6/18: bonus ride

Today was our third day of riding, our second full day and the start was at the highest point on the island, Vidova Gora, about 2400'.

I remember a ride in Greenville SC last spring when I ran into another rider along the Rabbit Swamp trail. He said: "hold on and I'll ride with you". I figured a ride with someone else is almost always better than riding alone, especially if I was riding with a local (turned out he was not). We rode for a while and as we headed back to Greenville he said: "have you ever ridden Paris Mountain?" I said I had not but I would ride with him to the base and he could ride it while I rode home.

There was a sign at the bottom on the mountain and I asked him if he would take my picture. He said "let' earn it". So what began as a 15-mile easy spin turned into a 30-mile ride with 1500' of climbing. It was the second day in a row for him so I was happy to put a little hurt on him for suggesting this.

We earned this.

Having drunk the kool-aid, I figured if I was going to the highest point on the island, I should earn it, especially if we were using it as a start and riding down. Since we were tacking this on to the beginning of the ride, we left with Mario who was driving the van and the bikes to the top of the mountain and he dropped us off near the bottom of the climb. I told Mike, Walter and Stu and Mike and Walter joined. Dan Rosenberg, a CAT 3 racer joined us too. We left about an hour before the rest of the group and started riding about 8:30.

The climb from Nereczisca to the top is a category 2 climb. It is listed in strava as a segment of 5.7 miles and 1266' of climbing. I finished the climb in 44:07. That put me in 158th place on the leaderboard. Walter did it in 47:40. Dan did it in 40:08. The KOM for this segment is 23:51 and the QOM is 30:04.

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When we got to the top, what had started as a cool morning ride turned out to be cold. The wind was blowing and we were sweaty. Fortunately, Mario was there with the van and we waited in the van for the others while he gave us the briefing for the day.

Here we are at the top. Don't let the sunshine fool you - we were coooold. And you can see some of the others in our group were wearing jackets.

Because we left early, we did not get the recommendation to bring a jacket or vest for the descent. We did the old-school method of stuffing paper in our jerseys. Pro riders often use newspaper given to them by fans if the team car is not nearby. We used paper towels. They worked really well.

The descent was fast and squirrely. There was a strong cross wind and it felt like I had a flat because the back end wobbled.

Here's what the morning ride was supposed to look like: https://ridewithgps.com/events/28928-vbt-croatia-the-dalmatian-islands#routes/18431369/preview

When we got to the bottom, we ditched the paper towels because it was easily 15 degrees (F) warmer, the wind was not blowing and the sun was shining. We were back to summertime riding.

There was more climbing and Leeann again took some great pictures as we got to the top of a rise. I'm sure Mike got there first in our group.

No blog would be complete without the yellow jersey pretending to win the stage. Notice the absence of a sponsor logo.

I don't remember where she took this picture but it's a really good one. Notice Walter wore his Alpe d'Huez jersey in honor of the climb.

Here's what the afternoon ride was supposed to look like: https://ridewithgps.com/events/28928-vbt-croatia-the-dalmatian-islands#routes/19729901/preview

Here's what my final stats looked like: https://www.strava.com/activities/1042781061

In summary: 42.9 miles, 4016' of climbing.

6/23: final thoughts

Today is the long trip back to the states. A large number of VBTers including Walter and Mike were up around 5:00am to catch a 6:00am transfer to the Split airport. The rest of us dribbled out during the day. Stu and I caught a 12:45 transfer along with Tom and Barbara. We took the same flights back to Boston via Frankfurt. We arrived in the evening of the same day so it was about 18 hours of travel. It was a long day.

I have always felt that traveling west is easier than traveling east. Not everyone feels this way. I always feel pressure to sleep on the eastbound overnight flights and probably sleep less well as a result. Traveling west I don't worry and I just doze. It probably also helps that I'm traveling home instead of beginning a new travel adventure.

All four of my biking adventures (three trips with VBT) have been enjoyable on a number of levels. Because my philosophy on personal finance now includes international travel for bike trips with my biking buddies, it would be pretty hard not to have a good time.

The riding on this trip was challenging, not as difficult as riding in the Alps, but nonetheless it pushed me to my limits. There were times riding in the Alps when I really did not want to be riding any more. On this trip there were moments when I thought it was pretty hard but never a time when I thought that getting on a bike was a bad decision.

On our previous VBT trips, Mike and Walter or Vince or Marty and I were the strongest riders in the group. For our TdF trip, we were the slowest. On this trip it was nice to get to know and ride with Dan who was far and away the strongest rider in our group and would have fit right in with the riding group in the Alps.

The ebikes changed everything. There were multiple occasions when we would be struggling up a hill and one of the people on ebikes would breeze by. If it was Caryn, Dan would be standing to try to keep up. Tom did the last hill of the tour on his ebike and chatted with Walter as they rode up the hill together.

I had fun on my little spin on an ebike and it is, as Caryn put it, a game changer. I can see riding an additional 10 years beyond when I might otherwise quit riding if an ebike was available. The ebikes on this trip were pretty clunky and if the power ran out, they would be prohibitively heavy to pedal. The technology exists to make ebikes indistinguishable from standard road bikes. For ego if nothing else, I hope that the technology trickles down so that when I am ready to do a tour with an ebike, I can do it on a bike that is not a tank.

The routes were well chosen. They demonstrated an understanding of what riders want and what I try to consider when planning routes myself. The rides covered a variety of terrain (flat, hilly, really hilly) and the spectacular views never stopped. There were a few roads on our routes that had poor surfaces but that's life.

My trip home included an additional drive from Boston to Syracuse but I had a chance to visit with my sister and her family and Honora in Springfield. She had just finished her first full day as a bike cop and when I insisted on pictures, she sent me this.

Finally, I am re-posting this picture, probably my favorite, below because it captures the trip perfectly.

P.S. did you happen to notice that the 2017 VBT Catalog has on the front cover, a picture of.... HVAR!

6/22: the long way home

VBTers: please comment.

Today was a transfer day from Hvar to Split where most of us would catch flights home. Since we had a "farewell dinner" the night before, it felt anticlimactic even though Matej and Mario accompanied us to Split. This gave us one more opportunity to say goodbye.

Because of the timing of the ferry, our luggage moved before we did. We had about two hours to sit on the veranda overlooking the harbor before we walked to the bus station where we took two vans driven my Mario's sister and her husband to the ferry in Stari Grad. The ferry took about two hours to get us to Split where we went to lunch.

Split is the second largest city in Croatia and it had the bustle of a city, especially once we left the old town later to walk to our hotel. Even in the touristy area near the port, it was not quite like the Hvar which was super cute or even Dubrovnik which was so highly polished.

This is what the view was like out of our hotel window.

A nice example of 1950s communist block architectural style.

After lunch we met Petar, a registered tour guide and a friend of Matej who gave us a tour of the old town section of Split. Here is Petar.

This included a visit to the interior of the castle that we passed through a few days ago.

It was hot and we were tired. Given choices, we went to the dungeon where it was cooler but there was virtually no place to sit while Petar went on about the construction. It was actually pretty educational except we were all so tired.

Here are some examples of the precision of the stone cutting.

This room contains some of the equipment used for making olive oil.

Here is Tom playing the part of an engineer looking at some of the pieces that the Romans constructed for transporting sewage under the city.

On our way out the castle, we stumbled across a Dalmatian a cappella group. Rick Steves said to expect this although these guys obviously do this regularly. They probably own this spot and they
were really tight. Stu and I both bought copies of their CD. If I can identify the track that they were singing on the CD, I might use that for the soundtrack of the video I hope to create from footage of our rides.

We made the long slog to our hotel. I think this is one of the first times I felt that VBT did not do a particularly good job with logistics. It would have been nice if the hotel either was closer to the port or if they could arrange a transport for us. It wasn't a long walk but at the end of a long and hot day and a long and hot week, we were all pretty tired.

6/21 - part 1: the last climb

Today was out last day of riding. As usual, it was hot and exacerbated by the fact that we had to be driven to Stari Grad for the start. By the time we got started, it was around 10:00.

We stopped at a war memorial. It was really hot. That's Mario in the middle with the red shirt. There were lots of casualties from the same families.

The wall is straight - the pan makes it look curved.

We did a pretty flat and easy ride to Jelsa where we stopped for a picnic lunch that Matej had prepared. In Jelsa, we looked for an art gallery that is owned by this guy that Mario grew up with. The feature of this gallery is a creation called Lavendar Man (this is not a misspelling). Lavendar Man is a cartoon character who has super powers but is forever confined to the island of Hvar where he parties and hooks up with Czech girls. He appears to be the creation of someone who smokes a little too much weed. This guy apparently does not have many bills to pay because he does not keep regular hours. And as Mario warned us, the shop was not open even though it was the middle of the day in the middle of a work week. This was too bad because Mario said that the owner will automatically give a 30% discount on anything in the shop if you walk in naked.

Here is the town's nod to Lavendar Man.

After lunch, we started the return that had three options. About a half dozen of us chose to climb the ridge that bisects the island back to Hvar. This was the same road we traveled the day before but in reverse. The climb out of Stari Grad is about 4.5 miles long with an average gradient of 5% that translates into about 1100' of climbing. It doesn't sound like a lot but the length of the climb in the heat makes it pretty tough. Strava calls it a category 2 climb.

Stu had been thinking that he would skip the climb because his knee was bothering him so he volunteered to pull us to the base of the climb. He was riding strong and I couldn't keep up with him and Mike on the small uphills but I was able to catch up on the descents.

When we reached the bottom of the climb, Stu was feeling good enough to tackle the hill. Mike left the Stari Grad bus station with Peggy. I left with Stu and Mike S. Dan left a few seconds later and easily caught up with us.

Mike S and I stopped about half-way up the hill to get some sugar in our systems.

I stopped near the top and Stu and I rode in together. I completely missed this interesting structure the day before going down.

My time on this segment was 40:12. That put me in 449th place on the leaderboard.

Tom paced Walter on his ebike.

Walter came in at 42:44. I didn't have my camera ready so I asked him to go back down and do it again.

Dan crushed it at 31:34. This bumped me to 450th place.

Mario did it in 30-something minutes. In sneakers.

The KOM is some guy who did it in 18.04.

The QOM time is 22:24.

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Final stats for the day: 31.6 miles, 3176' of climbing.

6/20: same old same old

Today was day 5 of riding and my legs are tired. Too bad Vince isn't here or I could justifiably say: "I got nothing". (If you don't know Vince, he always says that and he is one of the strongest riders in our group.)

We climbed out of Stari Grad and through some lavender fields. They do all kinds of things with lavender on the island including sachets, tea, scented oil and apparel.

Here is the "red team" in front of the lavender field.

The profile of today's ride looks like a bell curve. We climb out of Hvar, cross the ridge of the island and descend to the other side in Stari Grad. The strava segments considers the climb to Hvar Peak to last 4.5 miles with an elevation gain of over 1250' resulting in a category 2 climb.

My time was 47:40 which put me in 374th place on the leaderboard out of 642 attempts. (In case it's not clear, I am not trying to make this out to be some big accomplishment. It's a little like saying it's a PR - personal record. Of course it's a personal record, it's my first - and best - time ever.)

Walter completed it in 51:35 and Dan in 47:11. Mike and Stu are not on Strava. I found Mario on Strava but he has no data.

For context, the KOM for this segment is 21:25 and the QOM is 27:44.

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I am guessing Strava penalizes us for stopping. I don't think we are that slow.

We descended from Hvar Peak into Stari Grad where we stopped for lunch.

Leeann, who takes pictures for a living, made us look like real cyclists. I really like this one.

The two below are not action photos - they're just great pictures. Proof that a camera in the right hands produces results that don't happen in the hands of a hack.

Here we are trying to figure out how to slow Dan down. That's Mike taking air out of his back tire.

The afternoon included a ride through a camping area and a short out-and-back. It was not a huge climb but at the end and after the morning's climb, we felt like we had accomplished something.

Here is the Walter victory pose.

On the way back, we seemed to have lost Walter and Stu and no matter where we go and no matter who we invite to ride with us, at some point it is Mike and me. And by that I mean me chasing Mike around the countryside.

Here's the route: https://ridewithgps.com/events/28928-vbt-croatia-the-dalmatian-islands#routes/18436086/preview

Here are my results for the day: https://www.strava.com/activities/1045802301

In summary, 33.4 miles, 3130' of climbing.

6/19: clothing optional

Today was another transfer day but VBT worked a short ride into the schedule.

Here is the route: https://ridewithgps.com/events/28928-vbt-croatia-the-dalmatian-islands#routes/18376712/preview

As you can see, it is a long downhill.

Dan did the bonus ride up to the start.

Here are his data: https://www.strava.com/activities/1043937120

Nice job, Dan.

The "highlight" of the route was a "clothing optional" beach. There are many such beaches scattered around Croatia but as our tour guides pointed out, any beach can be a clothing optional beach if you are brave enough. There was one beach a day or two later where a middle-aged woman very matter-of-factly took off her top and lay on her back to work on her tan. As one of the women in our group pointed out, she had obviously been working on her tan before.

Our tour guides said that most of the people who visit clothing optional beaches were from Germany or the nordic countries. We stopped at one clothing optional beach and decided when in Croatia, do as the Germans do. Here we are with all our garish biker tan lines.

The evening activity was billed as a cooking lesson, but actually it was more like a cooking demonstration. We walked up to the home of Ante, a guy who spent 27 years in Germany as a professional cook before he decided to move back to Croatia. He owned an apartment on the hill in town with a small open area that he used for an urban garden. He grew a wide variety of vegetables and herbs including the ingredients for grappa. So of course we began the visit with a toast.

Here he is with Mario translating although his English was actually pretty good.

Here he is in his kitchen. Don't let the open fire fool you. He had professional-level equipment.

He started with a dish Mario described as "salsha". It was a cross between a warm gazpacho and egg-drop soup. It was delicious but I didn't get a picture of it before I inhaled it all. These are the ingredients. I don't think I could replicate this dish even though the ingredients are all readily available.

The main course was grilled tuna steaks with potatoes and zucchini. The dish on the right is holding sea salt that he collects and sells. This was an interesting story and it represents a lot of hard hand labor in the heat of the summer. I bought a jar of it even though I need to watch my sodium intake.

This is Mario explaining how it gets harvested.

Even though there were four people working (cooking, plating and serving), they put me to work drizzling olive oil on everything. I got the message that it was impossible to put too much olive oil on these plates. This is what it looked like when I got done with it.

And dessert. I did not have a chance to screw this up.

Ante has a philosophy on cooking, eating and life. He summarized it with three proverbs.

1. Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)
2. Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food (Hippocrates)
3. If you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk; if you want to be happy for a year, get married; if you want to be happy for life, have a garden and spend an hour per day in it (he claimed this is a chinese proverb but I think this is edited to fit his purposes) 

Apparently Hvar is a pretty happening place. There were lots of bars, some with live music and this one was right under out hotel. A lot of the songs were covers of things we were pretty familiar with. The music was OK, the atmosphere was fun and we were the oldest people out there. The number of young people who smoked was surprising.

Final stats: 10.4 miles, 440' of climbing.

6/21- part 2: the line-up

The day ended with a farewell dinner.

Here is our group.

Mike Sperling and Peggy Kirkeeng from Mequon (Milwaukee), WI.

Marsia Quill from Kittery Point, ME and Diane Bryson (minus Don) from Durham, NC.

Leeann Bartran from Denver and Anmarie Russo from Arlington, MA.

Kathie Hammond from Huron, OH and Corinne Blake from Ft. Myers, FL.

Don Bryson (minus Diane) from Durham, NC.

Dan and Caryn Goldberg from Milwaukee, WI.

Our intrepid tour guide Matej Tomasevic Dancevic.

Walter Putter and Mike Reagan from Syracuse, NY.

Second intrepid tour guide Mario Gamulin.

Tom Heyman and Barbara Kramer from Sharon, MA.

Allan Slobodin from Evanston, IL.

Stu Koman from Winchester, MA and Jeff's roommate from Trinity and 13-year riding partner in the Pan-Mass Challenge.

Lee and Hadassah Kneppel from Foxborough, MA.

Matej and Mario with final instructions.