June 24, 2010 - Wolbrom to Czajowice

Estimated Mileage: 25 miles only!
Trip Route Link
Photo Album Link

My trip went from care-free jaunt to a Shackleton-esque doomed journey that morning.  I had a number of things go wrong all of sudden.  Here's a list of some of the issues that popped up that morning:

• Serious nausea (could it be caused by the cottage cheese and kielbasa for breakfast?  Nah...)
• Chased by dogs three times
• Rear derailleur shifter breaking and higher gears starting to skip yet again
• Rain, rain, rain and worthless shoe covers
• Charlie horse in my left thigh
• Left my Leatherman tool on a park bench
• I forgot to give back the hotel key

I went through the various stages of anger, annoyance, self-loathing and anger again.  Then you know what I did with all these chumps?  I STEAMROLLED THEM!!!!

The most disconcerting of the problems was being chased by dogs.  This freaked me out considering I was completely vulnerable and could sustain a fairly serious injury if they either bit me or knocked me off my bike.  Luckily, I came up a defense solution: waving my tire pump at them.  I moved the pump to an easily accessible position in the Large Handlebar Bag, and felt much more secure knowing a weapon was at my disposal:

Every house that I passed for the first half of the day had a passel of barking dogs, usually fenced, but sometimes not.  Not very fun...

Here's me, struggling to remain positive despite the numerous woes that beset me that morning.

The day's route brought me into a park named Ojcowski.  It's a river gorge, with steep cliffs and rocks on either side and various ancient castles and churches lining the sides

It was a beautiful ride, but very, very wet.  The last bit of the day was spent in a 2 mile ascent out of the gorge and to the hotel.  After I was done climbing, I realized that I wasn't even tired or out of breath.  This made me reflect on how far I'd come on this trip, in terms of my physical ability to ride.  I just rode for 3 straight days, averaging 60 miles a day, through some not-so-easy terrain, and it barely phased me.  I'm proud of that...