Into the biosphere, day 5 (Saturday)

(This post follows part 1 and part 2 about my struggling through “The Accursed Race“.)

I’ve got a giant sandwich in my pocket, but on the way out of Plužine I stop at a convenience store at the end of the street. Besides food, I buy some spray deodorant. I’d never use the stuff, but stray dogs roam in abundance, and I have it on some authority that a good blast of icy freshness can distract an enthusiastic dog at heel.

The plan for today is all Montenegrin: I am hoping to make it to Berane and control point 1 tonight.

It’s awesome road riding out of Plužine. (In actual fact, the awesome road riding began somewhere before Foča, and will end somewhere after Šavnik.) It’s climbing from the get-go, bound south on the highway. Some dogs chase me—the spray deodorant is better used on armpits—before I plunge the thousand feet down to the bridge on the Komarnica. It’s a spectacular gorge, the pavement is buttery, and climbing up the other side of the canyon in the quiet morning sun is peaceful and relaxing.

The top is 1500 feet up or so and imperceptible. The road, recently paved, one car wide, rolls among farmhouses and quiet villages. Not much activity. We’re riding the plateau above the river, before dropping down on the highway into Šavnik. Before that, I eat the rest of giant sandwich #2. And, like, it seems, everyone in the race with an instagram account, I take a picture of a picture of a road sign.

Right at the turn up the next climb, there’s a supermarket. I see two racers there, and we have a nice chat. The supermarket is too big. I’m stumped for options. Of what I find, some is for immediate enjoyment, some for later. It’s hot, and shade is scarce.

It’s about 100 km to Berane, where I hope to sleep. On the menu are 1000 meters of rolling climbing, then a not-quite-flat plateau, a descent, and then up and over the highest point of the race, found in the Biogradska Gora. It’s early afternoon, and I’m feeling pretty optimistic.

The plateau turns out to be the first hiccup. The road is rough, going through soggy and rocky pasturing in what feels like a completely abandoned park. (At various points, I meet unlikely, smelly cars; a group of guys on ATVs roars past.) The landscape is unusual, different from everything we’ve had before, and beautiful. (I’m sorry for describing so many things this way. Please just look at the pictures.) I pass a howling, snarling beast of a livestock guardian dog, whose head comes up to my sternum, its neck wider than my trunk, its fur blotched, matted, of various lengths. Woe to its foes. But it’s chained up, thank goodness. No humans in sight.

It’s early evening as I start the descent down to the bottom of the Biogradska Gora. It’s a beautiful one.

Our trip through the park is a big climb and descent. There’s a cash toll at the entrance to the park, and as I climb I’m reminded at times of the old days, inadvisable evening attempts on Mt. Greylock, before the road turns to dirt.

It’s beautiful forest, but the vibe is no longer peaceful as I try to progress as far as I can before darkness falls. When I reach the final traverse to the col, I encountered a racing pair. Just seeing them lifts the spirits immeasurably, but there’s no time to talk or wait–it’s now dark, and it’s cold with the wind blowing through the pass. I have my warm clothes on.

Descending the other side, I dismount to pass through a snowfield. It’s pretty dicey, and in the cold and dark the fall seems worse than it probably is. (It’s a likely bone-breaker but probably not a career-ender.) I’m kicking steps at 6 inch intervals, pushing or carrying the bike. Once I’m across, I look back and see my new friends doing something like the same.

It’s now fully dark as I gingerly steer down the bumpy, rocky, messy descent. The spray off the tires is mostly snowmelt and very cold.

The descent is into the outskirts of Berane, passing by cabins and vacation homes.

In Berane, a real city, it’s nevertheless easy to find the control point. It’s a button in the foyer of a hotel, where, unfortunately, a wedding reception or something is taking place. The people at the desk tell me there are no rooms. I find a hotel across the bridge, my diciest accommodations of the trip, but the people are helpful and nice.

But it’s hard to find dinner. There’s a lot happening in the street, and I waste some precious time, probably an hour, getting food. I order some pizzas, and while I wait for them to be baked, I find some insanely cheap gelato. Yum. It’s raining but life is good.

I eat one pizza back in the room and pack up the other for tomorrow.

I can rest in Albania, day 6 (Sunday)

Starting from Berane, I have no exact plan for the night. I think I text my parents that I’d like to follow the gpx’s nudge, but I know even then that it’s aspirational. The gpx, after all, runs from Berane to Kukës, a solid 250 km that komoot estimates will take about 19 hours.

From the gun it’s really hard. And komoot’s estimate is bogus–it doesn’t know that the first 40 km or so are rough, offroad riding, including some >20% hike-a-bike. But I’m a little ahead of myself.

From CP1, the climb starts almost immediately, and it’s steep. (Beautiful, though, green, misty, rocky.) These are mostly shepherd tracks, in the race description, “the Katun road,” and I get off the bike a lot. The descent is memorably difficult and slow.

The route takes us almost to the border (on paper) before taking a turn away. I was walking here, too.

After descending to Rožaje, where I tank up at a gas station, it’s a largely easy highway climb up to the border with Kosovo.

From the border (I, leery of official types, don’t generally have the camera out at border crossings) it’s a fast, wide descent down to the outskirts of Pejë. I am hoping for a good bakery option and don’t do so well.

The route through Kosovo is easy. It’s basically flat, running on a plain through the agricultural land at the foot of the mountains that make the border to the west. Out of the town, it’s late evening, dreamy, sleepy riding, quiet, and relaxed. I have resolved to avoid trying too hard on the flat, saving the watts for climbing later, and I’m freewheeling as much as I can, softpedaling the rest.

After turning up the highway towards the Albanian border, it’s less chill. Cars blow past. The sky is darkening. It’s initially up to the border, then down across it, into Albania, fast and easy.

I’m still sort of hoping to make it at least to Krumë, but as the climbing (chill, 1500 ft or so on pavement) starts in earnest, lightning, rain, and thunder start to roll in across the valley, and then down the pass ahead of me. I fetch my rain gear out and decide to wait in a turnout for the weather to pass.

It’s about an hour I wait. I’m joined at some point by a fellow racer—there aren’t so many good turnouts—and, after some rocks fall down alarmingly near to us, he tells me about how he once woke up from a thunderstorm bivy to find a pair of dead horses, fallen from a cliff above, next to his bag. I gain a new fear.

The thunder begins to come at longer intervals. It’s time to get going again, though the rain won’t stop. I roll over the pass, not too far off, and continue on the rolling terrain on the other side.

It’s lonely, but there are not zero cars. I start to get sleepy and give up on the dream of a hotel. I bivy in some long grass, 25 m off the side of the road. It’s a wet one.

Too close to the sun, day 7 (Monday)

I wake up a little later than I’d like, obviously. Clouds hang in the valley. It’s a damp morning. I keep rolling on the road before finding a gas station at which I can refuel. Two guys are having an early morning coffee and cigarette. One of them is eager to help and chat. I buy some soda and an eyebrow-raising number of 7 day croissants.

I have a pretty decent dirt climb ahead of me. It’s still damp. The main traffic on the climb appears to be some kind of informal bus service, very full minivans packed with people who nevertheless seem to be in good spirits.

Over the top, it’s some farms before a small descent and then a long, rolling section along the side of the hill before ending up in Kukës. It’s a sunny morning, and it feels very Mediterranean as I roll past the farms on the side of the hill. But I’m growing impatient, since I want to hit Kukës before it’s too late.

When I finally arrive, it’s around 10:30 AM. I find a hotel, where I pay some fraction of the room price to take a shower. While my bike is safely stashed, I go through the hot, dusty, busy streets to find a pizza, or three. Two go in the pocket, one I house. While I’m waiting, I hit the supermarket across the street. It’s all good, but it’s a long stop. The man at the pizza place, intelligent, good-natured, talkative, keeps me company while I devour his work. (I try to hide the pocketing process from him.)

On the road again, I’m suffering early. It’s very hot. I’ve managed to get my arms painfully sunburned, an unfamiliar sensation for me. Despite the cake of zinc oxide I paste onto them, I feel like I’m being cooked alive as I ride through the outskirts of Kukës on a path running through small farms and gardens.

Crawling up some road climb, I pass a convenience store with some shaded picnic tables out front. I eat a bunch of ice creams. The storekeeper is a kind of gen X-ey dude who speaks German but not English. We do our best and it’s all pretty good-spirited. A nice stop.

Off the road the course becomes spectacular. It’s unfair to make comparisons to the more familiar, but the vertiginous, hot, scrubby mountains remind me of Greece. A great sector.

Evening approaches as I enter the park.

The difficulty of the route spells defeat for my lighting strategy, which is centered on the dynamo (i.e. forward motion > 6 kph). I’m hiking the bike under my light’s flicker, and in frustration I try to get on and pedal. I lose traction in some mud and fall over backwards. I have a dog encounter. I begin to feel sorry for myself. Once it’s fully dark I’m not having much fun, I’m tired, and I hear dogs barking in the distance. I’m in a low, wet place, but I decide to bivy again. Anyway, the upcoming lakes—I assume the cold humidity I’m lying in is related—are a sight to see, and I don’t want to miss them for riding in the dark.

Starting wet again, more progress than I thought, day 8 (Tuesday)

Everything is wet. This sucks. While I’m lying in the soup, still in denial about my alarm’s ringing, I see Nick ride past me. We exchange a good morning, but he’s moving and I’m not. Still a boost, feeling less lonely. I won’t see him again until the finish line.

I roll up the valley and pull over some long switchbacks that take me through a pass to some wide, wild valleys, and eventually I end up in a little town or village.

I’m hailed by a man on the road with a child; the adult turns out to be an English teacher at the school and wants to talk—indeed, unbelievably, wants to invite me into his restaurant (another job) to have a meal, but there’s of course no way and it’s very early. We take a picture instead.

I mention I’m headed to Peshkopi. But Peshkopi is that way, he says, indicating the way I came.

Near where I’m standing I see what looks like a new hotel—someone smart might have known. I console myself by saying it looks too fancy for the likes of me.

It’s a rough way out of town and pretty soon I’m hiking the bike, quite a lot, up to the many lakes. As promised, a sight to see.

While hiking at some point I see another racer, which is nice. We’re both struggling with the gradients. He’s enjoying a soda.

I’m running low on water, having resupplied well outside of this park. I filter some from one of the streams running out of a lake. It takes a really long time.

Did I mention there’s a lot of hiking? The 50 km since waking up take me about 8 hours.

When it’s time to ride again, it’s a relief, and it’s pretty fast on the dirt roads and then paved roads into Peshkopi, control point 2.

Peshkopi is a real town, surrounded by farms. CP2 is at the end of a semi-pedestrianized zone that is lined with sports bars, shops, a bank, restaurants, etc. I am slightly reminded of Isla Vista, for all the foot traffic, small shops, bars, televisions.

I take a long stop, order some pizzas, take a shower at the CP2 hotel. But it’s annoyingly far from nighttime, and it doesn’t make sense to sleep here. Plus, I know the next sector, to Laç, is long–komoot thinks it takes about 20 hrs. So whatever bite I can take out of it is good.

Motivated, having made it to CP2 and had a chat with the volunteers, I am nevertheless a little bummed at the thought of another bivy. I know everything is still wet. While eating pizza #1, I take a peek at the map. (At this point in the race, I’m a lot less familiar with the route. I wasn’t, after all, that sure I’d make it this far, and I was confident that, were I to make it this far, none of my plans would still be in place.) I discover (on booking.com) that there is actually a plausible hotel two hours or so down the road, which would work out great, since then I could have an early night before a big push to Laç. On the phone, the guy on the other end doesn’t speak any English, French, or German, but we communicate instead by me reading Italian off a translation app and subsequently trying to figure out what his replies mean. It turns out that the front desk is closing in like 2 hours and 20 minutes, but if I can make it there before then, I’ll have a bed.

I pack furiously. The thought of a bed and no more bivy—I figure I can get a hotel in Laç and finish the following day—seems too good to be true.

I’m on the gas. Fuck softpedaling, this is what I’ve been saving up for with all those zone 1 hours. I am absolutely hammering out of town.

As it gets dark I hit one of the komoot off-grid sectors. These confuse the hell out of the Garmin, and I’m toggling between phone navigation, the Garmin, and dead reckoning, growing more pessimistic that I can make the hotel. After all, my estimate of the feasibility was based on biking, and I have no idea how komoot figures the times for places it doesn’t know have paths!

Luckily I had some money in the bank from the pedalmashing I’ve done to get there, and eventually I’m back on very smooth tarmac. I’m doing some arithmetic in the head and it looks like it’s gonna come down to the minute. I’m seeing numbers on my head unit that I haven’t seen since day 1.

I arrive with a couple minutes to spare, relieved as hell. The place is actually insane. It looks like the sort of place where they film “The Bachelor,” a kind of stone castle with fire pits and tiki torches. There appear to be almost no guests—except for a racer, who’s outside eating real food.

The kid at the desk speaks excellent English. He helps me up to a room, super nice, and I buy some nonalcoholic beers to drink to wind down.

Part of my genius plan for this hotel was to unpack nothing, so as to have as quick a turnaround as possible. After I shower I emerge in my towel to realize that there are actually no sheets on the bed or in the closet. This is a bummer. I don’t want to call some teenager up to help me out while I’m nearly naked, like a creep. But I don’t want to sleep in a bed with no sheets. And I don’t want to unpack my bike and put on my clothes to deal with this. But there are a lot of towels. I manage to cover with towels the area I’ll sleep on. I even have one towel left to be used as a blanket.

Smelling the barn, day 9 (Wednesday)

I manage to get rolling pretty quickly, since I have very little to do. Since it’s early, and there are like no guests, the place feels empty. And the door to the entrance I came through last night is locked. And the gate to the parking lot, too.

The first one I bypass by opening the door to a patio, dropping the bike over the railing, and climbing over. The parking lot gate is more substantial, and I have to climb over the landscaping to find a place that is low enough for me to get the bicycle (and rider) over.

The paved rolling in the morning is good, reminds me of Orinda, weirdly, lots of trees, houses spaced out. I get a surprise from a group of dogs in a sleepy square of some village I pass through; a woman walking by is indignant on my behalf.

Then it’s a long dirt climb in the trees while it threatens to rain. Peshkopi was low country, and now we’re back into the mountains. It’s green and lush and quiet.

Evidence of humans (beyond the presence of the road) at the top.

It’s hell, though, as we pass through a huge mining operation on the descent. Honestly a Mad Max situation. Surreal, crazy. Run-down trailers, junkyard dogs, a shop in the middle of nowhere, impassive men in big machines.

Well before the bottom, the road becomes very smooth. The following climb is like the fancy neighborhoods in Santa Barbara, paradise regained.

Then into the trees, where the road is being paved. I filter some water while some guys ferry buckets to hydrate the mortar they’re using to build a wall.

We pass through a beautiful valley below a dilapidated, isolated resort from the communist era, and then we pass to the balcony road, a perfect, winding, gravel road with endless late afternoon views.

I filter some water behind a bar (?) on the way. I buy some sodas.

To get to Laç we need to go over one or two more climbs. The first winds through farms and small holdings up the hill above a larger town, passing fences, clotheslines, backyards. These fade away as we move toward the pass. This feels like an old road but the surface is pretty rough.

After I make the pass, I descend down a steep way, and then it’s a short, steep climb on the dirt up to another pass before a descent down into Laç. The moon is up and I see distant lightning, hear distant thunder.

I have a pretty bad fuckup in Laç. At some point I’ve settled on a hotel, which turns out to be about 5 km off course, and actually between two exits on an actual highway. This is pretty depressing. I stop for a snack on the way towards the highway at a convenience store that is inexplicably open. Then I roll down to the hotel, which is actually run by the attached gas station, and the surly teenager indicates that I need to leave the bike downstairs. This is kind of a drag, but it’s all fine. The hotel is very serviceable.

LFG… get two flats, day 10 (Thursday)

In the morning, I stock up at the convenience store at the gas station, huge, shiny, and bike back to Laç. I do my best to avoid the highway but it amounts to lifting my bike over a jersey barrier and across some ditches. Then it’s an annoyingly long way back to Laç. But I am able to stop at a bakery and get a ton of börek, valuable sustenance.

Back on course, I’m in high spirits, and it’s super easy riding out of Laç, down the river, on basically pavement. I stop for some ice cream, whatever, it’s great.

We have to cross the river on a great bridge. There’s a metal seam and a change of gradient. I decide to hop it. I mistime it, of course, and slam my wheel on the metal corner. Instant puncture. Goddammit. That sound? It’s my mood escaping out of the butyl.

I take a long time to change the tube. I get freaked out by my spare tube—I convince myself, incorrectly, that it’s the wrong size—and decide to use my other spare tube. Also these ones have like a removable valve core, and my little hand pump threads on, and I keep threading the valve core out when taking the pump off, which upgrades the task of pumping up a MTB tire with a mini pump from “somewhat annoying” to “curse-extracting.”

Then I forget that I have a dent in my rim from the Mont Blanc trip years ago. So I get paranoid about the dent in my rim, wonder if it’s race-ending, and decide to true my wheel with my multitool. Which is all to say that my confidence is shattered, I’ve lost whatever I had recovered of my good mood, and wasted like an hour, all the while getting eaten alive by flies at the side of the river.

Once I get rolling again, I’ve resolved to just git ‘er done, to the extent that I am vocalizing thoughts along these lines, giving myself encouragement as if I am an adult talking to a child.

There’s some road climbing around some reservoirs, then some nice red dirt climbs, some rolling stuff between farms, it’s all lovely. I am delayed by goats.

I’m mainly anticipating the final big climb of the day, which is about 20 km long. I’m telling myself all I gotta do is get to the bottom, then get to the top, and then roll home.

It’s a hilly run-up to it, but it’s a touristy area, and as the road runs around the edge of the lake, we’re passing lots of little bars and roadside restaurants, hostels, and so on. I stop at one and get some ice cream, coca cola, etc. Thunder in the distance. But I’m feeling pretty good about getting up and over before it’s too late.

At the bottom of the climb, I’m ready. I’ve been saving the legs, and on some of the very steep lower slopes, I’m pushing irresponsible power. I can smell the barn!

But then it becomes too hard. I’ve gotta hike the bike… downhill. It’s pretty dicey, probably the hardest hike-a-bike of the race. And it gets worse. I take a wrong turn, the Garmin gets confused, I leave the bike at a fork to see which way is the real way. In frustration I seize the bike and push it through a bunch of plants on the path. In doing so I push a woody, 1 cm-long needle of a thorn through my tire. My second puncture! Argh.

Now there’s no way I will get to the top before dark. I push the bike the rest of the hike without changing the tube. Once I’m onto something that looks like a road again, I change the tube, overinflate the tire—I haven’t been able to find the hole in, actually, either tube, it won’t be easier in the dark, and my only option would be to do it and then patch it—all in all, I don’t want to pinch—feel sorry for myself, and keep rolling.

The downhill feels long, and I’m brutalizing myself on the hard tires. (I also pump up the front, since I don’t want to flat there, either. To be clear, this was a mistake.) I’ve also somehow managed to not fully charge my backup light, and it’s threatening to die on me.

Once I get to the tarmac, I’m riding fast through the city, where I find my last dog of the race.

I close the loop at almost midnight. It’s nice to see the people I met along the way, talk with the volunteers and organizers, drink a beer, and relax.