Day 3 & 4 – Exodus Prague to Budapest bicycle ride

Day 3 – More Hills

We started the day with a 5km climb of around 100m of elevation, a slow, painful climb first thing on setting out, it was quite the warm-up. We were all given the option of taking the van up to the top and waiting for the group, only one person took up the offer but I’m pretty sure a few wished they had by around 2.5km. It was brutal, especially for me as I’m really not in condition. From there on in we were up and down hills until lunch at around the 30km mark.

As I have never really done the distance cycling thing (riding from downtown to exhibition place in Toronto being my previous idea of a long ride) I’m managing to keep up ok, I’m solidly in the middle of the pack. Except on good long down-hill stretches, then I’m able to use my body weight + physics to sometimes even get out in front of everyone. I think my motorcycle experience is helping me on the downhill stretches, as I’m more comfortable judging the curves at speed than others. Of course my body weight + physics makes the up hill stretches killer, but thankfully the up and down parts are roughly even.

The weather today was overcast and high teens/low twenties, which I guess is ideal cycling weather, but it does feel weird that July is ending and I still haven’t really had warm weather, people in Europe are telling me it’s the summer without a summer, so it’s not normal weather. I’m just happy it didn’t rain on us while cycling, it held off until approximately 30 minutes after we were done.

As for the trip/group I think that some people probably should have paid a little more attention to the definition of “Moderate” in the exodus literature, there are a few people for whom this is a really challenging ride. To be fair to them the Exodus literature needs to be read pretty closely to understand that you need to be not only in good physical shape but also comfortable on a touring bike and know how to use it properly, plus understand what doing a 5km uphill climb might be like. We’ve got a running joke in the group that these aren’t hills but rather what Exodus calls “Undulating” landscape.

We’ve been having frequent stops to keep the group together, this helps the stragglers keep up but also aids in the navigation, there are lots of turn offs in little, poorly signed, villages in the South Bohemia region of Czech. It’s somewhat frustrating though, especially when we have to stop at the bottom of a hill and lose all that precious momentum. But it’s for a reason, Matt our tour leader let us go through a village on our own after some of us complained (ok, I complained about the constant stopping) and unsurprisingly someone got lost and we all had to stand around for 30 or so minutes waiting for it to get sorted.

All in all I’m enjoying myself, it’s a huge challenge for me but achievable and a welcome change from staying in hostels and walking around european city centres visting museums. We’re seeing lots of interesting Czech countryside that doesn’t really get lots of tourists and generally having a good time. I’m pretty tired by the end of the night though, so I’m not really doing lots of sight seeing in the town we’re stopping at.

Supposedly tomorrow is the hardest day of the whole trip – it’s hard to imagine it being harder than today but we’ll see.

Day 4 – Hills on top of hills

It’s a bad sign when the tour leader, a svelt, fit 24 year old university student who loves cycling, elects to take the van for a portion of the route. I thought yesterday was hilly, it was really just training for today.

We started with hills, ended with hills, and had some hills thrown in into the middle just for fun. I used every single gear on my 24 speed bicycle, something I never thought possible. I would ride up a long hill struggling in the lowest gears, barely moving but pedaling like mad, get to the top, and be greeted with a slight decline for about 500 meters and then another huge hill behind it. I tried my best to gain momentum on the frustratingly rare downhill stretches, but unfortunately we were plagued by a wicked momentum stealing headwind for most of the day so I wasn’t able to capitalize on my downhill speed to help me up the hills. Oh, and it was wicked cold, like top temperature of 15C but for most of the day we were at maybe 10C if we were lucky.

Despite (or because of) the cold and wind we made pretty good time, finishing 60km in less time than we did 50km the day before. I think the group members who were having serious difficulty using their bicycles are learning the tricks, and those of us (myself included) who are out of condition are gaining stamina. I think the group is split 50/50 between those that think Day 3 was harder vs those that think Day 4 was harder, I’m in the Day 4 was harder camp. The hills were steeper on Day 3, but today there were more of them and there was no corresponding downhill for most of the hills, the reward for finishing a hill was simply to climb another hill.

Tomorrow is supposed to be flatlands and wine tasting, I can tell you we’re all very excited by the prospect of a day without mega-hills… also the wine 🙂

I’m hoping we’re going to get a little bit of sun, and I’ll try to take some pictures, including one of me and my bicycle. I’ll post that, and perhaps a little something about the gear next post.

Day 1 & 2 – Exodus Prague to Budapest cycling trip

Learning from my past experience travel blogging I think I need something more specific than simply “general travel blogging” in order to keep things up to date, so I’m going to try and keep a diary of this organized tour I’m on.

In brief, before I get to my trip diary – Cologne was nice (stayed in what might have been the best dorm room I will stay in during my trip), Berlin was cool and fun, and Prague was a strange blend of eastern and western Europe, but strange in a definitely good way.

OK – that done, back to the bike trip.

The prep

The trip starts with a no-biking day in Prague, most of the group are flying in. As Exodus is a UK company, the majority of the group were flying in from the UK. We’ve also got another Canadian, a few Australians, a Kiwi, and… I think that’s it. As I suspected it might be, I am the youngest of the group, there’s something about long distance multi-day cycling trips that calls to older people. I guess I’m getting old too. We have at least a couple retired people, and the rest are just on holiday.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s actually refreshing to be the youngest in the group, especially after feeling like the oldest person in the hostel for the last 3 weeks, it’s a refreshing change to talk to people who can actually have an idea what it is I do for a living when they ask. My roommate is an Australian who is going to the Olympics in London after this trip, I think he’s crazy to attempt to visit London under Olympic conditions, but he’s pretty excited about it so I guess the queue’s won’t feel as bad when you’re excited.

After meeting up, everyone had a chance to site see in Prague, as I had already been there for 5 days I instead took the time to do laundry and take a nap in the luxury of a hotel room rather than a dorm room.

The next morning, after a hotel breakfast we were picked up by a mini-bus and driven to the starting point in Ceske Budejovice, the home of the original Budweiser beer… not the shitty american beer but the original Czech one they stole the name from. We picked up our bicycles, had a quick stop off at a local bicycle shop to buy supplies (one of the UK couples missed their flight, then their luggage was lost… talk about bad luck, so we were stopping to buy a helmet for her), and were off.

The Ride

Here’s the GPS map of our route:

And here’s a chart of our elevation and speed:

As you can see we had a few climbs to contend with… Czech republic is hilly in these parts! I think it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t taken the very first hill at way too aggressive a pace. After a pretty easy first 7 or 8 km we hit our first hill, it looked to be about 80 meters before it leveled out so I took it hard, it turned out to be the beginning of a twisty hill that pretty much let to more hills for the next several kilometers. Live and learn, tomorrow we’ve been warned that we start out with a 4km climb and have all been given the option of taking the minibus to the top of the hill. I, of course, am too stubborn for that so I’m going to just do my best to make it up that hill and hope for the best.

Oh, and we also did ok on the weather… overcast and a steady temperature with the rain holding off until we got to our destination, there were a few points with a bit of a headwind but nothing truly onerous. It’s raining now though, but I’m still hoping we stay dry tomorrow.

More (hopefully) tomorrow.

Photos from Cologne and Berlin

I don’t have much time to write a post right now, I’m about to head out to a beer sampling tour of Prague, but I did upload photos from Germany so I figured I’d post them here.

On the road again

So i promised many, many people that I would blog my trip and here I am 3 weeks in and i haven’t blogged at all. If you’re friends with me on facebook, google+ or twitter or foursquare then you’ll see some updates from me in all those places… but there’s something special about trying to write down your thoughts while travelling that a simple status update doesn’t cover. So here goes.

It may be strange to say, but even though I left Canada on June 21st, and am now into my fourth country (Iceland, UK, Holland, Germany), it doesn’t really feel like I’ve been travelling yet. Iceland was fantastic, but it was more a vacation than backpacking and for all but 2 nights since I’ve been staying with friends who have graciously let me stay with them in both London and Amsterdam.

Now, sitting in the bar under my hostel in Cologne, Germany I’m starting to feel like the trip is beginning for real. I’m nervous, excited, and I miss my partner something fierce… but with skype you’re never really apart from those you love even when you’re doing something silly like backpacking around the world for no apparent reason. 🙂

So. A quick recap to clear the cache and leave me ready for the road ahead.

Iceland

I’m Canadian, and I come from a country with great wide vistas of unspoiled wilderness and I have been lucky enough to see some truly awe-inspiring landscapes in my own country, but Iceland is a whole different palette of landscapes. The colours, the shapes, the atmosphere is utterly unique and breath-taking. If you love dramatic landscapes you’ll love Iceland. Do yourself a favour and plan a couple guided excursions in the glacier region of the south-east of the island. You may think you can just go there yourself in the cheapest rental car available in the Keflavik airport, but they’re not kidding about needing 4×4 vehicles.

To top is all off, when you’re done with the landscapes and the sheer magnificence of the countryside, Reykjavik is a lovely Nordic city with great nightlife, world-class foodie level restaurants and fantastic shopping.

Oh, just one important note… bring lots of money, it’s expensive.

UK

After a tearful departure from Iceland, with Moira heading back to toronto and me heading off on my own, I made my way to London to stay with Geoff. At this point my travelling starts to feel more like a personal episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, with Geoff bringing me to local haunts in Hackney, taking me to a Brazilian ju-jitsu lesson, a burlesque-comedy-cabaret featuring his fantastically funny girlfriend Lois-of-the-lane, and topping it all off having late night booze fueled deep discussions about political theory, monetary policy and art with our good friend Emily… well, it was a bit of a whirlwind of fantastic times with fantastic people.

After the weekend I made a quick stop over in Cambridge to visit the college of Sir Issac Newton, the father of modern physics and indulge my nerdery by otherwise soaking up the history of science through the several science focused museums in the area.

edit: photo album!

London, Canterbury and Cambridge

Holland

I left Cambridge, taking the overnight ferry departing from Harwich to Holland and went to Amsterdam to visit an old friend Chris. Amsterdam is a beautiful city with a bad reputation. The whole red-light district is really just a couple seedy streets, surrounded by a much larger ring of coffee-shops, hostels, and tourist trap stores and restaurants. If you’re going to amsterdam for partying those few streets seem to be the epicentre, but if you’re going to amsterdam for a bit of history and culture the whole area can be safely avoided. If you must see it, just to see, do what I did and go during a weekday afternoon to avoid the crowds of roving drunk men and women. I concentrated my time in Amsterdam on walking around at random looking at the buildings and architecture and visiting museums. In keeping with my science nerd theme I went to NEMO, the science museum in amsterdam (highly recommend, especially if you’re travelling with kids), the Artis zoo which hilariously had raccoons in one of the exhibits, FOAM a museum dedicated to contemporary photography and the amsterdam hermitage.

Aside from Amsterdam I spent lots of quality time hanging out with Chris, his partner Alex, and even Chris’s aunt Deb who was also visiting at the time. They live outside of the city in a small town called Zaandam, which was Holland postcard beautiful with small cobbled streets and old fashioned wind-mills and topped off by a town wide smell of cocoa as there is a processing plant there. We went for what will probably be my flattest bicycle ride of this trip, I watched my first ever F1 race (team Red-bull won), and generally enjoyed the luxury of staying with an old friend in his house.

Cologne

Well this section is yet to be written. I’m going to work on getting some pictures from the UK and Holland sorted and posted and maybe write something about Germany next week (no promises).

There, my cache is cleared, and I have room in my brain to think about the upcoming parts of my trip.