A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
Last winter I thought I was too old for adventures,
but I got itchy feet again. The truth is that you will never be too old for
anything, unless your lazy mind manages to persuade you that you are. Therefore,
it is always be only your mind that will eventually determine what you can
accomplish. This ultimate trip was not just a spontaneous decision, but it
had been planned carefully several months in advance. I had to save up
some money first to upgrade my bike and to buy several indispensable things
such as reserve batteries for my laptop and cell phone. In this blog I am
going to share some of my travelling experiences that might be interesting or
inspiring to you.
...
Right from the beginning I was nicely surprised with perfectly marked bike routes. At least from Marchegg to Vienna, it was virtually impossible to go astray.
Unfortunately, my travelling started with a serious problem with my knee right from the beginning. To keep you in suspense, let's say for reasons then unknown I got a terrible twinge into my right knee every now and then and each move of the knee was accompanied by terrible pain. This started as I arrived in Vienna and I contributed this to the overall fatigue on the first day. Therefore, I went to my favorite Kebab Kiosk to feed, literally. I thought I could eat a horse, but I ate only one kebab and one burek.
Just before leaving Vienna I made a quick break, when an old lady came up to me to asked whether I was not looking for accommodation. She was totally horrified when I thanked her an said that I am going to stay in a tent for the next two months.
However, the pain in my knee was getting worse and more unrelenting. I did every 5 km with an immense endeavor and was seriously afraid that I would have to give up on my fabulous summer adventure.
Later in the evening, I was on the brink of total exhaustion. I passed a huge water power station and at that point I made an ominous mistake: With that last energy I managed to summon, I rode like frenzy for 15 km with the motto "now or never“, unfortunately, the exact opposite direction. That means that instead of continuing, I set my camp 10 km nearer to home on the opposite side of the river from the direction I came. This was supposed to be a nice morning surprise. Having arrived tired as hell, I decided not to build a tent. What a coincidence that 15 minutes after I had lulled myself into a sleep, a big thunderstorm with heavy wind came out of the blue (or in this case would be more suitable to say out of darkness) and sprang a nasty surprise on me. I never knew that I can build a tent so fast. Just in the nick of time I managed to build my shelter and put my luggage into it.
My bike tent, a marvelous invention as it is, is extremely easy to build and has almost no weight. However, with its only one pole, it proved not to be very stable in strong wind. Therefore, I spent the night holding the tent from inside to prevent the ultimate collapse, until I gave up the fight at 2 am. The tent acted like grass in the wind and I got struck with the construction several times. Fortunately it was agile enough and did not break.
I have decided to add some pictures to each blog entry. Unfortunately, my cellphone was not always able to take a good snapshot and some of them might not be of a good quality. Moreover, as I realized in horror, all pictures from the Camino itself (Day 33+) were taken with wrongfully set 800 ISO which made them look more like impressionistic paitings than real pictures. Sorry about that, I hope that they have at least some documentary value suppsoing that from the artistic point of view, they are totally rubbish.
No comments:
Post a Comment