me to say "Will you take a picture of me?" Although Google translate is quick to point out that...

Today we took a fine detour around the countryside to end up at our next destination, Lubin. Normally it's only about 30km away from Zielona Gora, but that didn't seem very bike tour-y of us at the moment, so we took a fine detour to Gora and then back down to Lubin. <iframe width='465' height='548' frameborder='0' src='http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/216199683'></iframe> Not sure what the deal with these maps are - sometimes I see them and sometimes I don't. If they are not being shown here, you can click the text in the upper left hand corner and it will take you to the page. According to our host, Jan, in Lubin and the surrounding areas are all developed as mines. Most specifically copper mines but there are some other things going on there as well. One of Poland's largest companies - which happens to be a mining company, KGHM has set up shop here. A sampling of the mineral ores found in the Lubin ...

Yesterday we left Zielona Gora and our wonderful hosts Jackyc and his wife, Mila after a fantastic breakfast. Jackyc, the intrepid cyclist, gave us a small tour of Zielona Gora. He showed us the place he used to live as a kid (and how he climbed trees in the yard and jumped wrecklessly across the rooftops and over alleys in the city a la parcour, but in the 1960s). Our hosts Jackyc and Mila in front of their apartment building He showed us some of the ancient city ruins as well as the site of the old city wall and several tributes to Bacchus (or Dionysus), the Greek god of wine, and patron of Zielona Gora. Graham in front of Bacchus, who has grapes and doves as hair (Graham's are covered by the helmet)  Jackyc even rode with us to the rural road that brought us straight to our next destination: Glogow. Glogow (pronounced Gwo-goff) which is only a slight detour from our route, but we had an offer from a very enthusiastic host that we couldn't possibly turn down....

Today we got to spend a little time with our extremely gracious Belorussian hosts in Slubice. Maybe too much time, but that's ok, I guess cyclists, like wizards, depart and arrive exactly when they intend to. There is nothing really to do in Slubice (sorry, Slubice natives!) but our host showed us the fountain, the post office, and the grocery store. She also made us a traditional Belorussian breakfast, which, if you are from the United States, would call dinner (cooked squash with peppers and onions followed by cheesecake). The reason, according to them was, "You guys need to eat carbohydrates!" We then biked 86 kilometers. Look! Our host here in Zielona Gora is 67 and lives with his wife. He is probably the most incredible adventurist that I have met to date. We walk in the door after the trip after a ride in the building's special extendable elevator - just for bikes the back doors open extra wide - into a fantastic dining room with a vegetable casserole, ...

Made it last night to Frankfurt on the Oder. Although our hosts were actually on the other side of "The Bridge" which actually isn't a metaphorical bridge...it's actually in Poland. So we made it to Poland on Day 1! We only got lost a couple times on the way. The conversation upon leaving Berlin went like: Graham: "Do you have a map?" Me: "No, do you?" Graham: "No, but I have a compass on my wrist, and we just need to go east" So we got here doing 95km in less than 5 hours! Our extremely gracious hosts Dasha, Luba, and Svetlana snuck us into their dorm and cooked us a great post-biking Belorussian dinner of green beans and cheese. This morning they made us Serc Nazimno - a kind of apple cheescake served cold. Also had my first Polish experience buying a map (successful) and my second buying postage stamps (not so successful). Actually, the lady at the post office spoke almost no German and absolutely no English. and I asked for...

I promise I didn't take a break from biking! Just the internet (sort of) Spending a couple weeks in Colorado reminded me of the mountains. And mountain biking. So a friend of mine hooked me up with a mountain bike and I went riding. Unfortunately I didn't have my handy device but I found the (approximate) route online. Here I climbed the link trail. It's been a while. I used this path as a training grounds before I did my first bike tour from Paris to Zadar. It's a pretty grueling uphill and I had forgotten a bunch of the turns and loose rock spots. I used to be able to make it up about 95% of the way without dismounting. This last time I think I sat on the bike only about 65% of the time. Although I did not have my clip-in shoes, nor my full suspension (had a hard tail). But that did not take away from the awesomness of the mountain. Saw some deer on the way up, the trees smelled great, and the singletrack treated me fairly well - even though overall I would say ...