As I've mentioned before, I learned to ride a bike when I was eight years old (slow learner) and I haven't stopped since. I commuted to work by bicycle for almost 25 of my 28 years in private practice. I would have done it more during residency training, but when my father found out that I was riding to Duke Hospital at 4:45 AM to make rounds and often riding back home in the dark late the next night, he mumbled something about throwing good money after bad and lent me enough to buy a $750 car.
Paula and I rode up Provo Canyon when we were dating as students at BYU about a thousand years ago,
and we've done several bike tours as "vacations" through the years. It's a great way to really explore a place; you get to smell the lavender fields (and the cows), see the people (and their camper vans hurtling down the roads), and get a feel for the clime (including rain, hail, wind, cold, etc.).
So when we were doing so in Croatia last year and our beloved friend and guide Sue Clark mentioned a trip that she and the other guides and the owner of the small New Zealand company had put together in Montenegro, Paula said, "Sign us up!"
Easy, right? Just jump on a bike and see the world! Not if that world is described as having around 80,000 feet of vertical to be ridden up over two weeks and 500 kilometers' distance. It means that although you're riding your bike a couple of times a week at home, that's not going to cut it.
Instead, it means a lot of work trying to get in good enough condition for such a trip, with daily rides, 50-mile ones a couple of times a week in which you are looking for, instead of avoiding, the biggest hills in (surprisingly hilly) Raleigh, NC, etc. This all has to start at least a couple of months prior to the trip. Sometimes the weather would interfere, like this attempted ride after a big rain.
And if the weather was too bad, "riding the rollers" in the kitchen. (Note: This is not actually me - my crashes on the rollers were even more spectacular, and this guy had the sense to wear a helmet.)
Sadly, Paula's beloved brother Alan was fading quickly as we were getting ready. He passed away about ten days before the trip, and his funeral was scheduled for the day we were to land in Croatia. Paula rescheduled her ticket and attended, while I went ahead to Dubrovnik. I was able to see her and listen to the service thanks to the internet, while I sat on a balcony in a hotel.
Paula and I don't ride on Sundays, so I did the Monday ride with the other seven members of the group (all New Zealanders, or "Kiwis") and the three guides, and we picked up Paula at the end of the ride. By this time, in four days she had traveled to Oregon, attended her brother's funeral, caught a redeye flight back to Raleigh, and then boarded a three-leg flight to Croatia. We helped her navigate the parking lot curbs, ignored her tangled attempts at speech and buckled her in the van, still severely disoriented.
Although the next day's ride began in Croatia, we quickly arrived at the border with Bosnia, which required a passport check to leave Croatia, then a half-mile later a second check to enter Bosnia. Another ten miles or so later, another stamp at the crossing to leave Bosnia, and after a half-mile a fourth check to enter Montenegro, where we rode for the next ten days or so. So how do you do a border crossing on a bicycle? That's right, on your bicycle, with your passport in your back pocket. The border guys were unimpressed, mumbling something in a Slavic tongue while we smiled, said "Thanks," and pedaled off.
The owner of Kiwi Style Bike Tours is a former bicycle racer, having competed internationally for New Zealand in his younger days. (He's on the left. The one on the right refuses to race.)
Where's Montenegro? you might ask. It's across the Adriatic Sea from Italy and was one of the six entities balled up into "Yugoslavia" after World War I. This was after millennia of various dominations by the Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, French, Venetians, the Detroit City Council and about fourteen other known groups. The country itself only became a free-standing nation in 2006, when a close vote was held to separate itself from its former conglomeration called "Serbia and Montenegro." Montenegro is working on becoming an official EU partner, while already having joined NATO and adopted the Euro as its official currency.
So what's Montenegro like on a
bicycle? It is said that while absolutely deserving visitors, the
country is perhaps ten years behind Croatia tourism-wise, and that's
almost completely to the good. Much of the economic wealth is
concentrated on its coast, where most of the tourist dollars are also
spent. The inner topography is very mountainous and the towns are
small, and prices haven't caught up...yet.
We tackled Durmitor National Park on the third day. It's a beautiful, raw area in the mountains, with a single-lane road winding up and down. I did about 6,000 feet of vertical that day, and while the guides took pity on Paula and let her skip some of it, she and I soloed back to the inn by ourselves in the wind, cold and a bit of rain.
The daily rides were varied but always impressive. We spent one day holed up in a hotel while a major storm passed through, but the next day looked better. Don't trust Montenegran weather reports. Moments after setting off on a 30-kilometer ride through twenty-some tunnels on another day, the bottom fell out. Trying to ride through the longer tunnels guided only by the blinking bike lights ahead of you, as seen through rain-speckled glasses, while having no idea of what potholes are lurking is a great way to stay awake.
Another day found us with fellow-travelers on the narrow roads.
Stops at little cafes along the way were cool, and the soup was hot.
On a particularly beautiful day, we climbed up to a mausoleum at the top Mount Lovcen, built in the late 1970's by the Yugoslavian Communist government on the site where several small chapels had periodically housed the remains of King Petar II Petrovic-Njegos. He had decided he wanted to be buried at the top of that mountain, and the first chapel was built in 1848, where he was buried when he died three years later. However, with various wars and the ever-changing political situations, his progressively-deteriorating remains went back and forth to Cetinje, which was periodically the capitol of the variously defined limits of what was sometimes termed "Montenegro." The Communists after World War 2 finally said, "Доста тога!" roughly translated as "OK, enough of that!!" tore down the old chapel and built a neo-classical or whatever thing on the mountain, and to which we grunted and sweated on our bikes in order to visit. The bike ride up wasn't easy,
Other days were near-idyllic, such as one riding along through villages along the Bay of Kotor. Looks great, no?
Yeah, well, about a half-mile later, the road turned left, with gradients up to 16%. Ooof.
The last day's ride was one of the best, a route called The Serpentine, climbing above Kotor City itself for 3,100 feet.
As typical, it was a single-lane road, but with 26 tight switch backs this time.
and when we were stopped by the jam, the two bus drivers where on the road waving their arms and screaming at each other in some Slavic tongue which I had the good luck not to understand. Finally one gave in and backed up to a (minor) widening in the road and we pulled ahead, racing the scattered cars back down The Serpentine.
The last couple of days were spent in Perast, a small village 20 minutes up the road from the cool but tourist-infested Old Town of Kotor. Sharp-eyed Paula noted a water leak in our first-assigned room, and they had to upgrade us to a room right on the water. Darn.
Dave & Paula
