I'm leaving in a couple hours. I will get on a plane and fly to Manchester England, where I will borrow a motorcycle from Simon, who I know from the V-Strom International forum. He has two V-Stroms, one of each size. The two of us will ride south and stay with another rider from the forum, then all three of us will take the Chunnel and ride to Germany. In Frankfurt we will meet up with several other riders from the forum, that are from various countries. We will ride to Slovenia, and even more riders will meet us on the way. Eventually there will be ten of us. We're going to ride around the Balkans, and various local riders are going to host us and join us for a day or two.

Apparently our visit is generating a lot of interest in some of the smaller, non-English-language V-Strom forums, and whole groups of riders are coming out to meet and greet us and show us all the cool little local places.

For Simon the trip combines work and pleasure. He is on his mid-term holiday for the first part of the trip, but he will be able to stay longer because he's making some official visits on behalf of his teachers' union to other unions, teachers and schools in the countries we will visit. Igor, who is arranging the trip, will serve as his personal translater and guide when he goes to his meetings. The rest of us will go to one of the school visits, but mostly we'll do other touristy things while he's off doing his work stuff.

May 30

I've made it to England. My flight left Detroit at 6:10pm on Monday, and landed in London a little before 7am on Tuesday. One of the neat things about the flight was that as the sun set, it was pretty clear, and I could see all of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton from my window, it was like looking at a map. At Heathrow, they had us disembark the plane and walk down a ladder to the tarmac, and then get on a shuttle bus. I have never done that before, only seen it on TV when movie stars and politicians do it, so it seemed glamorous. The shuttle took us to a building where we had to go up, around, down, and out another door where we got on another shuttle bus. There were many escalators and moving sidewalks, none of which were working. It was dim and gloomy and reminded me of a loading dock or a service entrance. The second shuttle bus went through a maze of little driveways and roads, and fetched up at another terminal, with more ups and downs and rounds and rounds. Had to wait in a half dozen lines just to get through this building, all the customs and border stuff. Then at the gate, they put us on another shuttle bus and drove us out to the plane, and another open air stair to get into the plane to Manchester.

There's a five hour time difference, and by the time I landed in Manchester it was around 10am local time. My luggage came right out and was easy to find. Simon and three of his children were waiting for me. Arthur (age 8), Elizabeth (age 6), and Frank (age 4) are the children's names. There's also a ten year old, Edward. They are lively and noisy but cheerful and good natured. As I write this they keep bursting in; they all want to hang out with me, but they don't want to share me, so the minute one of them comes in, another will follow, and they start competing for attention, getting ever louder. I keep shooing them out (with full support from their dad) and they take this as gracefully as small children can. I'm sure they'll burst in again soon, after all it's been five or ten minutes and when you're that age, that's an eternity!

After we left the airport this morning, we went to lunch at very old building that houses a small museum and sells antiques. The oldest part was built in the 1300s, and there's a room where a priest was executed. It would be interesting to get the rest of that tale but I failed to do so. The place is called Samlesbury Hall.

Samlesbury Hall

We also visited a Hein Gericke dealer.

Once we got to Simon's house, I unpacked my suitcases into the hard cases, and everything fits just fine with room to spare. We hooked up the power supply for my tank bag. I handed out presents: plastic motorcycles for the children and t-shirts for the adults. The motorcycles seem to be a hit and the t-shirts look like they will fit.

Simon and his bikes in his garden

We all went out for Indian food. The restaurant was within walking distance of his house, and had terrific food.

May 31

This morning I woke rested and it actually felt like morning, rather than like a Sunday afternoon at a science fiction convention. I spent the night in Elizabeth's bedroom. I think she was bunking in with one of her brothers. The minute I opened the door I had company. Arthur wanted some candy, but Lizzie just wanted to get to her clothing, which is stored in that room.

The bike I am to ride has an alarm on it. You push a button, and then you have 30 seconds to put the key in and turn the ignition on. I wasn't ready to start yet so I just put the key in and turned it on, while I got my helmet and gloves on and got situated. When I went to start the bike, the battery was dead, I killed it. We had to jump start it. But we pulled out around 10am. Simon's neighbor, Graeme, accompanied us. He has a new red 650 V-Strom.

Graeme fixed the radios so they worked, yay! It was so handy, that we all had radios. I didn't worry when we got separated because I knew my host would tell me when he was turning. It made it a lot easier, since I didn't have to worry if I couldn't always see him. Driving on the wrong side of the road was terrifying at first. Every time a car came, I had to struggle to not dive back to the right. But I got used to it fairly quickly.

We went to the Lake District. The area near the house has rolling hills similar to SE Ohio, only with fewer trees and more houses. But as we rode north it got more mountainous, probably as mountainous as the Virginia section of the Blue Ridge Parkway, only not nearly as many trees. A lot of the other plant life is similar - there are huge rhodedendrons everywhere, and wisteria. There are trees with white flowers (dogwoods?) and the lilacs are blooming, and buckeyes too. Spring is not as far along here, as it is at home. We eventually went over Kirkstone Pass. The hillsides were brownish, and there was a lot of scree. I would think there is enough rain here to keep the mountainsides in lush plant growth but I guess not. I thought maybe the sheep eat the trees before they can grow, but Simon later told me it's because of the soil, it has too much peat content and few things will grow in it. It was still very beautiful. The pass came down next to a big reservoir, like they have in Tennessee along US-129 after you come down from Deal's Gap.

Simon and Graeme in front of the inn at the top of Kirkstone Pass

The roads are narrow and many of them have either a stone wall or a hedge, or both, instead of a shoulder. So there's no room for error and you can't see around the curves. At least without the deep gravel shoulders, there's not much gravel in the turns. There are some pretty big trucks (aka lorries) running over those little roads. We passed some gypsy caravans, with huge, ornate, barrel-shaped wagons being drawn by big horses.

Gypsy caravans in the Lake District

Whenever there's an obstacle, like a long light, or the rolling roadblock of gypsy wagons, the bikes are allowed to split lanes and run up alongside the cars and get to the front. Not only do the car drivers not pull out their guns and shoot you, they don't even squeeze you out. Some of them even move over and make room for you to come into their lane if need be. This is called "filtering" in local parlance.

Simon took me, and the four children, and the dog for a walk. He says they have a new law that allows people to walk on private land as long as they behave themselves, so we climbed over a gate and walked through a field. There are nice woods and fields very near to his house.

The house itself is very tall and narrow. It's at the end of a row of townhouses, which are all three stories high and squeezed up against each other. They have no yards to speak of, here, the stoop goes right down to the sidewalk and there's a little walled patio at the back of each house. This house goes all the way to the back of the property, though, so it doesn't have that type of back patio, and from the second floor bathroom window I can see over the walls to see what's in the neighbor's patios. Clotheslines and outdoor storage, mostly. This house is on the end, and it has a little garden on the side that doesn't have another house. There's a walled area where the bikes and the car can be parked, and a little landscaped area along the front. It's a very large house for England, with five or six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big formal dining room, etc. Most of the bedrooms are pretty small, but the kitchen is big and bright. There's a cellar with stone walls and very high ceilings. He says that when the house was built, servants probably slept down there. It's larger than my house, but smaller than the average newly-built house in the USA. It's about 100 years old.

Tonight we went out to the pub, and I tried some bitters. I didn't like it any better than any other beer I've ever had. I also had yorkshire pudding, and a jam roly poly with hot custard. Both of these were very good. The children stayed home, with Karen's mother (who lives here with them) and were in bed when we returned.

Tomorrow we will ride south to Robert's house in Cambridge.

June 1

Tonight we are in Cambridge, at Robert's house. Today we rode Snake Pass, and visited Chatsworth House and the Derwent Reservoirs. I also discovered that lane splitting is a blast, and I've added a third country to my list of places where I have hit the ton. Snake Pass is a popular road for the local sportbike riding set. It's twisty and runs through an area with almost no houses. England doesn't have the same sort of development we have here in the USA. The cities and towns are much more densely packed, and at the edge, they just end and it's immediately the countryside. In the USA every city is surrounded by miles of subdivisions with houses on large lots, sprawling out all over the countryside. The towns in England are close enough together, that if they allowed that there'd be no countryside left. If they did what we do, every scrap of countryside would already have been subdivided into two acre lots and a McMansion built on each. Personally I don't consider that sort of thing to be countryside. But I digress. I just wanted to say that places like Snake Pass make England look like it's wild and undeveloped, even though there are huge cities just a few minutes away, and I like this. Simon says they have 60 million people in England and not nearly as much land as the USA, so they have to be more careful, and therefore people can't get dwelling permits to fill Snake Pass with houses.

Snake Pass

The Derwent Reservoirs are a series of dams and reservoirs that provide much of the water supply for that part of England. The dams look like castle walls and have little crenellated towers. They were used as a practice site for bombers in WW2, so they could drop bounding bombs and blow up some dams in Germany. Now they are in a park, with nice bicycle trails and wooded picnic areas.

One of the dams at the Derwent reservoir

Chatsworth House is very impressive. It is open to the public, and even in the middle of the week the grounds were full of picnickers. We took the tour of the house, and I took a bunch of pictures, but most of them are too dark to show it properly. We had a very elegant lunch there.

Chatsworth House

After lunch, we were running late so we hopped on the slab for the rest of the trip. I've heard a lot about how England is full of speed cameras and you can't get away with anything there, but Simon assured me that there are no cameras on the motorway (which is what they call their limited access divided highways) and that in the places that do have cameras, they're all well marked. He said anyone who gets a camera ticket is really stupid. Then he led me down the motorway at a high rate of speed. When we ran into traffic jams, we just filtered through them. It was very exciting!

Robert's house is the most American looking of any house I saw in England. It would not be at all out of place in a newish subdivision in one of the more upscale suburbs north of Detroit. The backyard (which in England is called a garden) has golf course grass and nice roses, and a view out over a field. He has a two car garage, which is a rarity. Robert is a hyperactive little guy. He goes salsa dancing four nights a week and he dances around the house. He's having relationship drama and has decided to cut loose a bit, so he recently got three piercings: ear, nose, nipple. He says he's a vegetarian but he bought roast chicken for us for dinner and he ate some. He's got the same V-Strom I do, it's a yellow 2003 DL1000. But his has a few more miles than mine, and a lot more wear and tear. It's been down on both sides, though not too hard, probably just drops. His feet barely reach the ground when he's on it, so it's hard for him to keep it upright. Also he rides it all winter so it's pretty corroded, and he never washes it. This is in direct contrast to the house, which is 100 percent immaculate. He has a couple of other bikes, a Triumph and a BMW, both of which he keeps in a much more pristine state that matches the house, and an older, smaller Honda that he leaves parked outdoors and which is even grubbier than his Strom.

June 2

Today we got up very early, around 5am, because our reservation for the Channel Tunnel was at 7am. I was sluggish as is usual for me in the morning and I delayed the start by ten minutes or so, unfortunately. But we hauled ass to the Chunnel and would have been on time, except that there was a long line to get in, and then the bike wouldn't start after I finished talking to the Customs people. We bump started it and I kept it running while we waited to load, and revved it as much as a dared in hopes that it would charge. To no avail. We had to bump start it again after getting off the train. Simon called ahead and arranged to have a battery waiting in Germany.

Train? What train? Well, it turns out that the Channel Tunnel uses a train to move everything under the channel. Instead of driving through the tunnel, you load your vehicle into what is basically an oversized subway train. There were four bikes in our car, the three of us and a BMW rider who was doing a shakedown ride in preparation for a world tour. The train ride is only about twenty minutes long, so there was barely time to chat with the BMW guy before it was time to unload.

From there we hopped on the slab and rode for a half hour or so, and eventually stopped for breakfast in the village of Gravelines, France, where it turned out to be market day. We went into what we thought was a restaurant but I think it was more of a bar. They didn't have any food, but the guys had coffee and I had a diet coke. Then we wandered the outdoor market for a little while, and got some pastries at a little bakery. We ate them next to the bikes, then continued on our way.

Gravelines, France

Out on the slab, the European drivers are much more careful about keeping right except to pass. Probably because even when there are speed limits, there are still cars driving at 120+ mph in the left lane, and they close with a frighteningly high rate of speed. We were not the fastest thing on the road, but we were going much faster than I am used to going in the USA, frequently exceeding 100 mph. This is kind of tiring, actually. I think if I really wanted to cover ground in that environment, over a long period, I'd pace myself by choosing a slightly lower speed, one that I could maintain all day without getting worn out.

We crossed into Belgium, which is very flat. The slab was just starting to get dull when suddenly the traffic ground to a halt. We split lanes for miles, until we got to the front of the traffic jam, which turned out to be caused by the fact that the freeway was closed and everyone was being diverted down an exit onto another freeway that led in the wrong direction. We exited a few miles down and tried to find our way over the local roads. This offered a nice tour of several Belgian villages, which are neat and tightly packed, with lots of bicyclists. I noted that there are bus stops everywhere, even in the country, and they are served by enough busses that the public transit is probably useful, unlike ours. Which is good because if, like the USA, pretty much every adult had a car, they wouldn't be able to park them all; things are too close together.

Eventually we got back to the correct highway, and into Germany. Simon had a GPS and had put in the coordinates of where we were going. He tried to lead us off the autobahn at the correct exit, but Robert didn't notice so he blew past and kept going. I decided it was better to follow Robert even though it was the wrong way, so we wouldn't get separated. In the process of dealing with this, Simon almost ran headlong into a slow moving trailer full of bricks. But somehow, catastrophe was avoided, and eventually we caught Robert and brought him back to the exit.

Once we left the autobahn, the roads were beautiful, winding through the forest, then a village with steep, narrow streets, then more forest, and finally we arrived at the hotel, where we met Irene and Trond, the couple from Norway. The guy arranging the trip, Igor, joined us a short while later, and Zeljko arrived a little after that. Igor and Zeljko are both Croatians living in Germany.

Trond, Irene, Robert, Igor, Zeljko, and Simon

The hotel is a lovely old place tucked into the forested hillside. There's an observation tower at the top of the hill, and you can see downtown Frankfurt from it. My room was small and white and clean, with a single twin bed and a private bath. Through the lace curtains I could see big trees and a pretty old frame house across the street, with lots of gables and fancy woodwork. Lovely! The bedding was different than I am used to - there was no top sheet, instead it had a small duvet with a removable cover.

Frankfurt, as seen from the tower

After our walk up the hill to look out from the tower, we returned to the hotel and had a meeting to discuss riding together. We debated our riding speeds for the autobahns. Irene and Trond didn't want to go too fast and the others didn't like to go too slow. My comfort zone was in the middle, so a compromise would be fine with me. Igor said we had a lot of ground to cover, so we would start early and there would be no lunch.

June 3

Today we rode hundreds of kilometers on the autobahn. It's amazing how fast you can go out there, and how good the drivers are about the whole "slower drivers please keep right" thing. The group rode together pretty well, but they were all over the lane, which made it hard to stay together. It seemed to me that Igor was leading from the center of the lane, and this was confusing the people behind him, and causing them to wander side to side at random. At one of the stops, I gave a little lecture on staggered formation, and stressed the importance of picking a side and staying there, even if the people in front of you have poor discipline, because the people behind you depend on it. After that it was better, and by the time we left the autobahn people seemed to be riding together much more comfortably.

Oded (aka Elvis) met us at one of the gas stops on the autobahn. So by the time we hit the local roads, we were eight riders. Elvis is from Israel but he lives in Dresden.

As we left the autobahn, we also left the sunshine. The sky looked ominous, and it started to spit the occasional raindrop. We pulled over at the side of the road, about a mile from the autobahn, and put on our rainsuits.

V-Stroms on the roadside in Austria

Robert's DL1000 had been TEKA-tuned and was getting poor gas mileage, and he was concerned about running out of gas. He spoke to Igor and it was decided that we would return to the autobahn, and get gas at the station that was at the exit. This station was set up for access from the autobahn side, not so much for local road access, so it was tough to get in there. Eventually we all ended up running the wrong way up the drive to get into the station, yikes! But we did get in, and got gas, and got out again.

We came to a small town and the road was blocked, a sign said there was a detour, but bikes were allowed. I wondered if there was a road partially blocked by construction or something? Nope. Turned out this town was having a motorcycle rally. We rode right through the midst of a lot of cruisers and biker-lifestyle people. I saw one cool looking customized bike, someone had done a sportsbike up to look like it was covered in plate mail. Unfortunately I didn't get a close enough look to see what bike was under there, or get a picture.

A little while later, we pulled into another gas station, even though we didn't need gas yet. This turned out to be the meeting spot where we would find Jordi, the ninth member of our group. Jordi is from Catalan, in Spain. He once had a 2004 V-Strom that he loved, but for some reason he traded it in on a 2006 model that gave him nothing but trouble. In the end he gave up and got a BMW 1200GS instead. There was much teasing and joking about how we would make him ride at the back and we'd pretend not to know him.

By this time, we could see beautiful mountains, through the hazy drizzle and low clouds. The original plan had been to go over Grossglockner Pass, but it was closed due to snow because it is so high. Igor led us along an alternate route; we would cross a lower pass. But not enough lower. The rain intensified and the weather got colder as we moved into higher altitudes. At one of the stops I put on my electric jacket, and I was glad that my loaner bike had grip heaters. When I saw a snowplow coming towards us, and it had snow stuck to the plow, I knew we were in trouble. Soon the road started to get slushy, then turned white with snow. The group did not stop, but we slowed to a first gear crawl, and lengthened the distance between riders. I was careful not to apply my brakes, not even a little bit. We passed some local guys sitting on a tractor by the side of the road, and they cheered and waved. It was hard to see; snow was sticking to my visor. It was nervewracking! Fortunately it looked like we were at the summit; the road didn't go any higher. After what seems an eternity but was probaly only ten minutes, the road descended enough that the snow turned back into rain, and the air got warmer again. Ten or twenty miles down the road, the rain stopped, at least briefly, and the group stopped at a roadside gas station with an attached store and cafe. We sat outside and drank coffee and tea.

Simon said his feet were soaked. I suggested he change his socks and put plastic bags over them, that his feet would be warmer that way and he'd feel better. The people in the store didn't have much English but I managed to get some bags anyway.

The road continued to wind through the mountains and we crossed into Slovenia. After the border crossing, Igor telephoned our host for that evening, and he and his wife drove up to meet us. They led us into Kranjska Gora, where we would be spending the night. Kranjska Gora is a ski resort town, so this is the off season. There weren't very many people there. Igor had arranged for us to have two apartments in a building that was built for the ski touring trade. The apartments had one large bedroom with a twin bed and a double bed, and a common room with a fold out couch. I shared a bedroom with Irene and Trond.

Our hotel in Kranjska Gora

Our local hosts (whose names I didn't catch) gave us shots of blueberry schnapps that had the berries floating in it. It was fiery but tasty. This turned out to be a pattern; every place we stayed, it was required that we drink schnapps, and people were very upset if we refused.

We all went to dinner in a local restaurant. Since we didn't speak the language, they ordered for us. We had mixed meats. This also turned out to be a pattern. It seems that "mixed meats" is the specialty for most restaurants in that part of the world. You get a huge platter with five or six different kinds of meats, on a bed of greens, french fries, and rice, with a few dollops of some special sauces you might want to put on the meats. This is shared between several people. There's also a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, maybe some coleslaw, and a thick layer of feta cheese on top. This was accompanied by lots and lots of beers.

All this is very inexpensive in that part of the world. During the twelve days our group was together, the cost was only EU$330 apiece. That's about US$420. It included the lodging, all the meals, all the drinks, the tolls, etc. It did not include the gasoline for the bikes. I'm not even sure what that cost, but it was high by USA standards. I'll find out when the credit card bill arrives. (Edit: The bill is here, and it looks like I paid about $1000 for gas on this trip, and another $800 or so for things like insurance, tires, and for food and lodging during the time spent in western Europe, before and after my time with the larger group.)

June 4

Breakfast was at the same restaurant we'd eaten in the night before. It also was the start of a pattern. The typical breakfast in that part of the world is a platter of meat and cheese, thin sliced as if for sandwiches. This is accompanied by omelets or boiled eggs, bread, cereal, fruit, coffee, tea, milk, and OJ. The bread is wonderful, crunchy on the outside and soft inside with a nice flavor, really substantial. When you ask for water, they ask "With or without gas?" and this confused me at first. In my world tonic water is a mixer for drinks, not something to drink with breakfast.

It had been arranged that we would leave our luggage in the ski storage room in the hotel, while we did a short loop in the area. Then we would come back and collect it, and ride on to Croatia. The short loop started with a couple of local tourist attractions. We saw a site where a world record was set for something. I think it was for ski jumping; at least that's what it looked like it was, but the explanation was garbled due to the noise of the bikes and the language barriers. There were tour busses there so I guess it's also a stop on the formal tours. Next, we saw a lovely campground next to a mountain lake.

We stopped at a site where soldiers had been stationed during the First World War, to guard one of the passes over the Tyrolean Alps. We wandered through their fortifications and looked out over the valley. I imagined them, shivering and damp in these stone buildings, taking shots at people trying to cross the pass.

Ruins of WW1 fortifications

We crossed into Italy, briefly, and stopped at the roadside on the outside of a curve, where we could see a castle across the valley. We never got off the bikes there, but I still managed to get a picture.

A castle in the Tyrolean Alps

We went over Vrsic Mountain, via a pass with dozens and dozens of tight switchback turns, which was terrific fun to ride. At the top there was a scenic overlook where we met more tour busses. Then we went down the other side, through more switchbacks, and not nearly as nice a road surface. Simon had been leading but the cobblestones made him nervous, so I passed him. Everyone made it down without mishap.

Back in Kranjska Gora we picked up our stuff and continued on our way. A couple of local guys accompanied us. I'm not sure how many riders we had by now. We took a detour up into a valley, where we stopped by a lake that had an old church on an island in the middle of it, and a castle on the hill. The place was called Bled. Robert told me he'd been there before, that he and his soon-to-be-ex had eaten dinner in the restaurant on the island. He said you have to go there by boat, and you need reservations far in advance, and it's expensive but worth it.

Lake Bled, Slovenia

From there we went on to another lake, where we stopped in a sort of park next to the lake. There was a cliff where tourists could go rappelling, and some sort of mountain bike race course that ended in the gravel there at the foot of the cliff. A race was going on, and there was a sound system where music and announcements alternated. A huge awning was tied to the cliff, and underneath was a platform with a sort of cafe set up. This was our lunch destination. Lunch had been pre-ordered for us; everyone had a trout from the lake. After a long lunch, we suited up and managed to get the bikes out of the uneven soft gravel parking area, only to be stopped 20 feet from the driveway and directed to park on the soft gravel sidewalk so we could have a group picture. By this point I was already starting to lose patience with the milling around that happens whenever you ride with such a large group, so I could hardly conceal my irritation at getting the group moving only to stop it within spitting distance of where we'd already all been parked.

It was late afternoon and we still had to get to Zagreb that day. So Igor led us onto the slab. We stopped for gas in Ljubljana, and arrived in Zagreb a little before dark. In Zagreb, we went to a Ducati shop called Pit Stop where they were having a party and waiting for us. Our local hosts for the evening met us there. Their names were Daniel and Liliana. When we arrived we were told to grab some food quick because this was dinner and it was late. There was a big grill with various meats, and some nice bread.

As it got dark it started to rain again. We were told to suit up and move out, time to go to the place we would be staying. This turned out to be about an hour away, over progressively smaller roads, as the rain slowly got heavier. I was cold and very very tired when we pulled up at the house. Parking was difficult because I could barely see, and the space we were told to park in was sloping. I couldn't park where I was told because the sidestand was uphill and the bike wouldn't lean far enough, and people I didn't know were pointing and waving and trying to get me to do things I didn't understand. I was having a really hard time adjusting to traveling with so many people. I normally travel alone, or with at most one or two other people that I already know pretty well. I tend to get frustrated and irritable when the cat herding gets intense. I was utterly exhausted, and rather grumpy about a day that had included way, way, way too much time sitting and watching people chatter in languages I didn't understand, while I wondered what I was supposed to be doing and whether to get off the bike. I could never tell. When I thought we were leaving quickly I'd sit there with the bike running, and twenty minutes later they'd still be chattering so I'd stop the bike and take my helmet off, and ten seconds later be told to put it back on because we're leaving, so I'd do that only to sit for another twenty minutes while they chattered some more. Simon described this activity as "Talking bollocks in Croatian", and every time he used this phrase, it made me giggle, so he kept saying it. It's good that he could make me giggle, it cheered me up and got me out of my worst fits of irritation.

It was simply not going to be possible to park the bike the way I was being directed to, so finally I just I ignored my advisors, and turned the bike so the front wheel pointed far enough uphill for me to be able to park it. I had a plate for the sidestand, and I put that down. I carefully climbed off the bike and stood blinking in the rain. Then I dug out one of the plastic bags with a day's worth of clothes, and my toiletries kit, and I walked up to the house to see where we would sleep.

Irene was examining the sleeping accomodations and deciding who should sleep where. It was a two room cabin. Each room was about 12 by 12, and had one or two beds in it. There were the nine of us, plus a few riders who had joined us over the course of the day and who I hadn't yet sorted out, plus some unknown number of other local people, that I couldn't figure out whether they would sleep there too, or not. As Irene estimated how many would fit in each room, I realized I just couldn't sleep in there. It was too many people, way too many, and I'm not used to so many people, and I was too tired and cranky to deal with it. I was going to freak out if I even had to talk. Everyone was being very friendly, but I was just overwhelmed. I dodged people until I made my escape, then went back to my bike to get my tent.

The front yard was too sloped and had too many lights, so I eventually settled on a space behind the house. By now people had settled down enough to not approach me in a mob, and I was fine with them once they weren't all coming at me at once. Simon decided to pitch his tent as well. There was a barn next door and a couple of the guys slept in the hayloft, which also relieved the crowding in the house. The tent turned out to be a good choice. We ended up staying there for two nights, and the folks who slept in the house had a rough time since it was party central.

June 5

Today it didn't rain. The group broke into smaller groups that went to different places. Simon and Igor went into Zagreb for meetings. Irene and Trond and I enjoyed the opportunity to sleep a little later, and relax a bit in the morning. Breakfast was on the front porch of the cabin and included stupifying quantities of food. I started to sort out the various people from the local crowd that was hosting us. There were Daniel and Liliana, who we'd met the night before. There was an older couple, who actually owned this place. They lived in town, but this was their farm and they spent their free time there. The mother introduced herself as Mama Tomislav so I assume the father was Papa Tomislav but I never was introduced. Mama Tomislav didn't have any English but she was beautiful, with a welcoming smile and very long brown-grey hair twined around her head. Papa Tomislav had twinkling eyes and a huge white beard. Now that I'd had some sleep I loved them both on sight. There was a fellow named Davorin who would ride with us for a few days, and his daughter Cassandra who would ride with him. There was also a younger blond woman with a little girl, and several extra younger to middle-aged men, whose relationship I never did sort out. A mixture of local motorcyclists and non-riding family members, I think. Few of them spoke English and I had no Croatian, but they made me feel welcome anyway.

Up the hill in back of the house, Papa Tomislav had a garden on the hillside. There was a concrete shed with a metal ladder on the side that led to an little observation balcony, and from there you could look out over the valley. We climbed up and admired the view.

Eventually we rode out, led by Davorin and Daniel. They took us to a sort of museum village whose highlight was the birthplace of General Tito. There was a statue, and the house he was born in, and an assortment of other buildings with interpretive displays showing how flax was made into linen, and how candles were made, and whatnot.

Me and Robert, with the statue of Tito

We wandered around the museum village for a while, then went on to Liliana's school. There are fifteen children who attend this one-room school. They were all there and waiting for us when we arrived on the bikes, and they were VERY excited. We parked the bikes along the road in front of the school. The children who knew English practiced it on us, and took turns sitting on the bikes. Somehow I ended up with a whole pack of little girls, and all the teachers, while Robert had all the boys clustered around him. Robert's GPS was a huge hit. Inside the school, they fed us lots of food, and the children sang two songs for us. It was amazingly cute.

Little girls outside their one room school in Croatia

After the school visit we had a roundabout ride back to the farmhouse, stopping at some other local historical sites. When we returned to the farm, they were cooking meat on the grill, and there were many people there, including a reporter for the local paper, who was writing a story about the motorcyle visitors. I was pulled over to be interviewed and photographed.

Then the band arrived. They came walking up the road to the house, playing as they walked. There was a cello, a violin, an accordian, and a tamburitza. I learned the name of the tamburitza from the singer, Carol, who was from Ontario. She was wearing a shirt that said "Croatian, made in Canada" and was more able to talk to me than most of the people there. The band was excellent! We danced some athletic folk dances. There was one where we all held hands in a big circle and ran in circles until someone fell over. There was another where partners held hands and ran under the arms of other dancers. I danced a partner dance with Robert and he was quite good at leading, made me feel like I wasn't nearly as clumsy as usual.

The band arrives at the farm

I had a long chat with Tomislav, the son of our hosts. Tomislav wanted to practice English, and he had many questions about the USA.

Later, another Croatian guy claimed me as his companion for an hour or so. In broken English he told me how the birds in Croatia sounds better than the birds anywhere else, and the hay there smells better too. He was very drunk and wanted to come back to my tent, but I turned him down. He tried to pour more wine down me, and he told me all about his wife and children, and more about his love life than I really wanted to know, then asked again if he could come to my tent. Sorry, the answer was still no.

As it got dark, the party got larger and louder. Simon was making jokes about how he'd fallen off the wagon, and he didn't think he and Bill would be mates again for some time. I didn't hear about this until later, but at some point that evening Robert went up in the hayloft, and some of the other guys moved the ladder while he was up there. Undaunted, he tried to climb down the side of the barn without the ladder, and caught his nipple piercing on something, and suffered an agonizing pull. Fortunately for him he was well anesthetized when it happened, but I guess he was pretty sore for a few days.

Eventually the band finished their last set, and then played as they walked away down the road. I was exhausted so I went to bed, even as the party continued.

It was a fabulous party, IMHO one of the high points of the trip!

Let me tell you about some of the things that became the norm, during this trip.

There are mountains everywhere. Even in the areas where the roads are straight and flat, you're just in big valleys, and there are mountains in the distance. It's beautiful.

The houses are mostly cube shaped two or three story buildings, with balconies on two sides. They are made of large grey or red bricks, which are then spackled over so the outsides are flat. Then they're painted white or beige. They have shallow pitched roofs covered with curving brick-red tiles. There aren't any wooden frame houses of the sort we have in the USA, and there are no asphalt shingled roofs. The reason I know how the houses are constructed, is because so many of them are under construction, or being repaired, or coming apart, or all three at once. A lot of houses are half finished, and occupied in the finished parts, even as the other parts of the house are being built (or rebuilt). In some of the areas we visited, the spackled surface of the houses had obviously been damaged by sprays of bullets. Maybe some of the houses with corners being built/rebuilt had been damaged by the war? Though some of them looked like they were being added on to, so I don't think that it was all war damage.

The yards are not generally the manicured grass we have in the USA. Instead they are paved over or covered with stones, surrounded by low walls, and there is vegetation around the edges and arching in towards the paved bits. In the USA when you see masonry buildings, they're usually farm outbuildings or old workshops, and if they have plants growing in around the edges it's because they're abandoned. So at first, I had a hard time telling which of the houses were occupied and which were abandoned, especially when a house had an entire corner torn off and crumbling. But the truth is that almost all are occupied. You can tell because there is washing hanging out to dry on every balcony, and there are carefully tended window boxes with flowers in them, and the vegetation growing in from the edges is actually planted, not just weeds.

The houses feel less strange to me, on the inside. I was in several houses where the exterior looked abandoned, but the inside was very pleasant. The windows swing inwards and are covered with these great shutters, that have movable slats like really wide venetian blinds. You can adjust them so the breeze comes in but the sun can't shine in, which is great for their hot climate. (Not that we had much heat during our visit, but I'm told it does get hot there.) The floors are covered in large square tiles, which are cool under your feet, and sometimes there are area rugs. The interior walls are also made of bricks so the noise from other rooms doesn't come through (though the noise of the room you are in echos a lot). I would have expected them to smell like basements inside, since I myself grew up in a house made of cement bricks (an unusual house, by USA standards) and it was always a problem keeping things from mildewing in there. I chatted with Danijel about it and he said if you construct the house correctly that doesn't happen. He told me that people there think Americans are odd for building wooden houses. They see the aftermath of tornados on TV, and marvel that the Americans choose to build such flimsy houses that could just be torn apart in the wind.

Many of the houses have signs hanging outside that say "Sobe - Zimmer - Rooms - Apartmani" and this indicates that they have rooms or apartments for rent. In some areas, there are signs like this in front of every second or third house. They don't have the kind of motels we have in the USA, so these family guesthouses are the normal lodging for travelers.

There are bus stops everywhere, even in the middle of nowhere. The busses are well utilized and seem to come frequently to these country bus stops. You could live in the countryside there without a car, and not be stranded.

There are no big chain restaurants, big block stores, or strip malls. In the market towns there are lots of small stores, and on market days there are outdoor stalls. These small stores and outdoor markets would be where you buy clothes, shoes, hardware, dishes, appliances, etc. I didn't see a McDonalds for two weeks. There are lots of small shops that operate out of structures that are similar to large bus shelters on the roadsides, that are like a combination of convenience store and fruit stand or bakery. There are lots of small restaurants with outdoor tables. They all have Coca-Cola, but they never have Diet Coke. There is no fountain pop. If you order Coca-Cola they bring you a glass and a 1/3 liter glass bottle which they open in front of you at the table. They offer bottled water with or without gas, coffee, cappucino, and tea.

There are no laundramats, or at least I didn't see any. There are no clothes dryers anywhere; they're unheard of. There are washing machines, but all clothes drying is done by hanging things on the balconies. This became a huge problem because during our trip it rained almost every day and we rarely stayed anywhere long enough for our clothing to dry. I had bought some fancy synthetic camping shirts because they were supposed to be cooler in hot weather. We didn't get any hot weather, but I ended up being glad I had these fancy shirts because they would dry (almost) during the night. It was impossible to dry anything made of cotton, and my cotton stuff got stinky from the constant damp.

There are stray cats and dogs wandering around everywhere. I fed some cats but never got close enough to pet any of them.

Instead of having a yellow line in the center of the road, they have a white line. I asked how they know if a road is a one way street, or which lane is for which direction when there are more than two lanes, and was told that they use arrows to indicate these things. If there's a yellow line it's only on the edge of the road, and it means no parking. The roads are marked like this all over Europe, not just in the Balkans.

The traffic laws are treated as optional. There are police along the roads, watching the traffic, but they don't seem interested in speed limit enforcement, or whether people are passing in no passing zones. Instead, they pull people over at random and check their documents. They have little sticks with signs on the end, that they wave to pull over the vehicles of their choosing, or to direct traffic.

There are a lot of scooters. Scooters and motorcycles are allowed to pass stopped cars and go to the front of the line whenver the traffic slows down or stops. They pass on the white lines between lanes, or on the shoulder, or move out into the opposing lane, whatever it takes. Often the cars will move over in their lane to let us by. The oncoming cars and trucks flash their lights wildly in greeting when they see us, or they tootle their horns. In many areas, we're a spectacle to the locals. Children wave, and people take our pictures with their camera phones. Sometimes when we pass cars, the people in the cars stare and wave.

June 6

This morning I awoke to the sound of rain hammering on my tent. I couldn't hear anyone stirring, so I went back to sleep for a little longer. I woke a little later and the rain had stopped, and I could hear Simon moving around in his tent next to mine, so I got up. I hoped that my tent would dry somewhat, but by the time I got in and out of the bathroom it was drizzling rain again. I packed it away wet. After collecting hugs from Mama and Papa Tomislav, we headed out. We had a lot of kilometers to cover, today. The first part of the day was on the slab.

We had a couple of tolls, and it proved to be a real pain getting the group through them. Igor was carrying all the money, and dealing with the local currencies, and was one of the only ones who could speak the language, so he'd lead into the tolls, and try to pay for the whole group. This confused some of the toll booth operators terribly, so it took forever getting through each one.

But eventually we made it through, and for a couple hours we hammered down the slab. We finally left the slab at a side road, and after some time spent talking bollocks in Croatian we headed out over the hills. The road was a delight, with wide sweepers and tremendous views. And eventually the rain let up. We stopped at a scenic pullout near the Velebit Mountain, and watched the ground below us steaming. The road started to have dry patches, even!

The view from the Velebit Mountain road

The road started to wind downhill and eventually we could see the sea. The sun came out and the temps grew warmer. We stopped in a parking lot next to a bridge over a stream coming into the sea, and I took off my boots to let my socks dry out a bit. My boots were more waterproof than most of the others, but they were just a little damp after all the days of rain riding, and the two nights in the tent. Everyone in the group was looking more cheerful in the sunshine.

From here on, we often traveled along the seashore. The sky was mostly cloudy, but there was some blue peeking through here and there, and it was much, much brighter than it had been. We stopped for gas, and Igor led us on very quickly. Jordi was still inside paying and got left behind. Simon and I talked about it on the radio, and rode slowly to wait for him. He eventually managed to catch up to us, and we all caught up to the group. The leaders didn't stick to one road; there were many turns as we trekked inland here and there to avoid city traffic areas, I guess.

We finally stopped near a small town, Nin, and parked by a sort of channel that had a bridge over it that led to the main part of the town, and some people took pictures. There was small cafe and several people wanted to get coffee. Igor said we were only going a little farther today and we'd get coffee when we got there. Robert decided to get coffee anyway, he went over and sat down, even as the rest of us were putting our helmets back on. Simon went over and somehow talked Robert into leaving the cafe and rejoining the group.

We rode over a variety of little roads and reached our destination, Vir, about a half hour later. This house was owned by the father-in-law of one of our local companions, Danijel. It's a vacation house, and Danijel had a key. He said he often used the house, but usually with his kids. There was much bustling about, getting the house opened up, moving the patio furniture outside, getting the water turned on. Danijel had a hard time getting the water going, because there was a problem with the pump, and Robert, Trond, and Davorin got involved. They eventually got it working by priming the pump with water from the neighbor's garden hose. Danijel said not to drink the water because it hadn't been tested, but Robert drank it anyway.

We laid out our wet coats and boots and socks and tents to dry on the balconies in what remained of the sun, and walked out for dinner at a local restaurant, where we had pizza. They do pizza differently there. In the USA you choose a small medium or large pizza, and pick toppings from a list. Over there, they have predefined pizzas, with certain combinations of toppings, and they all have names, and you order them by name. They're smaller and you eat straight from the trays. So you can't just order three or four pizzas for the group and have everyone just grab slices. They also have weird pepperoni; it's thinner and the slices are bigger, and it looks like deli sliced ham. It doesn't taste like pepperoni at all.

I was hoping to do laundry, but it was not to be. If I'd known that there were no clothes dryers anywhere and I'd have to go twice as many days as I'd planned, without a chance to do laundry, I'd have packed different things and hand washed things sooner. Thank goodness I bought those synthetic hot weather travel shirts. My usual cotton-heavy travel wardrobe would have been awful.

After dinner Robert and I sat on one of the balconies and chatted with Cassandra and Davorin, and drank some of Robert's scotch.

June 7

This morning, our start was delayed because Irene was the first victim of traveler's diarrhea. While we were waiting, I myself became the second victim. Fortunately I'd packed some meds for this and they fixed me up almost immediately. The meds helped Irene, too, though her case was worse than mine and took a bit longer. We eventually set out.

The house was on a small alley, and to get out we had to make several turns then go around a curve. As we went around the curve I looked in my mirror and I was sure I saw a yellow bike falling over. I mentioned it to Simon on the radio, and we both pulled over and stopped. He asked whether I thought we should go back? I said "No, there are plenty of people back there. Let's take the opportunity to adjust our radios."

Five or ten minutes later, the group members who were behind us joined us, and we all went on. A few blocks later we found that the front riders had stopped at a roadside bakery. So I had the opportunity to ask Robert what happened to him. It turned out that he had decided to show off for the pretty girls on the sidewalk, by doing a wheelie. His front wheel was in the air when he realized that the riders ahead of him were turning right. He tried to turn and bring it down at the same time, and he fell over. The others had picked him up and dusted him off, and the only damage was to one of his turn signals and to his pride. He was disappointed to learn that I'd seen it in my mirrors and told Simon. He was hoping Simon wouldn't find out. Simon just kept laughing about how, when Robert fell over, I'd suggested staying where we were and messing with radios, instead of rushing to his aid. He said I was starting to understand about Robert. Heh.

We stopped for breakfast in Nin, in the same place we'd had to coax Robert out of the day before. Breakfast was coffee and tea from the restaurant, and bread from the roadside bakery. The locals in the group ate some very greasy looking meat pie things they'd bought at the bakery but given the state of my digestion I decided not to risk those. We had a brief opportunity to walk around Nin and look at the very small old 9th century church they had there.

The church of St Cross in Nin. (Photo taken by Zeljko)

From Nin, we rode along the sea for a while, then struck inland. We passed a lot of war damaged buildings, but we didn't stop so I was unable to take any pictures. It was pretty grim. The roads were not crowded until we reached a town that was teeming with traffic, whose main attraction turned out to be the Krka National Park. After a brief negotiation with the guy manning the ticket booth, we were allowed to park for free. A second group of motorcyclists snuck in with us. They were mostly on sportbikes, with French plates and no luggage. I wondered if they had a four wheeled chase vehicle or if they were simply traveling very light? We talked to them briefly but I never found the answer to this.

We walked down to the lake, across a wide, empty, paved area. In the middle of the pavement was a spot where some sort of grenade or shell had made an unusual splash pattern in the pavement. It was sobering.

Damaged pavement at Krka National Park

After some trips to the toilets, the group set out again. I was somewhere in the middle, and I was having a really hard time keeping the riders behind me AND the riders in front of me in sight. The road was winding, and at one point I passed an accident scene where a car was upside down. Later I passed the emergency vehicles speeding to this accident. I realized I hadn't seen the rider behind in a few miles, so I slowed, and slowed some more, but they didn't catch up. Eventually I came to a turn, where Zeljko was waiting and waved me on, so I went on. A mile or two later I came to a fork in the road, and there was no sign of anyone else, or which way I should go. I wavered and stopped. Just then, a truck came towards me from the left fork, and the driver seemed to understand my confusion. He waved and made signs that I should go left. I assumed he'd seen the others, so I went left, and stopped on the side of the road to wait for Zeljko and the other riders behind me.

Twenty minutes later, they still hadn't arrived, so I went back to see what had happened. Zeljko was on the side of the road, right where I'd seen him last, and Irene and Trond were just joining him. It turned out that at the accident scene, the authorities had stopped traffic while they dealt with the upside down car, and Irene and Trond had had to wait. While they were telling this story, Robert and Boban came back from the same direction I had. They'd taken the left fork, found it turned to gravel, and were afraid it was the wrong way, so they'd turned back.

After a half hour or so of discussion, and some consultation with locals, it was determined that both the right and left forks went to the same town, Sinj. The right fork was paved, but 50km longer. The left fork was gravel, but only for 8km, whereupon it would be paved again. We discussed which fork to take and opted for the gravel. Boban led the way and I followed. He was pretty slow on the gravel, but the others were far slower. The gravel really wasn't that bad, and it wasn't 8km, either. More like 3. We got to the end of the gravel and waited for the others. I think Boban was a little startled that I'd stayed with him through the gravel instead of falling behind.

The others caught up and we went on into Sinj, where we stopped for gas. Eventually cell contact was made with the others, and they joined us. They had taken the longer, paved route around the mountain, and arrived at about the same time we did.

We continued along the road, and just as we wound back down to the sea, it began to rain again. It was cold and the rain goes right through my perf leathers, and it was starting to come down harder and harder. The pavement underneath was unusually slick with the rain; something about the road surface made it feel like ice. The folks up ahead showed no sign of stopping to put on rain gear. Finally I said to hell with them, and pulled over into a wide parking lot in front of a restaurant, and started putting on my rain suit. The folks behind me all pulled in and did the same, and eventually the front runners noticed they'd lost us, and came back. Some of the group members were miserable with the high mileage and the rain, and wanted to stop for the day right here, or at least get some dinner. Igor didn't want to take the time to have dinner here, but he made some phone calls and arranged an alternate place to stay, that was closer.

During this time, traffic heading back the way we'd come came to a complete standstill, and cars stopped coming through headed in our direction. Turned out there was an accident back up the road that way, and the road was blocked. We watched some emergency vehicles fly by, and eventually we pulled out again into the nice clear lane. This was when one member of the group had a minor crash. (I've been asked not to name him in print.) He slid on the rain-soaked pavement and fortunately the oncoming traffic was stopped, so no one hit him when he ended up in the oncoming lane. He was not hurt, but his bike was messed up. In the end, the group went on without him, while he called for emergency road service and had the bike towed to a shop.

We stopped for the night in the beachside town of Tucepi. The hotel we stayed in was a relatively fancy seaside resort hotel, but the washing still had to be hung on the balconies. The woman keeping the hotel pushed schnapps on me, and with the help of several locals, found enough English words to explain to me that laundry could not be done because it would not dry in this weather.

This hotel also had friendly cats that waltzed right into the rooms to hang out with us.

At first, I was going to share a room with Trond and Irene, but then Robert invited me to share with him, since he had a room with two beds, all to himself, so I moved over there. Since we finally had several good bathrooms, instead of just one shared with dozens of people, I enjoyed the chance to get a good shower and hand wash a few shirts. It was cold and damp outside so I hung the stuff indoors. Simon also hand washed some things, and hung them from the balcony. During the night the wind carried his things away. I was glad I'd hung mine indoors to dry, even though they didn't get dry. In the morning I wore one damp shirt, and put the other damp shirt and the socks into a mesh bag that I bungeed to my seat.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The only other customers were a group of teenagers at the next table, drinking beers and watching the World Cup on the bar television. I marveled at how casual and well behaved these kids were. I guess if drinking isn't proscribed, you don't have to focus on getting wasted every time you manage to sneak a few beers.

Danijel took this group photo at Krka Park. Standing, from left: Simon, Davorin, Elvis, Boban, Robert, Zeljko, Jordi. Crouching: Myself, Cassandra, Igor. Not pictured: Danijel, Trond, Irene.

June 8

This morning we got up early as usual, but we waited longer than usual to leave. We were waiting to hear from the shop where they'd taken the damaged bike, the night before. If it was fixable that day, we'd wait, but if not we would go on. It turned out that the bike was not fixable. The rider returned home by bus.

The sea view from our hotel in Tucepi

While we waited, the weather was nice. Simon got his dip in the sea, and I was about to go wading myself when the call came and we were scrambled back onto the bikes. We set out along the coast. The coast is beautiful. Mountains come right down to the sea shore, and the road along the coast is winding and often quite high above the sea, so we had great views. According to the signs, the speed limits are low, but no one pays attention to them, or to the passing zones. It made for a very entertaining ride. Before we knew it we reached the border between Croatia and Bosnia, and for once we didn't have to stop. Apparently if you're going through and not stopping in Bosnia, the usual border rigamarole is not required. A few miles later we passed out of Bosnia and back into Croatia, and not long after that we reached Dubrovnik. There's a lovely suspension bridge over the river.

Dubrovnik, as seen from across the river

We stopped at a scenic pullout, just before the bridge, where they have a map of the area. After a little discussion amongst ourselves, and a consultation with some of the locals that we met in the parking lot, we decided to go up the hill and look at the view. With local advice, Igor picked a road up there, and led us up a winding goat trail to the top of a hill overlooking the city. (Only one person dropped their bike on this road.) There are some crumbling, ancient stone fortifications up there, with modern radio towers oddly juxtaposed on top of them. We parked our bikes on the landward side of the fortifications, and walked around to the city side. This is where they shelled the city from, during the siege. You can see everything, it's laid out in front of you like a map.

Looking down at Dubrovnik from the fortifications on the hill

It looks like the fort itself was also shelled; it's very crumbled. One of the stone steps wiggled alarmingly under my feet. At the top of the steps, a piece of red plastic caution tape was laid across the hillside. We set our tank bags and helmets down on the ground on either side of the tape, and stepped out onto the walls. Robert was tired and he laid down on the ground next to the tape. That's when Igor said the tape might mark the edge of an uncleared minefield, and to stay on this side of it. Yikes!

This red tape might mark the edge of a mine field.

After taking a good long look at the view, and snapping a bunch of pictures, we picked our way back down to the bikes. No one blew up. However Simon had trouble getting the alarm to turn off on his bike. He says it's happened before, that the radio tower was interfering with the controls. This alarm not only makes noise, it disables the starter. Fortunately it was all downhill from there, so he was able to roll the bike away, until he got far enough away from the radio tower, for the remote to work.

We stopped at a restaurant partway down the hill, and had coca-colas and coffee at a table in the shade.

Eventually we got back on the road, and went on down the coast. We reached the border of Montenegro. In Europe, they have a thing called a green card. This has nothing to do with immigration - it's an insurance thing. The green card is a list of all the countries where your vehicle insurance is valid. Unfortunately, the English insurance companies don't give out green cards. Instead they use a white card. The border guards considered the wrong color cards to be unacceptable, so Simon and I each had to pay EU$10 for insurance at the border, before they'd let us in to the country. Sigh.

While we were waiting for everyone to get through the border station, Elvis came up to us and said that the Montenegro police are known to hang out along the few miles near the border, and try to ticket the tourists, that they have zero tolerance, we should all be mindful of the speed limits. So once we started moving again, Simon was careful of the speed limits, and I stayed with him. We passed about six police cars watching the traffic, in two miles, but none of them budged, even though everyone else continued with the normal scofflaw behavior. They soon ditched us. WTF? I'd have sped up as well, since obviously the cops didn't care or they'd have stopped the others. But I wasn't going to leave Simon, since I was riding his bike. Eventually someone came back and asked us why we weren't keeping up, and Simon bitched about being told to obey the speed limits when even the people telling us to do this weren't obeying them. We sped up and rejoined the others. I still don't know if this speed limit thing was supposed to be a joke, or what.

Fortunately it wasn't far to our stopping point for the night. Boban owns a house on the beach in Baosic. Gasho would meet us there. Some of us would stay in Boban's house, and some in a neighboring guesthouse run by a friend of his, Miki. I was in the guesthouse. The guesthouse looked very dubious from the street. It was an unpainted building, a little uphill from the beach. To reach it you went through a decrepit wooden door in a crumbling ruin of a wall, past the carcass of an old car and some more ruins, and through a beautiful, mysterious garden full of lemon trees and flowers. There was an overgrown gravel path around to the back of the house, and then some crumbling stairs with large colorful beetles crawling on them, leading to a door on the top floor. Inside, the house was lovely! Clean and comfortable and very pleasant. We figured out who to put in which room, put our things in, changed out of our riding gear, then moved the bikes back down to Boban's house, where we'd park them in his fenced garden.

Our lodgings in Baosic

I offered Miki a ride back to Boban's house on the back of my bike. As he swung on, he kicked me in the ankle. My unprotected ankle, because I was wearing my sandals. Ow!

At Boban's house he treated me like an incompetent and insisted on parking my bike for me. Whatever, dude, knock yourself out. I enjoyed the chance to check out Gasho's new TDM900, and he even let me sit on it. After some beers, we headed out for dinner. We ate in a restaurant a few hundred yards down the beach. The food was excellent.

June 9

The next morning we were up early again but breakfast was slated for somewhat later than usual. We would eat at Gasho's restaurant in the port city of Bar. It was quite some distance away, and we had to catch a ferry to get there. The ferry is a shortcut across the Bay of Kotor. You can go around on the road but it takes a long time, and the ferry ride is quick; it's only a couple hundred yards across. From there, we struggled through ten or twenty kilometers of slow traffic, then the road opened up and we were able to make better time. It was still late morning before we reached Bar.

Bikes on the ferry crossing the Bay of Kotor

Gasho is 1/5 owner of a large restaurant in a good location downtown. It's a bar and pizzeria with lots of sidewalk tables, and the pizzas were good. Montenegro is one of the poorer countries and several times while we were eating, children came up to our tables to beg. Gasho chased them away like flies, and cautioned us that these children will steal if you don't keep a sharp eye on your belongings. He didn't chase away the begging cats, though. One of them got a lot of my pepperoni. This cat looked a lot like Mac. He wouldn't let me pet him, but he stayed close by for a long time, waiting for more handouts. After lunch we took turns staying with the gear, and visiting the neighboring grocery store and bank machine. The bank machine wouldn't accept any of my cards, but I had enough cash to get some candy bars and bottled water, and some soap to hand wash my clothing.

After eating, we set out for Albania. Before we crossed, Igor lectured us on how Albania is very chaotic, and it's important that the group stay together. We should ride close, much closer than we'd been riding in the other countries, everyone must keep up, and we mustn't ever leave anyone behind. We all nodded our heads, but unfortunately I think every one of us thought "Finally the rest of these folks will have to ride more like me!"

The road we were on didn't look like a major highway, but apparently it's the main road from Montenegro to Albania. The border was a row of shacks on the side of the road. Crossing it took a long time. We had to produce our passports and documentation for our bikes. The insurance documents didn't list Albania for Simon and my bikes, so we had to pay EU$25 each for special Albanian insurance, which was sold out of one of the shacks by a cheerful Albanian guy. I had to wonder, if we ever needed to collect on this insurance, if it would even be possible? We also had to pay EU$10 each for visas, except for Elvis. After calling someone on his cell phone, the Albanian border guard informed us that it was EU$30 for a visa for an Israeli. He also said something about not being sure whether Elvis would be allowed into Macedonia at the other side. He put the money in his pocket. I waited patiently and watched the stray cats and dogs wandering around the border station. There's no point in getting snippy with border guards; if you piss them off they'll always get even. Smile and nod.

Finally they let us pass. The road wound about and eventually went into a village, where we got the most attention of anyplace we'd been. People came running out of the houses and down to the road to wave. One guy almost dropped his camera phone, he was in such a hurry to photograph us. I was surprised to see camera phones, since the houses didn't even look like they had electricity. Where do they charge them? At the end of the village, the road went over a decrepit one lane wooden bridge. It looked like a pedestrian bridge that would belong in a park, but it was carrying the motorized traffic on the main road through Albania. The bridge ended in a sort of gravel parking lot, and we had to make a tight turn to get back to the paved road. Little boys came running up, wanting to touch the bikes. They wanted to hear us twist the throttles, or better still they'd like us to stop and let them twist the throttles. Some of the guys obliged. The boys were thrilled.

Out on the road, staying together became a huge challenge. I think that when Igor gave his lecture, the slower riders expected the fast ones to slow down, and the fast ones expected the slow ones to speed up. So the nuthammers just nailed it, assuming everyone else would finally keep up. But they didn't. Once again, I was in the middle, trying to figure out whether to catch up with the riders ahead or slow down for the riders behind. The nuthammers flew down the road, passing cars like they were standing still. I watched Irene and Trond dwindle in my mirrors, as Igor &co dwindled up ahead of me. Now what? The road was straight and fairly open, but there were cows on the side of the road, with no fence, just rope leashes and human keepers. There were tractors, and mopeds, and bicycles, and the cars and trucks that were traveling at wildly different speeds. I didn't think I could catch the nuthammers; I was already going faster than I liked, especially given the close proximity of those cows.

Just then Irene passed me on her WeeStrom! Go Irene! She overtook Igor and got him to pull over. As I reached them, they were already having a shouting match. Irene was giving Igor holy hell for the dangerous speeds, for making people go this fast. Igor was claiming that he wasn't going that fast, and if he didn't go fast then cars would pass him. Irene said that the people at the back have to go faster than the people at the front, to catch back up whenever they can't pass something as quickly. They were both spitting mad. Eventually they calmed down and we set out again, at a somewhat slower speed this time. It was still well beyond anything that would be legal in the USA, but it was no longer stupid fast. Occasionally a car would pass us, and I'm sure it upset Igor every time it happened, but really, if cars pass, you just let them, it's not the end of the world to be passed.

We stopped at a gas station to regroup, and it was starting to rain so I put on my rainsuit. We set out again into the rain, at a slightly more moderate speed. I think this was because Igor wasn't sure we were going the right way. The rain stopped. We stopped again, and Igor, Boban, and Gromko looked at the map and consulted with locals in some cars that stopped. I struggled out of my rainsuit while they did this, and almost didn't get going again in time to stay with the group when they left.

We reached the outskirts of Tirane and suddenly found ourselves in very heavy traffic. We stopped again to look at the map and consult the locals, then swung back out onto the road. The pavement disappeared shortly thereafter. There was rebar, but no cement. The traffic slowed to a walking pace, and lost all semblance of organization. The cars going our direction started lane splitting until they were three abreast and blocking traffic from the oncoming direction, and the oncoming traffic started filtering between us. The road was only about 20 feet wide, and it had a steep ditch on the side. I was soon the last rider in line, as the others squeezed through between two cars that then moved closer together blocked my passage. I was cut off from the others by a wall of cars pushing and shoving and honking their horns. There were cows, and there were manholes with no covers, and dead animals in the road, and chokind clouds of dust. The buildings along the road looked like they'd been bombed, but they were full of people, who were still waving and taking our pictures. I resigned myself to being left behind, and over the radio I told Simon that it had been nice knowing them. He pulled over and waited for me, and together we battled the chaos until we won through to a more normal street, and there, the others had waited for us. Thank goodness!

We then circled around Tirane for a while, trying to figure out which way to go. It looked desperately broken down and poor. The cars were rattly old things, and there were ragged looking people all over the place. Workmen rode in the backs of tired old trucks. There were lots of busses, and lots of people waiting for busses. We stopped a few more times so Igor and Boban could discuss the map with the locals. When we stopped, teenage boys would cluster around us, very excited about the bikes. They would chatter in Albanian and make signs asking if they could twist the throttles? Sometimes we let them, and they would rev the snot out of our bikes, and they'd get these huge grins on their faces.

Eventually we found the central square. There was a rectagular plaza, about two blocks that were just paved over and had planters and posts set around to keep the cars out. The traffic teemed around this plaza, and there were fancy buildings overlooking it. This area was in better state of repair than any part of Albania we'd seen so far; even the cars and people looked more prosperous. Robert managed to pull the whole group over into a little space where bikes could be parked out of traffic next to the plaza. He yelled "It's fookin Tirane! Stop! We have to take pictures!" So we took pictures.

Three pictures of the central square in Tirane, Albania

A few begging children fought their way through the traffic to us, and Robert gave them Euros. I gave them candy bars. I figured the money would be taken off them instantly the minute we were out of sight, but I saw them eat the candy.

After a few minutes, Igor put his helmet back on and started his bike, so I did the same. Robert, who was parked next to me, had put away his digital camera and was taking pictures with his phone. I called to him to put his helmet on, we were leaving, and he said he'd catch up. As we pulled away I saw that four or five bikes did not follow. I mentioned this to Simon, who was up near the front of the group, and we dragged our feet a bit trying to slow the group so the others could catch up. We went around three sides of the square, then turned onto a street leading away from the square. I caught one last glimpse of the others, still standing where we'd stopped, and then they disappeared from my mirrors. I pulled to the side of the road, where I could see the square and they should see me when they came around, and waited. I talked to Simon on the radio, and he told me the group was turning right at the next street. Then we lost contact. I waited, and waited, and the others did not come. Finally I didn't dare wait any more. I was afraid I was now lost and alone. I rode up to the next corner, and turned right like Simon had informed me. I called over the radio and Simon replied, thank goodness! A block or two later the road forked, and there was Simon waiting at the left fork. We continued another couple blocks and the road forked again, and the others were waiting there. Igor asked me what happened and I said the others never came.

After some intense discussion, it was decided that the rest of us would wait here and NOT MOVE while Jordi (who had a GPS he could use to find us again) would go back and get the others. For the next hour, Jordi made ten or fifteen minute loops around the area, back and forth between here and where we'd left them, and tried to find them. He never did find them. While this was going on I had plenty of time to look around. The place where we were waiting looked calm and prosperous. There was a sidewalk cafe and well dressed people were sitting there. Women in business suits with briefcases crossed the street. There was a park across the street, shady trees, and perfectly normal store fronts. No cows or goats to be seen. A few begging children tried their luck with us but no one gave them anything so they wandered off to try their luck at the cafe, where they were run off by the proprietor.

Finally Simon said "Let's call all their cell phones and leave a message for them to meet us in the next town. We'll never find them in this big city, but the next town is smaller and it will be easier to find each other." So that's what we did. Just as Simon left the last message, his phone rang and it was them calling back. They were already in Elbasan. They would wait for us there.

After a bit of circling and map checking we finally found the right road. We soon left the prosperous neighborhood and were back into poorer areas. This side of town was hillier, and as the number of buildings diminished the road got twistier. Eventually we were back in the wilderness, and the road climbed up, up, up. It turned into a ridgetop mountain road, similar to the Blue Ridge Parkway or Cherohala Skyway, only higher, and twistier, and narrower, with no guard rails. There were a lot of spots where the ground dropped away and went down forever, right from the side of the road. Not a good place for people with vertigo. We saw herds of goats and sheep, sometimes right on the road itself, and people were selling something on the roadsides. I couldn't tell what it was. Bowls of round, light colored things. Olives?

The road climbed higher and the nuthammers pulled away from us. Simon and I let them go, and rode at our own pace. After a while we stopped and took some pictures. You could see for miles and miles from up there. It was gorgeous! Simon worried that we were stopping to take photos when the group hadn't stopped, and wanted to rehearse an excuse, but I'd had enough of this insistance on togetherness that didn't include any attention paid to whether the folks at the back were following or had been dropped. If asked, I planned to tell the unvarnished truth. We stopped to take pictures. If they were worried about us, they would have waited.

View from the road between Tirane and Elbasan

Elbasan was a nasty little industrial town. It appeared to be a smoggy, coal fired power plant, surrounded by other grimy industrial plants, and a snarl of towers carrying power lines in all directions. The whole thing was laid out in what looked like a mud pit. In the middle of the wild beauty of the valley farms and rugged mountains, Elbasan looked like the gates of hell. The effect was enhanced by the fact that there was a violent storm going on, with a dark black cloud and lots of lightning. It was not raining where we were; we were looking down into the storm. The road we were on descended to Elbasan via a whole lot of switchbacks, and in between the switchbacks were terraces with groves of what I think were olive trees. We rode onto wet pavement but we never did catch the storm. By the time we got down the hill, all that was left to mark the storm were some suspiciously filthy looking puddles.

We found the others at a cafe at the edge of town. They had found the one local guy who speaks English, and Robert and he were already great friends. Robert and Boban were making plans to return to Albania very soon, and their new pal was going to show them all around. It sounded fabulous, actually. Albania is stunningly beautiful, and it's certainly off the beaten trail. It would be a great adventure to spend a couple weeks there.

Elbasan, Albania

The group at a small cafe in Elbasan

The group got underway again, and soon we were at the Macedonian border. Exiting Albania cost EU$2 each and we had to carry forms between multiple windows. Then we moved on the the Macedonian side, and carried forms around over there. Once again, our insurance wasn't good enough, and this time it was EU$60 for the special Macedonian insurance. It took a long time to get everyone through the border, and while we were there it got dark and started to rain. But eventually they let everyone through, even Elvis. Igor called ahead and our Macedonian hosts came up the hill to meet us. They found us at the gas station. Can you believe that for all our adventures in Albania, we never even had to get gas there? That's how short the distance was.

Our Macedonian hosts led us to the hotel they had arranged for us. We pulled in and parked neatly by the door. Too neatly, because before I'd even gotten off the bike, they'd changed their minds about where to put the bikes. They wanted us to park on the patio. It was tricky. The driveway were were on was one lane wide, and the drive to the patio was a two-rutter with paving bricks in the tire tracks, angled back the other way, so we had to make a tight turn and go up, and there was slippery mud in between the paving bricks. Simon was in front of me and he lost traction and almost fell over. So I waited until he'd cleared it, before I even tried to go up it. I sure didn't want to have to stop in the middle because he'd fallen in front of me! People started to yell advice at me. They seemed to think I'd stopped because I didn't know how to go up it. I ignored them. They were tired too, or they'd have realized I stopped because the rider in front was having trouble. Once Simon cleared it, I rode right up without incident.

The rain continued. We were shown to our rooms, and told to hurry back down for dinner because the kitchen would only be open another half hour. I was sharing a room with Simon. I considered taking a shower, but our bathroom was kind of scary. There was no shower stall or tub, just a drain in the floor, so water went all over the whole bathroom. There was a squishy foam mat on the floor. I just couldn't face it. So I changed into dry but dirty clothing and went down to the restaurant.

There was almost no one in the restaurant. Elvis was sitting at a table near the door and I joined him. Eventually most of the others appeared, and we moved to a larger table back by the bar. There was very loud recorded music playing, and since we were the only ones there we asked them to turn it down. They smiled and nodded and ignored this request. Menus were passed around, and food was ordered. Coca-colas and beers appeared, but no food. After a half hour or so the place started to fill up and a band came on. They were even louder than the recorded music. The place started to get very smoky. Still no food. Eventually some salads appeared. After an eternity for the salad, I was about ready to fall over. I was too tired to enjoy music, especially at these volumes, and I had used up all the voice I had screaming to communicate simple things like whether I wanted another Coca-cola. Would we ever see any more food? I considered going up to my room and having candy bars for dinner. I'd given most of my candy bars to the Albanian beggar children but I might have one left. My head was pounding. Irene and Trond looked even more unhappy than I felt. Even Igor looked exhausted. Robert and Boban were happier, they were staring at the singer with their tongues dragging on the ground. Eventually I couldn't stand it anymore, so I went out to the bike and got some earplugs. Finally the food appeared, and I ate a little bit very quickly, then excused myself. Irene, Trond and Simon weren't far behind me. I think they felt the same way I did, that if we'd known it would take this long and that the music would be this loud, we'd have just gone to bed without supper.

Later I learned that after dinner, Robert and Boban went out on the town and found a place to go dancing. I don't know where they found the energy.

Despite the exhaustion, the trip through Albania was beautiful and very exciting and I'm glad we did it. When I look back on the trip, the half day we spent in Albania will probably be the most memorable part.

June 10

This morning we were told we could sleep late. When I got up, the sun was out. Yay! This town was called Ohrid, and it looked much better after adequate sleep and without loud music. I learned that we would have breakfast here, in about an hour. Not only that, but Irene and Trond's room had a much less scary bathroom than mine, and they offered me the use of their shower. I jumped at the chance to wash my hair.

I was in the shower and had just gotten my hair thoroughly wet, when Irene started pounding on the door saying Igor wanted to leave now, I should hurry! What now? Argh! When I came out, people were scrambling around loading the bikes. I said "I thought we were having breakfast here?" and was told we were actually having breakfast in town. Back in my room I braided my hair even as it continued to drip. I hoped we would have enough time not on the bikes, to take it out and dry it before it started to smell.

My ankle was still hurting where I'd been kicked two days before. I examined it and realized that it wasn't just a bruise, the skin had been broken and it was now infected. Great. Just what I needed. My first aid kit didn't have any salve, so I asked Irene and Simon, and neither had anything in their first aid kit for this either. I decided to consult Jordi, since he works as a nurse. Jordi agreed that it looked infected, but he didn't have anything for it. I would just have to look for something along the way somewhere. I cleaned it with soap and covered it with a bandage, and finished suiting up.

A local motorcyclist led us to a cafe in the market part of town. It was called Neim. He led us right into the pedestrian area, past the parking blocks. The proprietor had us park in his space, but there wasn't quite enough room. Then the lady with the fabric shop next door waved welcome for us to park in front of her store as well. I shucked my helmet and unbraided my hair quick, for maximum dry time.

They said we'd stay here a while, so Robert and I wandered off in search of bank machines and money exchanges. I'd long since run out of Euros, and I now owed Simon about EU$200, yet I was still carrying several hundred dollars in US funds. I'd rather exchange that for Euros than carry even more cash. The first sign we saw for exchange, turned out to be some sort of pawnshop. But a little farther down the way, we found a bank. Inside, the teller spoke English. She informed us that they could not change my US dollars, but they could provide us with Euros if we took the money out in local currency from their bank machine, and brought in the receipt from the bank machine. The exchange rate was 62-point-something dinera to the Euro. We went back out to the bank machine and Robert tried it first. He got a message saying this was an invalid transaction. My turn next. I requested 20,000 dinera. Wonder of wonders, it worked. I went inside and bought EU$300 with it, and had local money left over. Yay! Robert realized he had misplaced a zero and requested ten times what he intended from his bank card. That card didn't work for the rest of the trip; he'd triggered the shutoff at his bank. Back at the restaurant I paid Simon what I owed him, and had money left.

We ordered a variety of things for breakfast. I had some sort of stew with white beans and sausage. It was really good. This restaurant was owned by someone big in the local motorcycling scene, and he had all these photos of rallies he'd been to. We all signed his guest book, and took turns flipping through it to see who else had signed. Lots of motorcycle tourists had been here.

Jordi pointed out a pharmacy across the street, and I went in there to look for something for my leg. The pharmacist spoke excellent English. He had me come behind the counter and sit down, and show him the wound. He thought maybe it was blistering caused by my boot, but I told him about getting kicked in the ankle two days before, and how the boot was probably irritating it but was not the original trauma. He found a little tube of ointment for it, and some dressings to cover it. The charge for all this was EU$5, and it was better care than I would get from a real doctor, if I'd come down with something like this in the USA.

Simon had found a currency exchange that was open and would exchange my US dollars for Euros. So I got another EU$300. Suddenly I was flush. Yay!

We wandered around the market and I spent some of my local currency. I bought a nice scarf from the fabric store whose owner had so graciously let us park in her space. I got some hair sticks. I wandered through some clothing stores. I found a grocery and got some bottled water and a box of cookies. My hair dried completely. It felt so amazingly good to have clean hair!

Then it was time to suit up. As I was putting on my helmet and jacket, the local guy told me it wasn't necessary to wear gear. Maybe I'm being obstinate about the ATGATT thing, but IMHO it's always necessary to wear gear when riding. And besides, if I don't wear it, how shall I carry it? This guy carried his helmet on his elbow. I think it's more comfortable to carry on my head, thank you.

He led us up the hill, through narrow winding roads, through an archway, and down a tree-lined avenue to an old monastery. We spent the next 45 minutes or so, wandering around there. A sign on the outside of the church read MEDIEVAL CHURCH SS CLEMENT AND PANTELEIMON 9th - 15th centuries. It turned out that this building was destroyed centuries ago, and a mosque was built on the site by the Ottomans. The mosque was later destoryed. In 2002 the monastery was rebuilt on the same site. The area around the rebuilt monastery had ongoing archaeological work, and there were huge mosaics being uncovered in two spots on the grounds. We wandered around looking at them.

Rebuilt St Clement Monastery near Ohrid, Macedonia

From here, we rode out around the lake, and saw another old monastery, St. Naum, near the Albanian border. There was a hotel sharing the grounds, and they had peacocks roaming about. The road we took to get there was fun, very twisty, though we did have a little rain.

When we got back to Ohrid, we got on the freeway. There were tolls on this freeway, but our new local guide led us around them. We would come to the toll booths, and go around them, squeezing the bikes through between the poles that served as a barrier to cars! No one batted an eye. And it wasn't just a case of motorcycles being exempt; I saw the signs and they showed a picture of a bike and listed a price. Crazy!

In between being toll scofflaws, we just flew down that highway. Despite having spent most of the day poking around Lake Ohrid, we arrived in Skopje at dusk. At our hotel, we were met by Zeljko's wife, Jasmina, and by an assortment of curious children from the neighborhood. Several of the children spoke English and were pleased to show it off to us. Simon and I spent a half hour or so chatting with kids and letting them take turns sitting on the bikes. They were so interested that it made us a bit nervous, so we were careful to put the chains on the bikes before we went inside.

Local kids outside our hotel in Skopje

Inside, Igor arranged with the front desk clerk, for someone to be called in to do laundry! Oh frabjous joy! Clean clothes! I had all but given up on that. We were instructed to gather up what we wanted washed, and bring it down quickly. Clean clothes and clean hair on the same day! Woohoo!

Jasmina had arranged for us to have dinner in a small private restaurant, and for several taxis to carry us there. Dinner was terrific. Like most restaurants we'd been to, the house specialty was mixed meat. But we also had some new things. There were chunks of warm bread piled in heaps with feta cheese, and a special liver dish. Both were very tasty.

After dinner, the plan was to walk around the city. But it was after midnight and at least some of us were tired. Irene, Trond, Elvis and I went back to the hotel instead. Robert and Boban went dancing.

I shared a room with Elvis and Simon. It was an attic room, very large, with four beds and several skylights. Through the open skylights, we could hear people in the area watching World Cup Football (aka soccer) and just roaring. Every now and then, something would happen in the game, and we'd hear thousands of voices raised, and horns honking all over the city.

June 11

We were instructed to get up extra early this morning and collect our laundry quickly, because we had a lot of ground to cover and we needed to be somewhere by 4pm. Since the laundry didn't get washed until after dark, and the night had been wet, the hotel staff had set it all to dry on racks in a special room they used for this purpose. They let us into the room and we each found our own things on the racks, still mostly wet. (The woman who did laundry had been called in to work at night for us. She was assiduously polite but she had dark circles under her eyes. Simon gave her EU$10 as a tip, and she looked startled and very pleased. Later he asked around and found that EU$10 was probably about two days wages for a job like hers.) I wore a wet shirt and socks, and packed the wettest of the remaining items into my mesh bag and strapped them to the passenger seat. The less wet items went into the luggage loose, rather than in their plastic bags. I figured that every time we stopped, I'd open the cases to let them dry some more.

The other notable occurence this morning, was that Boban was not feeling well. He is from Serbia so we were getting closer to his home. When he didn't feel better, later, he decided to just go home.

It was back on the slab for the first part of the day. We crossed into Serbia. Soon it started to rain again. I moved the damp clothes from my seat to my top case, when I put my rainsuit on. Serbia seemed to have more flat land than most of the other Balkan countries we had passed through. The mountains were far away and the slab stretched on for miles with hardly any elevation changes to disturb it. Eventually we turned off the slab, onto a secondary road that wound back up into the hills. Boban left us at some point, not sure when. We came to a big reservoir. The clock in my bike hadn't worked since the last time my battery died, but looking at the sky I thought it must be past 4pm already. The clouds were very dark and the light rain continued.

The group pulled over into the parking lot of a pretty restaurant next to the water. Irene wanted to stop for tea. Igor grumbled but allowed himself to be persuaded. Our wet, bedraggled little group straggled into the restaurant and took over one of their tables for helmets and tankbags and rainsuits, and sat around two other tables. We were the only ones there. We were served by a very formal and polite waiter in a suit. Irene got her tea, and Robert ordered an omelette. Igor grumbled; we weren't supposed to eat here, we had somewhere we needed to be! But after looking at some maps, he decided there was just no way we'd get to Kremna in time. He switched his grumbling, to a complaint about the local guy who had told him this ride could be done in six hours, when there was simply no way. (Philometers are everywhere.) Then he said "Let's order hamburgers." So we did. Hamburgers for everyone! They were amazingly good hamburgers and our spirits perked up immensely once we had food in us.

Back on the road, it soon quit raining, and we came to an area where there was road repair going on. They had cut square holes into the pavement, about 12 or 15 inches across. These holes had not been filled with anything yet, and the edges were quite sharp. Not the kind of thing you want to put your front wheel into. When you ride with a group, you point out hazards like that with your toes, to warn the rider behind you. There were so many of these things, scattered so randomly, that we coined a name for this activity. It was the Serbian Road Dance. It's like a cross between the Hokey Pokey and a line dance.

Eventually we reached Kremna and turned off the highway and onto its main street. This was one of the more run-down looking towns we'd seen. Igor had said we would be staying at a hotel across from the train station. I didn't see a train station, but the building we stopped in front of did appear to be a hotel. There was an official looking building across the street, but I couldn't tell if it was a train station. Were there tracks on the other side? Some older men came out of the hotel to stare at us. I looked around at the town. Every building, except for the hotel and the building across the street from it, was either collapsing or looked about to collapse, and the hotel itself didn't look so hot either. There were an awful lot of people here for a place that had so few good buildings, and they all just stared at us. Igor got out his phone and called someone, then asked one of the locals where the gas station was? It was back out on the main highway, just a little ways from where we had turned to come into town. We went there. It appeared to be closed. We waited there for the people who were going to meet us.

About ten minutes later two Stroms came flying down the road. One of them had California plates. The riders were both Serbian, but Schwaba lived in the USA. The other guy, Djura, had bought a V-Strom first and praised it so highly that Schwaba bought one too. He got a great deal on it because it was on eBay and the seller mispelled the name of the bike, so didn't get very many bids. In April, Schwaba had quit his job in California, ridden his V-Strom to New York, and air freighted it to Belgrade. They were here to lead us to our destination for the evening. It wasn't very far, they said, but they warned us that when we got to the tunnel, we should slow way down and go carefully because the pavement in the tunnel was very bad. They had a tale of a group of local riders going through this tunnel, and thirteen people crashed in there.

The mountains got wilder and more beautiful. We went through the tunnel, and the pavement was indeed bad, but compared to Albania it was easy. We all made it through without mishap. We arrived at Mokra Gora and it was lovely. There was a little train station, and a fancy tourist hotel with a restaurant. The room I shared with Robert was very nice, the most elegant of anyplace we'd stayed on the whole trip. It was on the ground floor and it had a nice porch overlooking the train tracks. We quickly pulled out all our wet things and strewed them around the room hoping that they would dry a bit more.

The tracks were narrow gauge, and there was a group of passenger cars sitting right outside the hotel. I could smell railroad ties and pine trees and a steam engine, though I didn't see the steam engine just yet. Smells are very evocative, and this one reminded me of family vacations when I was a child, and we rode the Durango-Silverton in Colorado. According to the brochures we were given, the name of this tourist railroad is the Sargan Eight.

Train station and restaurant in Mokra Gora, Serbia

Our hotel in Mokra Gora

The Sargan Eight steam locomotive

I let Robert have the room to himself so he could shower and dress at leisure, and I walked around outside in the dusk. I found the steam engine, it was hiding on a second track, behind the passenger cars. There were a bunch of paved walkways leading here and there, and some little gazebos. There were a lot of outdoor tables, but no one was using them; it was too cold and damp. I wandered back to the hotel building, and Elvis called to me from the second floor window. He and Simon had a room up there, and Elvis was sitting in the wide window sill messing with his GPS. I sat on the porch and watched the mercury vapor lamps click on and off. It was very peaceful. Eventually Robert came out and I had my turn in the shower.

I was the last to arrive at dinner. I sat next to Schwaba and got the tale of his trip from California. It sounded like a fabulous adventure!

June 12

This morning I slowed down our leave taking by getting out my tire pressure gauge. You really should check the tires when they're cold, and I'd felt so scrambled each morning lately, that I'd never managed to do it. This morning I was one of the first people to get to the bikes, and they were parked far enough apart that I could actually reach the tires, so I got out the gauge and started checking them. My bike had 32psi in front and 34psi rear. Lower than I'd like, but not terrible.

I asked some of the others if they had brought their tire pumps. No one seemed to have what I would consider an appropriate tire kit. How I wished I had brought mine! A few of them had those disposable cylinder thingies, but it seemed silly to waste one to add two or three psi to an undamaged tire. I was about to ask Igor to look for a gas station with a compressor, somewhere along the way, when Schwaba produced a proper battery powered tire pump. Thank goodness! This pump had alligator clips instead of an SAE connector so I had to take the seat off. By the time I removed the seat, other people were airing up their tires as well. I guess the tire check was a good idea. :-)

We rode back down the way we'd come. When we got to the bad tunnel, it was closed for construction. It seemed they were finally repaving it. We were detoured over a really great road, narrow, with tight bends and lots of elevation changes (and gravel scattered on the pavement in the turns). Wheee! We passed Kremna. We came to a road junction, where our two Serbian friends bid us farewell.

We wound our way up into the mountains and at the top of the pass, we crossed the border into Montenegro. This time it was a little easier crossing the border, because we still had the paper showing we'd bought the EU$60 insurance the last time we'd entered Montenegro. It still took time, though, and I passed the time by coaxing a stray cat. I took pictures of the cat, and the border guards didn't object to this. (Usually they didn't want us taking pictures at the border crossings.) So here's a cat picture, against the backdrop of the shacks that make up the border facilities.

Stray cat at the border between Serbia and Montenegro

The guards did make a point of telling us that we couldn't just wait, we had to leave when we were allowed to cross. I stopped around the corner, just out of sight, and talked to Simon on the radio, let him know I was waiting for them. Robert was the last one across and they gave him a harder time than most, it took quite a while for him to arrive. But finally he did. The sun came out. The road was terrific, winding and twisting through the high country.

We stopped for a break at a little hilltop restaurant. We still had wet clothing, so we opened our side cases and spread things out on the bikes to dry in the sun. While I was down at the bikes, a bus came and dropped off two people. One, an older guy, stopped and said "Tourist?" I nodded and said yes and he said "English?" and I said "American". He repeated "American?" in an incredulous voice. Then he said "Dobro dosli!" (welcome!) very enthusiastically, his face wreathed with smiles. He spoke rapidly to the woman who'd gotten off the bus with him. All I could pick up were the words "America" and "Tourist" and "Dobro, dobro!" (Good, good) They both smiled at me and chorused "Dobro dosli! Dobro!" I said "Hvala!" (Thank you!) and they continued smiling and saying "Dobro" even as they walked away up the hill. (And there you have it, every word I learned in the local language during my trip.)

V-Stroms in front of a restaurant in the Montenegro mountains

We rode down through the mountains and into a town, where we stopped for more TBIC, and Igor got directions from the locals. At the edge of this town, there was a very disturbing looking power plant. The cooling tower was asymetrical with frightful bulge on the side. I was glad to note it was a coal plant, not nuclear. As we were passing this plant, I was second to last rider, and Robert was behind me. Suddenly he disappeared from my mirrors. Over the radio I let Simon know I was stopping to wait. He stopped a little farther up the road and waited, too. It had only been about a quarter mile since I'd seen Robert, but he never arrived. After a few minutes I told Simon I'd go look, and I turned around and went back to where I'd last seen Robert. He wasn't there. I looked up the road and caught just the briefest glimpse of him as he darted off, back the way we'd come. WTF? I sprinted after him. I caught him a mile or so later, and got him to stop. It turns out he thought that Jordi had been left behind, somewhere, and he'd gone back to find him. I was pretty sure Jordi was up ahead, so I got us turned around and headed back towards Simon. When I got back to where I'd waited, there was no sign of Simon. But the road just went one direction, so I kept going.

About a mile later, I saw Simon. He started hollering at me on the radio and saying to stop. So I stopped. He told me that when he'd stopped, Jordi had also stopped, but the others kept going. They'd waited for us for a long time, and when we didn't come, and the others didn't return, Jordi raced off to catch the others and bring them back. Jordi had told Simon to stay put, right where he was. So, we waited. And waited. Simon got more and more worried, and finally we decided to go. The road just went in one direction, Simon had seen Jordi go that way, so we could logically follow, at least until we came to an intersection.

I took the lead and scooted off down that road. We traveled 20 or 30 miles and didn't see any of the others. I saw people here and there, at farmhouses along the road, and I thought about stopping to ask them if they'd seen the other bikes. But the language barrier would make it difficult. Best to just keep going. The road climbed higher and there were fewer farms, more forests. It was really quite beautiful, if you could get past the interpersonal stresses.

Suddenly Simon called to me that his phone was ringing, and he was going to pull over answer it. So we all stopped. Simon answered his phone and talked for a long while. Robert pulled up next to me and said we should turn around and go back to where Simon was, since we'd stopped in a curve. We turned around and went back, and turned around again to line up on the roadside near Simon. He finished talking, and said we were on the right road, the others had promised to wait for us and not move. I pulled out. Robert pulled out. I watched in my mirror as Simon dropped his bike. I stopped, parked, and got off my bike, and ran back to help him pick it up. Robert stopped too. Finally we got everything upright and everyone dusted off and calm, and we rode on down the road. Ten seconds later, we saw the others. They were at a scenic pullout just around the curve. If it wasn't for one tree, I'd have seen them from where I stopped!

This was the view from the spot where I stopped my bike. See the tree right in front of my windshield? They were behind that tree.

The road got twistier and steeper, and the mountains more beautiful, until we descended into a gorge, and there was a high, arched bridge across it. Tour busses were parked in a pullout next to the bridge, and the bus tourists were walking around on the bridge. Our leaders pulled to a stop and had us all park on the bridge, right there in the travel lane. The traffic wasn't heavy and no one seemed to mind. The bus tourists greeted us with smiles, and the ones who knew English were pleased to practice it on us. Down at the bottom of the gorge, was the Tara River. The water was a perfect swimming-pool blue color. It reminded me of the lakes and streams in British Columbia, along the Alaska Highway.

The Tara River near Durmitor National park in Montenegro

The bridge over the Tara River

On the other side of the bridge, we turned onto a road that paralleled the river. This was a great twisty canyon road. The canyon walls got higher and higher on either side, and there were many tunnels.

Some views of the Tara River Canyon

I decided that the group needed a bad influence, so I started making centerstand sparks in the tunnels. We talked about it later and none of these guys admitted knowing this trick, though Elvis, who had been behind me, said it looked impressive. I would have expected Robert, at least, to know this one. None of them had ever done kill switch backfires, either. The V-Strommers just aren't like the 'maggots. They don't wrench and they don't create the same kinds of mayhem.

Robert stops for a drink of water

We stopped for gas, and from the gas station we could see a wrecked train on the hillside above. The train looked rusty, like it had been up there for years, but Zjelko said it was only a few months ago, and that many people were killed. Terrible.

The road took us out of the mountains and back into urban areas. Simon and I tried to keep the group together, since we had the radios. I brought up the rear and he took a position right behind the leader. We had discussed this with the others and they were supposed to stay between us. But Trond didn't get the memo, apparently. He started doing stoplight drags with S, and they ended up having a shouting match. I agreed that Trond was being a pain, but sheesh, Simon was wound awfully tight today.

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant overlooking a lake. We took an outside table, but just as the drinks arrived, it started to rain again, so we moved indoors.

After dinner it was less than an hour to our night's destination, Bar. There was an exciting detour on the way into Bar. They'd blocked the main road along the sea, and they were detouring people through a sort of private alley that was only one lane wide and went through a lot of people's backyards. Since it was only one lane, they were only letting one direction through at a time. But at either end of the detour, there were multiple roads feeding in, and not everyone needed to go through the detour; some people were going down those other roads. Since people in that part of the world don't queue very well, the ends of the detour were a bit wild.

The destination hotel was one of the nicest ones we'd been in yet, and we seemed to be the only ones there. They threw open room after room and just let us pick. The rooms were huge and bright, with clean, well appointed bathrooms. There was also a bar downstairs where they ran a tab for us. We would be here two nights. Robert and I grabbed a room with three beds, and didn't end up with a third roommate, so we had plenty of room to spread out our still-damp clothing. Hooray!

June 13

This morning we didn't have to pack the bikes, because we were staying here two nights. We could leave the side cases behind, whee! We set out, back through the crazy detour, and up onto the shore road. We rode along the sea for ten or twenty miles, past this extremely cool looking little island, covered with buildings, and connected to the mainland by a bridge or causeway of some sort. Neat! I wished we would stop so I could get a picture, but we didn't. Soon we came to a corner, where a road led up the hill. We pulled over into the right turn lane, and stopped. And sat. And sat. WTF? They weren't even talking bollocks in Croatian, at least at first.

I had pulled up next to Robert. He said "I think I'm going to leave the group for the day, just let them go, and explore on my own." I said "Can I come with you?" He said "Sure". He went up to tell Igor, and by the time he came back, Irene and Trond had detached themselves from the main group and joined us as well. We left the rest of them to sit there if they liked, but the four of us would go on. Robert led us up the hill.

After a half dozen switchbacks, we'd climbed up quite high, and we could see a long way down the coast. There was a roadside shack selling coffee, with a couple picnic tables, and a space to pull over and look out over the sea. There were two bikes there already, a V-Strom and a large scooter. Robert pulled in there. It turns out these two guys were here to meet our group, and somehow some wires got crossed, they were the ones Igor was waiting for at the bottom of the hill. We talked to them for a little while and eventually the rest of the group arrived.

Robert said he wanted to go back and look at that island we'd passed, and spend some time in the seaside town we were looking down at.

Igor tried to convince me to rejoin the main group, he said he was taking them somewhere great. It had started to rain again. I looked inland, and saw dark clouds. I looked towards the sea and saw blue sky. I thought of doing another 400 kilometers in the rain, never sure where we were going or why, and returning to the hotel sometime after dark. Certainly the roads would be nice and the sights interesting, and I'd be able to talk bollocks in English on the radio with Simon while we rode. But I was so tired of long days, and of the struggles inherent in riding with such a large group! I decided to stay with the splinter group. Robert led us back down the hill and into Budhva. As we rode down the hill, we rode out of the rain.

Robert wanted to find a bank machine and have another try at getting some cash out. Irene wanted to look for souvenirs. We found a place to park, locked the helmets to the bikes, and I stuffed my tankbag into my top case. We wandered down to the beach.

Irene and Trond almost immediately found some other Norwegian tourists, sitting at one of the beachfront cafes. While Robert and I were waiting for them to finish their chat, we ended up conversing with a Ukrainian guy who spoke very good American-accented English.

Budhva has an old city with a wall around it. There is a narrow walkway on the top of the wall, you can walk all the way around it, and look out through the arrow slits. There's a spot where the walkway widens to a sort of patio, and you can see in all directions, look out over the harbor. From the wall you can look down at the inside of the city, and into people's gardens. They look green and mysterious. One garden had lots of cats in it, including one that was sprawled out on the stone walk, luxuriating in the sunshine and the warm stone. Another garden was entirely paved and had a number of scooters in it. You couldn't get to any of these gardens from where we were, unless you had rappelling gear. Inside the city there were a lot of old buildings, and nice shops. It was fun to explore.

The old city of Budva, Montenegro

Irene, in Budva

Back outside the walled city, we decided to go back to the bikes, find a bank for Robert, then ride down the coast to the next town and seek lunch. I remembered seeing two banks near where we parked. Sure enough, Robert was able to get cash at one of them.

We rode down the coast to the next town. It was smaller. Robert led the way right into the center of it, and down a steep narrow cobblestone street with a hairpin turn halfway down. The street led right down to the beach, where it dead ended into some outdoor cafe tables. Irene and Trond turned around and went back up, but Robert and I parked down at the bottom, near where bicycles were locked to a rail. Irene and Trond found somewhere to park up above, and walked back down. We picked a cafe and had lunch.

After lunch, Trond wanted to wash the bikes. He'd already picked out a car wash to use. I think that's the happiest look I ever saw on Trond's face, on the whole trip, when he washed the bikes. Robert, on the other hand, was visibly distressed by seeing his bike washed and shined. :-) I must admit some discomfort with the activity, myself, since the guys running the car wash insisted on power washing the bike and I was worried about the bearings and the electrical connectors. But everything was fine afterward, we had no problems with the bikes, and they sure looked pretty, all clean and shiny.

We stopped at a scenic overlook and took pictures of the island with all the buildings on it. The name of the place was St Stephens, and apparently a lot of movie stars have houses out there. It was EU$5 to park close enough to walk in, and we didn't want to spend much time, so we decided not to go in.
St Stephens, Montenegro

We got through the crazy detour, and back to our hotel by mid-afternoon. Irene and Trond walked into Bar and sent their postcards. Robert wandered off as well. I spent some time alone in the room, washed my hair, re-washed some of the clothing that had started to smell due to being continuously wet for so long, repacked my luggage, etc. It was so nice to just catch up on some of that stuff!

The rest of the group pulled in sometime after dark. They'd had a great ride, lots of twisties, visited a monument where they climbed many steps, and had a fabulous meal. It hadn't rained on them very much at all after they left us. They almost made me jealous.

June 14

Today we rode back to Dubrovnik, retracing our steps back through places where we'd already been. The ride along the sea was gorgeous. Mountains to the right. Clear blue sea to the left. Sunny skies, finally! Beautiful sweeping curves. Optional traffic laws. The route was clear and everyone was relaxed, and the group finally split, calmly and happily, into the divisions it had been tending towards all along. So I was with the Norwegians when Trond (who was, at that moment, leading the more conservative half of the group) was pulled over by the police.

By this point, even the most conservative riders in the group had gotten used to the idea that no one in these countries gives a thought to the speed limits, and no one cares where motorcycles pass. The traffic laws in all these places are entirely optional, even though there are cops sitting on the roadside everywhere watching over the traffic. They don't seem to care at all even if you pass them at two or three times the speed limit. But today we were pulled over by a couple of cops who, unlike most cops we'd seen, were partially hidden behind a hedge. One of them leapt out in front of Trond, on foot, and waved to him with his lollipop sign. Trond pulled right over and so did Irene, and I slowed down, trying to decide if I should stop, or keep going? The cop tried to wave Irene on, but Trond made gestures to say that we were all together, and the cop widened his stop to include us all. Guess I better stop.

Neither cop spoke any English. Or Norwegian, for that matter. He shouted "Document! Document!" and we handed over our passports and our bike registration and insurance, just like at borders. I dug out my international drivers license, with its translation of my drivers license into 14 languages, and the cop seemed to like this very well, since it actually had something he could read. The cop examined each piece of paper, making a great show of it. He seemed especially interested in the stamps in our passports. Then he waved his arms and shouted a little, and we looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then he gave us all our papers back, drew a picture of the coast in the air with his hands, then said "ferry" and then drew more coast, said "Montenegro" Then he chopped his sign language map and said "Croatia?" and looked at us. We nodded yes, that's where we're going. He waggled his fingers and said "Montenegro" again, and it was clear that he was saying "Behave yourself in my country!" He then waved for us to go. Telling the story later, I have to wonder if this cop was looking for a bribe, but gave it up when he realized none of us could communicate well enough to observe the proper forms.

(There had been another incident, earlier in the trip, where one of the locals we were riding with got pulled over, and the cop yelled at him and told him the fine was EU$150 and he was going to take his drivers license and he'd have to go to the capital to get it back, and blah blah blah. The local guy said "That's going to mess up my vacation. Isn't there anything I can do for you?" and the cop said "Only if it comes from your heart." The local guy pulled EU$20 out of his breast pocket and gave it to the cop, and said it came from his heart. The cop said that since it had come from the heart, he would let it go this time. I wasn't there for this incident, and didn't speak the language so I wouldn't have understood it while it was happening. I just heard about it later. But it sounds to me like there's a script for these things, and the locals know what to say.)

The others were waiting at the ferry, and we told them of our encounter. They had passed this cop but he hadn't stopped them.

After the ferry, we went on down the coast an