August 1: Rainy or Not, Here I Come
I’m sitting here sipping hot tea, wearing my pink fuzzy socks and PJs, and watching my clothes dry on the stepladder loaned to me by my Slovakian hotel, grateful that I have a warm place to stay tonight. Today’s ride didn’t go as expected by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s still no where else I’d rather be than on the road during summer.
I had high hopes when I left Krynica Zdroj this morning for what was supposed to be a scenic trip to Zacopane for lunch and Zilina for lodging. Although I had seen a weather alert for rain, I had somehow convinced myself that the 37 days of precipitation I had already experienced on this trip was my full quota for the summer.
I headed southwest, enjoying a small country road covered by a canopy of trees and following the Poprad River past the little town of Muszyna, stopping to take a picture of some of the town’s colorfully painted waterfront buildings surrounded by lush vegetation.
Shortly afterwards I entered Slovakia and things took a turn for the worse as dark storm clouds brewed and the road conditions deteriorated. It seemed that entire villages and the areas between them had started road construction projects and somehow neglected to finish them, leaving the lanes with deep ruts for miles and miles. Abandoned buildings added to the somber picture.
After quite a few miles of sliding back and forth on the grooved surface, I turned on what looked like a dirt footpath barely wide enough for one car let alone two, crossed a narrow wood bridge, and then traveled down a gravel road before coming to a large hole spanning the entire width of the lane.
After a man working a bulldozer there told me the road was closed and I needed to turn around, I decided to abandon lunch in Zacopane and head straight to Zilina for the night. Just a few minutes later the heavens opened, and rain came pouring down.
From that point on thoughts of looking at the scenery took second place to maintaining some kind of visibility of the twisting mountainous road in front of me. I flipped my face shield up, kept a gap between my goggles and my face, and wiped everything down regularly but still struggled to see.
At one point that rain lessened to a drizzle, and I was able to stop and admire a little village in the foothills ahead of me. The rest of the time I focused on how exciting it was to be in yet another country and thought about how the bad weather today would make my warm room more inviting tonight and sunny days later in the trip that much more special.
Finding food, gas, and my lodging in Zilina ended up being more complicated than usual as my phone would not connect to the internet when I arrived, and my navigation did not work. However, I was able to get directions to a gas station and use the wifi there to find a grocery store. Soon afterwards I reset my phone’s network settings and the navigation came back to life.
Although I haven’t decided yet exactly where I am going tomorrow, I’m looking forward to another day on the road. Things are not always easy, but they are absolutely adventurous. .
