Slow and Steady

Telc to Znojmo, Czechia — 43.0 mi, 11.4 mph, 2160 ft

Today’s destination would be a great Scrabble word. It’s been fun to see some of the unusual (from an English speaker’s point of view) letter combinations. It seems that just about any letter can be preceded by an “r”. I looked this up and found that in Czech and Slovak (very closely related), r is a “syllable forming” letter. Apparently, there are entire sentences without any vowels. Here’s a fun one: “Prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn,” meaning "A mole farted through grass, having swallowed a handful of grains". I found this on Wikipedia, so it must be true!

We had another wonderful breakfast this morning a few hundred meters from the hotel — eggs, sausage, cheese, yogurt, granola, bread, butter, jam, juice, coffee. What’s not to like. The answer to that question is… rain! It was raining steadily as we pedaled out of town, stopping briefly at an ATM to get more Czech korunas or “crowns.” Fortunately, the rain lasted less than an hour, which I was very pleased by. There were plenty of short steep hills early in the day, so we were in no danger of getting very cold. I have an iPhone 8 now (waterproof, or so they say), so I just left it clipped to my handlebars so I could see the route and hear the voice cues. The touch screen, however, is all but useless when completely wet, so I tried not to mess with it.

Drive up ATM machine!

Kylie was tired of listening to music on our speaker, so we picked out a RadioLab to listen to, one of her favorite podcasts. This was a nice distraction as we pedaled through more rolling farmland and in and out of small towns. The listening ended, however, going up at mile 12. Meg’s chain snapped again, for the third time in two days. We pushed the bikes to the top of the hill and I performed my magic trick of threading the chain back onto the bike, pushing out a pin, removing the damaged link, and reassembling. I’m getting pretty fast as long as someone holds the rear derailleur forward so I have some slack in the chain. Once down, hands washed, Kylie and I climbed the next rise and sat there, me with a sinking feeling the longer we waited. Meg and Dex appear… walking up the hill! Arrrrgh, this is getting ridiculous! I had hoped to stop at a bike shop either in the town halfway through the ride or at the endpoint. There were at least a half dozen to choose from, all closed until Monday! Since it was Saturday, we had no choice but to limp along until Vienna.

Kylie with problem chain

Dex had apparently gotten over his fear of the chain breaking, perhaps through constant exposure. Now that the chain had been shortened four times, getting into the big chainring, was definitely off limits. Instead, they decided to permanently ride in the small one. Slow and steady was the name of the game for the rest of the day.

We seem to have become big fans of chicken schnitzel. For lunch, Meg, Dex, and Kylie chose that while I picked the cream spinach penne. The woman at the restaurant was a good sport about us not speaking any Czech. Ordering food has got to be the easiest situation to deal with when you don’t speak someone’s language. The context is clear, you want food. It’s just a matter of pointing to something on the menu even if you’re not completely sure what it is. Google translate is pretty good, but sometimes, leaves you almost as confused as when you started.

Wildlife!

By a little after 3:00 we were sitting in front of the Grant Lux Penzion. Znojmo, it turns out, is an old walled city with an impressive church and Town Hall Tower with one of those crazy pointed, gothic roofs. Despite the short days, I seem to have very tired legs today. The Czech Republic has, for the most part, had great small roads and beautiful scenery. Tomorrow, we’re off to Vienna.