Day09: Novy Bor to Jicin, Czech: Going for flat(ter) riding on another damp gray day

I had a good, and very needed, rest/work on web pages day yesterday. The weather forecast was terrible - 90% chance of rain/thunderstorms - but the actual weather was just dreary until near the end of the day when the sun actually came out. I gather there were severe storms and flooding problems nearby, but not in Novy Bor. I worked on routing and web pages in the morning, then took a walk and had lunch. I napped for two hours after lunch and worked on web pages and browsed till about 5 PM. I was using a local open wifi and it was the best connection I've had on this trip. Faster than my home connection.

My pension last night

I fixed myself some cold food and then went down for a beer at 6 PM. Later I fixed instant oatmeal with Nutella to complete my supper. Then I went out for another walk and, when I got back, finished my cleaning, drying, and packing. I also reorganized my front panniers to give a more even weight distribution. The most exciting event of the day was working to finish getting my camera dried out after it got wet in my tent two nights ago.

Heading east on 268

Pretty scenery, even in dreary weather

Bike path on 268 that went off into the woods

Detour route marked by orange arrow sign and LOTS of traffic

Panorama looking north from one of the high points on the detour

Nice riding on the detour

9

A neat church in a small town on the detour

This morning, after a good breakfast, and some internet, I left Novy Bohr around 9:30, heading for Jicin which is about 80 km away. As I write this, it is afternoon and Jecin is still over 50 km away. Unlike day08, that isn't because of steep climbing, but rather because of a detour that turned 6 easy km into 20 hard ones. The detour, and a bike path that added a few km that I rode earlier, also made my day a lot more interesting and, since I'm doing a short day - now probably close to 100 km - anyway, they improved my day. Without the detour, my routing would have been extremely simple: go south 8 km from Novy Bor and get on 268 to ride to Jicin.

Mimon

Eastern European style pipeline along 268

Here is a misleading grab shot of a burst of heavy traffic on 268 The next car came along five minutes later...

Here is what 268 usually looked like

It really helps to be on a bicycle on this kind of pavement! Especially when you are on it going 40 or 50 kph downhill

Lunch in Mimon, where the detour ended, was a good Donner plate and .5 l of good beer for about $6. Mimon - note, all place names have accent marks I can't reproduce here. Even if I could, you couldn't pronounce them unless you knew Czech. Great country, great people, hard language, and very few English or German speakers. Communication is still quite possible if you are friendly and just stick to basics.

Telephoto of an old castle

About 3 km before this, I saw a 4 km, slippery when snowing, sign
I knew it meant a climb out of this long valley.
This is the start of that climb, all of which is on lousy pavement

My bungie cords serve multiple purposes including locking my Nashbar backpack/pannier hooks to my rear rack
Without the red tiedown this pannier bounces off too easily With the tiedown and the bungies, it never bounces off

My Townie pannier reinforcements

Taking a break at the top of the longest, and bumpiest, hill

In the rain

Red poppies, green grain, and YELLOW rape seed fields

After lunch, riding was easy, but pretty boring for the next few hours. The road was mostly straight and the hills were long, but not too steep or steep, but not long. The most interesting thing was the thousands of good places to stealth camp ;-}. I stopped for a snack after the biggest climb of the day. It was a km or so in my lowest gear. There was a stone wall at the edge of the road for the last few hundred meters of climbing, so I stopped just before the end of the wall. and leaned my bike against it while using its top for my seat and a table for putting together my sandwich. I stopped again to eat an apple after 268 joined E16, an expressway, about 20 km from Jicin.

I even reduced the saturation on this image a bit That is a very yellow field

E 16
It has a lot of truck traffic and a good shoulder Riding is easy, but not quiet

I was riding in on and off light rain for the last 30 km of my ride today. The rain actually made the riding more comfortable. Earlier in the day, I had a hard time keeping comfortable beacuse the long climbs were mostly done with a tailwind which led to getting too hot even though it was a cool, cloudy day. The the downhills would be too cold because of windchill. The only rain gear I used was my very light, but pretty waterproof, wind vest. I had a wicking long sleeved undershirt on under my long sleeved 'adventure' shirt and my PrAna rock climbing knickers over bike shorts and knee high Smartwool socks under my knee warmers and Keen Austin shoes. I was really comfy in the light rain, even after I got to Jicin and was searching for a place to stay.

A stork in a field near Jicin