The next morning our time in the cupboard was up and it was time for me to leave Lviv. There had been talk of Hanna finding a bike and coming with me for a few days but finally we decided it wasn't such a good idea. Hanna had never done a bicycle tour and we felt like the middle of winter in Ukraine probably wasn't the best time or place for starting. Instead she would take the train back north to Belarus and I would turn my nose finally south and so we had a sad goodbye in a park surrounded by pigeons. I managed to hold off crying until she turned and walked away and I watched her disappear down the street and I walked and pushed my bike along the pavement in the opposite direction. I looked at the bike through teary eyes and said:

"Why do you always do this? Take me away from girls like this?"

"Whoa hey, lets not start this again!" My talking bicycle replied. "We've been through this, and by the way, I am an inanimate object and you are the one pushing me along right now, I'm not doing anything."

"Well, but.."

"But nothing. And another thing, this conversation is happening entirely inside your head. I am, as I said, an inanimate object, and you, by the way, are completely insane."

"That seems a little harsh, I am a bit upset right now."

"Well, I know what will cheer you up, a nice trip to Moldova. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Hmm, not really actually."

"Its a country, we're going!"

I was actually quite relieved that Hanna didn't join me because the road that I took out of Lviv was an absolute nightmare. It was a highway with a lot of traffic but it was in a terrible state of disrepair, absolutely littered with potholes. The shoulder was muddy and even more littered with potholes but it was the safest place for me to be because most of the traffic was playing some sort of game that involved weaving all over the road trying to find the best bit of road surface and avoiding the biggest potholes and the only rule of this game was that under no circumstances was anyone allowed to use the brake pedal. To make matters even worse it was a miserable grey foggy day. It was probably the most depressing day of cycling I can ever remember. Only the previous evening I had stood before a crowd of people and enthusiastically gushed about how great it was to travel by bike all the time, and now I had no idea why.

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Its kind of always like this when I stop for a while and then have to leave again, especially when I leave a great place, especially when I leave a really great girl, especially when I leave a really, really great dog. I knew very well that the thing to do was to just push on and get through a day or two without being shot at by any hunters, and everything would be alright again. So push on I did and as night fell I came to the town of Blbrka, which was as lacking in street lights as it is in vowels. Now the thing was that I needed to find a shop because I was completely out of toilet paper and I cycled along the main road all the way through the town. I was sure I would find a shop if I kept going so I went on and on along this dark street but no shop I found. At the end of the town there was a motel and a gas station. I looked in the gas station but they had no toilet paper. I was frustrated because I really needed this stupid paper. I had seen another street in the middle of the town which I guessed might have shops on it so I cycled all the way back along the dark road. Eventually I found a shop and went in. These shops have all the stuff behind the desk and you have to ask for what you want. I couldn't see any toilet paper and I didn't want to ask for it because I would have to ask in sign language and thats a charade I didn't feel like doing in a strange Ukrainian town shop. So I went on further and found another shop, and a chemist, and still I could find no toilet paper. Surely the people of this town must be able to purchase this important product somewhere! Then, further on I found another chemist, and finally I saw what I was looking for on the shelves and I had an extra large roll for the very reasonable price of 15 cents. In the shop next to this, incidently, I bought a few other groceries from a fat old woman who, in lieu of a till, used an abacus to calculate the bill.

It was now almost pitch black outside as I made my way back through town. The lack of light made cycling on the bumpy, holey road even more difficult but I made my way all the way back to the gas station and motel. This looked like the end of town but just beyond the motel I now noticed that there was a small shop and because I understand how these things work I knew very well that they would sell toilet paper there but even so I looked in the window, just to be absolutely sure that I had just wasted an hour of my life. Sure enough, there was the mother of all toilet paper pyramids, from floor to ceiling, it filled half the shop!