On the road again... kind of

September 3rd, 2012 Monday

We decided to embark on our journey through the Czech Republic on Monday mostly because we still needed the essential map that detailed the pathways to take. Most stores close early on Saturdays and aren't open on Sundays, so Monday it was. We got our things together, had a big brunch (I cooked while Alex fixed a broken spoke on the non-drive side) and headed out to leave... almost. Turns out my loose spoke was a broken one also on the non-drive side (the side where the chain rings and cassette are not). Since it is more likely that we would have broken spokes on the drive side, it seemed that maybe the way our bikes were strapped in on the train had something to do with it.

Karbos and Alice see us off!

After fixing the spoke, we said our goodbyes to Karbos and Alice and made them promise to visit us in LA. After all, just seeing Tennessee as an exchange student still doesn't give the full scope of the United States.
We were off!... to catch the metro to the edge of Prague 13. Riding in the city is so difficult what with cobble stone everywhere that it made the most sense to catch the bike path from there. The metro was downstairs and thus we expected some sort of elevator, at least for those in a wheelchair, but not at this stop. Alex carried the bikes down the stairs, we got our tickets, and sped away from the center. When we left the metro, it took us a while to connect with the bike route but we finally found it! It was already the late afternoon and we had to make it to the closest campsite about 35km away.

wrong path, right place

I-I follow, I follow you through deep green baby...

With that we hit the trail... And lost it soon after. There are several biking ways in the Czech Republic, but we found that most of the accidental detours we made led us back to the correct path. We were about 12 or so km away following the yellow arrowed signs when we noticed other trail markings that we recognized from online info. We turned on this path to find broken pavement uphills, gravel downhills, and paths in deep grass meant for mountain bikes. Man, this path was terrible, but the view was great. We eventually found that we were on an offshoot of the main path, and quickly rejoined it.

ooh look! old stuff!

We arrived into the small town with camping as it was getting dark (no maximum daylight like northern Germany summertime). We found some round about way to the camping green, set up our tent (we saw only one other tent), made some beans with gnocchi and promptly fell asleep.