http://www.pdsnoki.org/
Fundraising Goal: $9,000, or $9 per kilometer!!!
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So there is much to tell about the first day of the trip, but I am using a borrowed computer (from my very kind hosts, on whom more in a moment) so I may have to be brief.When I left Tallinn, I was very concerned about ensuring I didn't get lost. So after spending an hour planning my route, I realized it was drizzling. I had promised myself I would not ride in the rain, but this was just a drizzle and it seemed like I had no choice -- I couldn't lose the day. So I finally got out around noon and hit the road south. The Via Baltica (Highway 4) goes due south, but it is a huge highway so I decided to avoid it and go via backroads. This was generally a good call, as I saw prettier places and had little car traffic to deal
with, but the signage wasn't top and a lot of the roads on my map are just dirt or gravel roads, making it hard to plan where to go. That said, for the first 20 miles, I had many bike paths. I also got to pass through Saku, the suburb of Tallinn where they brew one of the big domestic beers.By the time I made it about 20 miles outside of Tallinn, to a town called Hageri, it had stopped raining. Nothing I was wearing had gotten too wet, though the bike was covered in grime. Once I made to a small town called Kodila, the minor troubles began. There was no sign for the southern route and I found myself riding about 10 extra km northwest to a town called Varbola. This meant I had gone pretty far out of my way AND I had to take the Via Baltica highway for a good 12 km to get to where I was going. It
turned out not to be too bad -- the tight shoulder and occasional rushing trucks were compensated by the fact that the road was high-quality, so I could ride a lot faster.I also noticed that I did not see a single restaurant for the first 40 miles of my trip (after Tallinn, of course), but I found a cute little hamburger stand on the Via Baltica and that was my lunch at 4:15! Hamburger was, well, a loose term to describe the Salisbury steak, drowned in cole slaw and a runny pink ketchup on a soggy bun. But it was tasty!
I made it to the B&B I had booked around 6. This is a pretty remarkable place called "Luhtre". It is an old farm that was built by the Luther family about 100 years ago. They had no heirs and passed it on to their neighbor in 2002 when the last of the family died. The neighbor got married in 2004 and he and his wife have turned it into a bed and breakfast, styled on places they have seen around the world (like Arizona, she said!) There is a 23-year-old cat, and they are in the process of building up the grounds with a pool, tennis courts, a sauna, and a museum showing all of the various articles the Luther family left here. As I write this, for example, the lady of the house just showed me some 100-year-old undergarm
ents and a 2-inch stack of 1940s Reichmarks. They also hunt or farm all the food (breakfast tomorrow, for example, will be from their chickens' eggs). It is a pretty neat place. They just brought me some sausage and a glass of wine while I write this, and she makes a pretty mean apple tart! If you'd like to know more, here's their site: http://www.luhtre.ee/So all in all, today's trip, with detour, took me about 59 miles. That is the longest I have ever biked by far, so I expect to be sore tomorrow! Tomorrow's journey should take me to the coastal town of Pärnu, Estonia, on the Gulf of Riga. It will be about the same distance, perhaps a little less if I don't get lost... I may then stay there and have a recovery day (and do some wash). We'll see.
A few observations on the biking:
- My pack probably weighs more than twice my bike. This means it is VERY easy for the bike to fall over if I am holding it only by the handlebars and walking it. This happened once in the mud and so I learned the hard way. It is also really hard to kick my legs over the bag, so I am mounting the bike over the main tube instead. But the extra weight hasn't been too hard for biking.
- It is absolutely as flat here as I expected, thankfully. I had literally not one hill today.
- The bike does very well in the rain. I suppose it should, but I guess I find that surprising nonetheless.
- In true form for this part of the world, it is mushroom hunting season. I saw about 80 cars if I saw one pulled to the side of the road with people out picking mushrooms in the forest. Just along the road I saw tons and tons of types of mushrooms.
- There are precious few restaurants in the country. My intended coping mechanism for going such long distances was to have been a big lunch/rest stop, but I see now that I have to plan that carefully! I will basically take any occasion I can to get food when I see it (I bought a few candy bars early on today, for example, since I didn't find a restaurant until 4:15).
- The limiting factor for my riding may be more the pain of sitting in the saddle than the distance of riding...we shall see. By the end of the day today, it was pretty uncomfortable.
- Bringing back memories from Moscow days, there are plenty of drunk Russian men around who reek of cheap beer/vodka and even cheaper cigarettes. Hm. Memories.
OK, off to rest before heading to Pärnu tomorrow.
Vitals on today's ride:
- Distance: 58.5 miles
- Soundtrack (when on country roads!): Alastair Moock, A Life I Never Had; Maceo Parker, Life on Planet Groove
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