I stared death in the face: For the third night in a row

December 14, 2013

The next morning I cycled back into the centre of Kosice and looked for some bicycle shops as I wanted to buy a new front tire. I found a couple, but neither stocked Schwalbe tires and it seems they will be difficult to find now. I felt a bit foolish after spending so long in Germany and Austria where they would be easy to come by, and then deciding that I need one just as I move too far east. But, you know, I'm pretty stupid.

Sometimes men weilding chainsaws in Slovakia are actually doing delicate ice carvings

Minus three in the daytime, things are starting to get interesting now!

Only the tops of the hilltains were white

Doing their best to promote tourism in Slovakia with this information board. It should really have carried the caption 'Enjoy hiking in Slovakia, there may be a hungry wolf lurking around the corner at any moment'

I left Kosice and headed north on more quiet roads through poor villages. It was a very cold day, as they all seem to be, and the hilltains all had white trees at the top of them. It looked very pretty. It was a fairly uneventful ride apart from at one point when I shifted gears my chain somehow got trapped between the small and middle chainrings. It really got itself right jammed in there:

I couldn't pull it out and this was a problem that up until a year ago I would have struggled to fix, but these days I carry a crank removal tool and know how to use it, so I was able to free the chain by basically removing the whole chainset and disassembling it. It was a tedious task in the cold, but it was accomplished and I was able to continue.

As it was getting towards dusk (at half past three in the afternoon) I reached the city of Presov, the third largest in the country. As with Kosice there was a nice church and a busy Christmas market and I sat here for a while, updated my blog, and put off camping until a more reasonable hour.

There was a wild horse on the loose in Presov, but it timed its jump over that fence all wrong

I could see that there was a patch of woodland about ten kilometres out of the city along the way that I needed to go, and it looked like a great place to camp (as long as no hunters came.) But google maps is not three dimensional and as I neared the woodland the road began to climb steeply up. It kept going up like this into the woods until the lights of the city were way below me and I was up among the white trees with snow on the ground. Even in the faint light I knew it was beautiful and when it finally flattened out at the top there was an area that was perfect for camping and I decided to spend the night up high.

The ground was frozen and I couldn't get the tent pegs in but I made it work by tying the tent to my bike and panniers. I looked around one final time at the beautiful scenery and took a deep breath of the cool mountain air, and then crawled into my tent. Then the noises started. I knew for an absolute fact that there were wolves in these mountains and I became quite convinced that the rustling noises I could hear were a pack of these creatures stalking my tent. At one point I thought I heard a growl from right outside and I sat bolt upright, petrified. By chance I had some scissors in the tent and I sat there with these held up poised in one hand, flashlight and blunt penknife held together like a bayonet in the other, terrified and facing death in the face for the third night in a row. What was on the other side of that thin fabric? It seemed like this really could be the end. Goodness this movie is getting exciting isn't it?

Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 10,933 km (6,789 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	4
Comment on this entry	Comment	0