Riding in the Rain

On Sunday, I went on the big Herl'any bike tour sponsored by the local branches of the Klub of Slovak Tourists (i.e., hikers and bikers). 'Big' turned out to be a dozen people, and once we got out of town it broke down into smaller groups. Eventually it was just me and three strong Slovak guys - they were all on mountain bikes (but with skinnier-than-normal tires) and I was on my cross bike.

In Herl'any (where the geyser was not geysing), we met up with the slower group (who had taken a much shorter route)



and we all moved up the road to the bar. I thought everyone was ordering dark beer on tap, but it turned out to be Kofola, the favorite soft drink around here. According to Wikipedia, "Kofola originated in the Czechoslovak pharmaceutical company Galena in the early 1960s during research targeted at finding a possible use for surplus caffeine produced in the process of coffee roasting. The resulting dark-coloured, sweet-and-sour syrup Kofo became the main ingredient of a new soft drink named Kofola introduced in 1962." So I had one - I'm not a connosewer of soft drinks, but I think this is kind of like Dr. Pepper (which I don't like).

After the lengthy rest stop, our little band of 4 (and a couple of others) headed back north to go over the road to Zlata Bana. This is the same road that I got 'lost' on back in March, but there are a lot more people out there on a Sunday in April. It rained long and hard enough on the way up to the dirt section to make it pretty messy. Back down in Zlata Bana, I noticed that I had a flat rear tire (defective tube) and had to replace the tube while my companions sat inside a warm bar drinking either beer or more Kofola (I couldn't tell which). Then it was all downhill into Presov. Total distance: 60 miles. Total time: about 7 hours. Bike condition afterwards: filthy