I Take This GT Avalanche 2.0 To Be My Lawfully Wedded Ride

James Gogarty and his bride, Lucie Průšova, getting hitched across the river in Klecany.

My apologies for not posting recently.

You see, my mother -- who was visiting Prague from the United States -- fell and broke her hip last week. I've been rather busy with that, as you might imagine, and haven't been riding, writing, or posting.

I'll be writing a post about the extraordinary events of the last week in my other blog, Gusto, so look for that.

In the meantime, I'll take a few minutes to catch up on two small rides I took a few weeks ago.


Fields of gold.

The first was a ride from Černý Vůl to Roztoky to attend the wedding reception of James Gogarty and Lucie Průšova.

Daisy, Emma and I all rode our bikes to the party, dressed in our finest biking casual. I first met James shortly after I started this blog. Stewart and I were having a beer at our beloved Koliba after a ride when this guy approached, having recognized us from the blog.

I thought to myself, "So this is how it's going to be! I'm going to be recognized everywhere I go, now that I'm writing this biking blog. Pretty cool."

It's never happened since.

Anyway, James was a cool dude, and we've gone cycling a few times over the past few years. (Our last ride is documented here.)

The reception -- at Hospůdka Zvířátka -- was fun, and the weather was perfect, and Lucie is a lovely woman, and James married up. (We missed the wedding itself, sadly, because we had to be at work.)


Outside of Roztoky, above Únětice.

The tipsy ride home, in the black night, was magical. About halfway through the forest, Daisy realized that we were surrounded by fireflies. Oddly, we'd never before seen lightning bugs in Prague, almost as if they'd become extinct.

We arrived home, smiling.

My second and last ride of late was another shorty, this time to Stewart's house in Roztoky. It was a ride with an interesting purpose: to drink some of Stewart's wine. He wanted me to taste it. He thought it might be bad.

He was right.

On my recommendation, he'd bought a box of Italian Sangiovese from my favorite wine shop, The Wine Depot, in Horoměřice. I'd drunk three or four boxes of that Sangiovese myself, all to the good. This particular box was, indeed, bad, however. It smelled like port or some sort of fortified wine, but didn't taste like port.

You could swallow it, but something about it wasn't quite right.


No matter how many times I pass poppy fields in the Czech Republic, I can't help but think of heroin, opium, and Afghanistan.

I told him to take it back and get his money back, but too much of it had been drunk by the time I got a taste. It was too late for refunds.

The ride home, in the gloaming, was gorgeous, the wheat fields glowing golden, the poppy fields shimmering green.

The wine helped a little, too.

RIDE STATS (COMBINED)
Length of ride: 24 kilometers
Pivo Index: 3
Vino Index: 3 or 4 glasses
Distance ridden so far in 2010: 365 kilometers (I'm not sure why I'm keeping this stat this summer. Pitiful, really.)