Horse Latitudes

Stewart and I stop for a couple of shots of medovina in the middle of nowhere.

What I'd always feared finally happened.

I came racing down along a woodline from an overgrown field onto a dirt path or road, and surprised a group of five or six horses and riders, who were about 30 meters away.

The horse in front of the pack, surprised by my sudden appearance, spooked, and reared up. The rider -- a young woman -- tried valiantly to keep the horse under control, but couldn't, and fell, hard, onto the frozen mud track and between some trees.

I froze as it was happening, not wanting to spook the horse any further, and felt helpless as the woman fell, hard, seemingly in slow motion. The horse was riderless, and none of the others dismounted to help the woman, who remained motionless on the ground.


You can just make out the five horses and riders in the center left of this picture. I didn't want to make matters worse by taking out my camera and clicking away while they were right in front of me.

I feared moving forward to help her, or to grab the horse, not wanted to make matters worse by spooking the other horses, or frightening the riderless horse enough to make him bolt.

In the end, the woman stood up -- she said she was unhurt, though I'm sure she was bruised the next day -- and grabbed the reins, and Stewart, who had advanced, held the horse while the woman remounted.

The group passed us, and continued down the trail. They didn't really say much to us as they passed. I thought it strange that none of the men had gotten off their horses to help the woman who fell. Maybe there's some unwritten law or something.

I felt bad for having scared the horses, but the trail we were on -- indeed, all of the trails in this area -- are shared by both bikers and horse riders, and encounters like this seem inevitable.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. Stewart and I hung back for a few minutes to let them get ahead, and continued ourselves on our ride.

As usual, Stewart and I had met at the Smallest Pub In The World in Úholičky and set off on a cold, gray day. I was feeling a little better about riding than I did on my last, depressive outing. We headed out of Uholicky and up the hill toward Tursko, with the intention of visiting the archaeological dig we'd discovered a few weeks back in Holubice, to check on any progress.

It was gone.

Covered over. Construction site. Laying some sort of pipe or sewage system. Too bad, really. Our guess is that when such things are uncovered during construction, they must be mapped and recorded, but then can legally be covered back over.


There used to be an archaeological dig on this construction site.

In any event, all the cool stuff we'd seen a month or so was gone.

We rode and talked, talked more than rode in some parts, explored unexplored paths and dirt roads, stopped in the middle of a huge field and had a few shots of medovina, basically a modern version of medieval mead. I'd brought a flask of the stuff, which we'd first tasted on an outing to the Bee Institute a few months back.


The middle of nowhere, somewhere near the village of Holubice.

It's smooth and sweet and delicious, but I think next time I'll bring the usual bourbon or whiskey/whisky. Need more of a bite out there on the trail in the cold and raw.

As usual, we behaved like kids as often as possible, in this case aiming squarely for all of the frozen puddles on the trails. The sound of our tires slicing through the ice sounded like some large, thick piece of cloth being ripped from end to end. As often as not, there was a pool of cold water beneath, and our feet got a bit wet in the process, especially Stewart's. He had a fine old time bunny-hopping his bike from the trail into the puddles, sending shards of ice and ribbons of muddy water flying.

By this time, our feet and fingers were cold. Or at least mine were.

We ended up, of course, in the restaurant at the Family Hotel Okoř, one of our favorite biking stops. Decorated for the holidays, it was the definition of cozy. (By the way, they serve the best steaks in Prague, in my opinion. Daisy and I go there for dinner a few times a month.)

As darkness swiftly fell, Stewart and I holed up inside, warming ourselves with good conversation and, not inconsequentially, three glasses of Ballantine's whisky and a half-liter of beer each. We also had a nice chat with our favorite waiter at the hotel, Tomas. He deserves a separate blog entry all to himself, which I must do sometime. Great guy. I keep forgetting to take his picture while I'm there.

Nice and toasted -- er, I mean, toasty -- Stewart and I headed back out on our bikes.

By this time, it was bitterly cold and pitch dark, and I had neglected to bring a headlight. Stewart had a tiny clip-on headlight, and I had my flashing back light, so he rode ahead and I rode behind.


It's fun to crunch through all the iced-over puddles.

Funny where you find yourself sometimes. Here we were, riding on an empty country road in the middle of nowhere in total blackness and in the freezing cold. We could only laugh.

We parted ways in Velké Přílepy, Stewart heading home to Roztoky, me to Černý Vůl. Truth be told, I had trouble even seeing the road from that point on, it was so dark.

For the first time, I was actually thankful for the occasional car, so that its headlights could remind me where the edge of the road stopped and who-knows-what began.

I managed to stay on the pavement and made it home in one piece. So did Stewart, eventually. He had quite a bit further to ride than I did.

A memorable ride, which helped to put the bad memories of my previous outings out of mind.

But I gotta get my headlight hooked up. Jeesh.

RIDE STATS
Length of ride: 30 kilometers
Average speed: 12.3 kph (!)
Maximum speed: 35.6 kph
Pivo Index: 1 beer, 3 glasses of whisky
Time on the bike: 2.25.24
Distance ridden so far in 2008: 1,393.5 kilometers (866 miles)


The Restaurant Okor (above and below) is always a welcome sight, but never more so than on this cold and raw night.




While I was waiting for Stewart in Uholicky, I stopped to admire this building, whose architect has, like me, a soft spot for trees.

Streets Are Uneven When You're Down

On the road between the village of Statenice and Okor.

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
-- The Doors' "People Are Strange"

I went for a ride a few days ago, and saw the worst in everything.

I felt helpless to resist.

The sky was the color of dirty bathwater, lacking all definition. Just a gray expanse as far as the eye could see, like some sort of concrete blanket. It was hard to figure out where the sky ended and the land began.

The air was damp and cold.

The roads were wet, and the sides of the road, where I often was forced by speeding cars, was pockmarked with mud and puddles and trash. Lots of trash.

The air was filled with the acrid burn of coal smoke, or in some cases a strange sewage smell. I also passed steaming mountains of horse and sheep dung.

I pedaled past a poor dead orange cat on the hill out of Statenice, laying quietly in the wet weeds, a victim -- no doubt -- of someone going too damn fast on these narrow country roads.

In short, it was a crappy day to take a bike ride.

I hadn't even felt like going out but felt some sort of misplaced obligation. I was feeling a bit down in the dumps and was hoping the exercise would make me feel better.

A few endorphins were stirred, I suppose. But mostly I just felt like cursing this miserable climate.

I'm not sure I am up to going out again this winter. Unless, perhaps, a sunny day happens by, or I can find a few good friends with which to share the pain.

Winters in Prague are a tragedy.

RIDE STATS
Length of ride: 15 kilometers
Average speed: 16.0 kph
Maximum speed: 40.5 kph
Pivo Index: 0
Time on the bike: 00.52.54
Distance ridden so far in 2008: 1,363.5 kilometers


The bleak landscape above Statenice, where the sky was falling.


In front of the 14th-century castle ruins in the usually charming village of Okor.


Castle Okor, looking grim and imposing in the muted midday light.

Guns & Rain & Naughty Santa

Rob (right) and I in Tuchoměřice after the ride. Note Rob's mud-splattered face.

The ride began inauspiciously.

I was on my bike, dressed for the cold, and riding to meet Rob in Tuchoměřice. My cell phone rang.

"Hey, man. You sure you want to go through with this? It's blowing like crazy up here. I can barely stay on the road."

Rob was in the village of Přední Kopanina, heading down to Tuchoměřice.

"The sun's shining down here, and the wind's not bad," I said, on the road between Statenice and Tuchoměřice. "Let's go ahead and see what happens."

All of my bike rides lately have started on a sour note. In one, we were hungover and out of shape. In a second, I couldn't get my mojo working and almost didn't go out.

And now this. But for a change it wasn't me suggesting that we turn around and go home.

In the end, I met Rob at the bus stop in Tuchoměřice.

As I was riding to meet him, I heard gunshots and the barking of dogs and came across a group of hunters, all carrying shotguns, surrounding a copse just a few hundred meters from the road. I counted at least 15 men. I don't know how many dogs.

The dogs were flushing pheasants and grouse out of the trees and long grass and, as the birds took flight, they were blasted out of the air by these 15 hunters, firing simultaneously.


You can count five or six hunters in this photo, and there were many more. I would have needed a panoramic lens to capture them all. Ridiculous.

Actually, you can't call them hunters. Tell me, where is the sport? It's like calling slaughterhouse workers sportsmen. The birds didn't stand a chance in hell. There's more sport in fox hunting, and that's saying something.

I watched a half dozen birds squawk first, then fly, and finally fall from the sky into the brush.

I was disgusted.

By this time, the sun that was shining just a few minutes before had disappeared, swallowed by an advancing storm front, the same front that was bringing strong winds and rain with it.

Rob and I decided to try the Airport Loop, a fairly flat route but which left us exposed to the elements. No forests or houses to block the wind.

It was great to ride with Rob again. It had been awhile since our last adventure. We've just got different schedules and don't live as close to one another as we once did.

He's been an inspiration (some might say maniac) on the bike, racking up 5,750 kilometers this year, and the year ain't over yet. He gets up most mornings at 4 something and rides in the pitch dark starting at 5 or 5:30 a.m. through Divoká Šárka park before work. I tip my helmet to him.

Riding through Kněževes and Dobroviz, Rob quickly zoomed ahead of me. He's just in way better shape, and he's got a new sprocket set that is a more forgiving ratio for riding on the roads.

He was nice enough to pull off and wait for me to catch up in Dobroviz, where we happened to see a very funny poster for a holiday party that, sadly, had happened the night before. It was a Christmas party for adults, with a picture of Santa sliding down something other than a chimney.

By this time, we were riding into the wind and the rain. It was pretty miserable.

I wanted to get in 25 kilometers of riding in if I could, just to make it all worthwhile, so we rode exactly 12.5 kilometers and then turned around, out near the end of one of the airport runways.

Riding back was like a different world. The wind was at our back, and the rain wasn't hitting our face. The pedaling was effortless. Rob said we were going a good 6 or 7 kilometers per hour faster than we just had pedaled on the exact same road just minutes before.

We road back to Tuchoměřice and parted ways.

Rob and I have got to get out again in better conditions, and with me in better condition.

RIDE STATS
Length of ride: 25 kilometers
Average speed: 16.4 kph
Maximum speed: 44.2 kph
Pivo Index: 0
Time on the bike: 1.29.32
Distance ridden so far in 2008: 1,348.5 kilometers


The sun did shine, at least for the first five minutes of my ride, while a few drifts of snow still clung to the fields (below)

A Shadow Of My Former Self

Yes, that's a shadow you see. That means there's sun. In Prague.

My heart wasn't in it. The rest of me wasn't too keen on it, either.

The sun was shining, I had a few free hours before I'd have to head into work, and I hadn't had any exercise since 1978. So I suited up for a ride, more out of guilt or a feeling of obligation than any real sense of pleasure or anticipation.

For one, I would be riding alone, which I have come to enjoy less and less. There just wouldn't be enough time to invite anyone else to ride with me.

Two, it was cold. Sunny, but cold. I've ridden in worse, but somewhere over the past nine months, I have lost any enthusiasm I once had for riding in winter weather.

Three, I've just been in a bit of an exercise funk the past month or so. No riding, really. No squash. I seem to have lost my motivation. Actually, I have lots of motivation, hanging around my waist. I guess I've lost my willpower. I've become a bit of a slacker, but I know I shouldn't be, which is why the guilt was hanging over me.


We're not in Kansas anymore. We're actually somewhere between Statenice and Lichoceves.

If I couldn't muster the energy to go for a ride on a bright, sunny day, all hope would be lost.

So I suited up. And then I decided not to ride after all. Then I shook it off and prepared to ride. And then I convinced myself it wasn't worth it, that I'd only be out for an hour or so.

So sad.

In the end, I went for a ride, hoping against hope that the exercise would encourage some endorphins to get off their sorry asses and start swimming around my bloodstream.

I headed from my house in Černý Vůl, west of Prague, to the neighboring village of Statenice, then up the steep hill out of town toward Lichoceves, and then a right turn toward Velké Přílepy.

From there, I headed toward the hamlet of Úholičky, and took another steep climb out of town, onto the road that leads into Roztoky, but turning off toward Únětice, down (whoo-hoo!) the steep hill into the village, and then a familiar forest path back to Černý Vůl.

A circle of pain, as it were.

But not without its rewards.


A few apples cling tenaciously to the fantasy that it's still fall.

I felt the sun on my face for the first time in what seemed like weeks. I smelled wood smoke and the tang of freshly ploughed soil. I saw a couple of hawks with wingspans as long as ironing boards, a few kestrels hunting for mice, and a pack (yes, that's the official term) of grouse huddling in a field. I even saw a few stray patches of snow left over from November.

And I saw my own shadow, a rare sight in Prague this time of the year.

In the end, I was on my bike for less than an hour, but I did feel all the better for it.

As Dorothy Parker once said, "I hate writing; I love having written."

RIDE STATS
Length of ride: 14.5 kilometers
Average speed: 16.0 kph
Maximum speed: 38.3 kph
Time on the bike: 52.40
Distance ridden so far in 2008: 1,323.5 kilometers (822 miles)


As I mentioned in a post on my other blog, "Gusto," I've been impressed by the imaginative architecture of some new apartment and housing estates around Prague. The pictures above and below are from another one I've been admiring. It's in Statenice.