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We started todays ride with eight people and finished with only seven; never a good thing.

So the next day of the long week-end (May 7) we woke up reasonably early (for the amount of beer and weird liquors consumed the night before) and settled on going for a ride. It was to be a group ride into the Jezerské Hory National Forest to the north of our cabin, with riders ranging from recreational cruisers to xc-marathon racers; we would probably do about 50km with lunch along the way. We were all sitting around the picnic table outside waiting for our friend Lukaš to wake up, when he jumped outside ready to go while the rest of us were still sipping tea wearing whatever we fell asleep in.

A few minutes later we were all ready and off. We rode as a scattered pack along empty paved and dirt mountain roads until we came to the gates at the national forest. The paths through the park were at first asphalt or bluestone dust. After our first stop though we came to the idyllic paths these forests are known for.

Sweet mother-of-what the hell is that you say? Well it seems that in the places most revered here; where you come closest to nature; they paved the trails with giant block of precast concrete. Its as if they laid jersey barriers down on the ground on their side, so as to prevent any erosion. And are they smooth and even you ask? Of course not! It’s like riding along on the freaking Penna Turnpike! Which leads us to what happens next…
(Casey is about to dig this!)

So much for amazing Czech engineering? So anyway all those repeated bump stresses apparently led to the catastrophic demise of Lukaš’s Czech DURATEC. It looked like a really nice bike. It had a cool but proprietary asymmetric design. But lastly it’s flaw… It was made of aluminium, and it didn’t bend it broke. Luckily Lukaš didn’t crash as we were riding along at a decent clip. But he was a bit heart broken and we a ways from home. I can attest that it was truly a JRA occurrence as I was just riding along behind him. (as it turns out though, he is the second owner of the frame.) But just look at the puddle of a weld there, and over a machined bit! It seems like on close inspection that the method of construction was kinda asking for trouble.

Karel did volunteer to ride the half he found home like a unicycle. But alas we took turns carrying it for Lukaš until we realized that it hooked on my bar ends rather nicely and securely. Lukaš walked the front half in. We really weren’t too far from the restaurant where we were planning lunch anyway, so after everybody poring over the maps we were able to take a fairly short route to get there. Lukaš called his girlie who was back at the cabin and she came and met us for lunch and to shuttle him home.

It was a bit of a cold dreary day, so we were all happy to get to the lunch spot and warm up with some hot tea, cold beer and warm food. As you can tell we were not alone. This bar/restaurant is at a big crossroads of bike and hiking trails in the forest, so it’s pretty packed on the week-ends. There were even some weird old mildly overweight Czech guys out under one of the umbrellas in assorted US and Euro army fatigues. It was a bit strange; one of them even had a union civil war cap on? Anyway with Lukaš’s bike sitting just outside it got a lot of looks from everyone who came by. (which was pretty much the same reaction when I was riding with th e back half of it on my handlebars.)So after leaving Lukaš with the sag wagon, it had started to rain a bit and the rest of us figured we should be on our way.

By the time we were on our bikes again and riding it had stopped raining but was definitely still ominous. The long gravelly/sandy climb out from the bar must have been one of the main routes across the area (leading south out of Poland only another 10km beyond) because as we rode up the trail there were concrete pillboxes left over from the last war littering the forest. It was a bit strange but cool nonetheless, because when you looked closely at the bank you could see a bunch of little hidden bunkers lining the trail.

At the top of the long but gradual climb we regrouped and decided to take an alternate route that would be more pleasing to the entire group. While we waited Karel did donuts on his lugged steel touring bike, on which he had been smoking us all day with his much larger than the rest of us gearing. Not to side with Casey, but a steel cyclocross bike is definitely the ideal machine for most of the longer rides in this country.

Somewhat to my surprise the move to appease the weaker riders almost immediately went straight up a steep technical climb, which only Verča and I cleaned. As you can see Verča was a rather happy to ride past the guy who had been leading all day.

After that we rode along the edge of the hill on and old roadbed that had pretty nice views to the valley below and of the impending storm behind us. Verča and I cruised ahead taking advantage of the long fast climb and following descents through scrubby pine trees.

That was pretty much the last picture I took as the ride soon after began its downward spiral. Waiting at the bottom of another Penna Turnpike section, we mapped out our course home for the remaining 20km or so, with about half of which would be dirt and a little steep. But by the time we were riding to our next turn it started raining. And it kept raining harder and harder. We decided to forget the dirt climbs which would be brutal, since it was now raining so hard we couldn’t really see. So we took a path(?) with more Jersey paving for about 10km which dropped us fast into a dense forest paved road for another 10km. We had to stop in the forest for a while to see if anyone could feel their fingers or toes. It had gotten much colder (50deg?) with the storm front and the consensus on the extremities was that we could see just not feel them. A few minutes later and we were in a small town about 500m lower than we were when we last stopped 25km ago and 200m lower and 5km away from our cabin. Luckily the climb mostly warmed us up as we passed another ski lift. And we were all happy to arrive back home at the cabin where we were again greeted well by a warm fire, cold beer, and hot showers.

I crashed out early that night and everyone else wasn’t too far behind me.