In order to try and reduce the amount of white line fever and to provide homage to Lou Reed who is revered by many of those who lived behind the Iron Curtain, we have been taking a walk on the wild side.
Basically this means trying to find roads that are a little less travelled by using a combination of Komoot for route planning and Street View to look at the actual roads. But Komoot isn’t always accurate with its description of the road surface and Street View hasn’t been on every road. This introduces an element of risk. Sometimes it works well and you are on a quiet paved road. Sometimes not so well and you end up on rough rocky roads. Sometimes its worse.
When on a rough rocky road you are often tempted, like brave Ulysses was tempted by the Sirens, to come over by the side where finer particles, like sand, have been pushed covering the rocks and smoothing things out. Sometimes it works well and the ride smoothens out for a bit giving a reprieve from the jarring. Sometimes it is just a bunch of soft sand with nothing underneath, the nemesis of a heavy laden bike. You see the tires sink in and the soft sand takes control of the bike. The heavily weighted bike now having momentum in a direction which is no longer consistent with the direction of the front wheel. If you are in a low gear and clipped in to your pedals sometimes you can power through to the road and regain control. But sometimes you’re in too high of a gear, or the sand is too deep and you’re clipped in and then…….well….. then……,
Well then there is blood on the saddle.
And the watching milk cows go
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Tallinn to Istanbul by Bike 