Adventure time

So, round three. You could say bike touring is becoming a part of the annual routine, if you consider three years running to constitute a routine. I can certainly say it feels that way to me, partially because I have looked forward to my next tour since last year, and partially because Vera is great and is happy to have me out of her hair for a few days each year, so I’ll probably be able to keep it going in the future too. 

While touring is then part of the routine, there’s nothing routine about touring. This summer’s tour was going to open new ground for me: I’d pack my bike up, fly with it from Berlin to Belgrade, then cycle to Sarajevo and on to Podgorica, Montenegro, where I’d meet up with V for another week of vacation. A tour through parts of former Yugoslavia. Americans, break out the maps 😉. Wide open countryside, stunning mountains, questionable road quality, drivers unaccustomed to bikes, potential 40 degree heat, and the possibility of stray or sheep dogs looking to take bites out of bikers. Adventure!! 

Murphy’s law

That was the plan until about 40 minutes before my flight to Belgrade was supposed to depart, when the announcement came that the flight was canceled. Balls. With no alternative to get to Belgrade within 48 hours, it was time to replan. So when I got home from the airport at 10pm last night, that’s what I did. The only constraint was needing to be in Podgorica, so I looked at flights to cities within a  500km radius, and hey, what do you know, there was a cheap, direct flight to Skopje (bonus points if you knew that is the capital of North Macedonia) today. Already looking good. Then I just needed to figure out whether I could make a reasonable cycling itinerary between the two countries. Also a check! Game on. I wasn’t a happy camper when I went to bed, but at least I had a plan.

Where to?

What’s the plan? Skopje -> Pristina (Kosovo) -> Pejë/Peč (Kosovo), then into Montenegro. Also about 500km and 8000m climbing, so four solid days of cycling. Same amount of adventure, if not more, particularly as I had no time to research anything. But weirdly not as exciting, I think because it was so last-minute I had no time to look forward to it. Still, the anticipation has been building during the flight, and now that we’re about to land and I see the mountains out the window, I feel good. So I’ll sign off now, hoping that my bike arrives with me and that no other major curveballs come my way. Fingers crossed!