DAY TWO
Kaitlyn and I were up at 530 am, groggy and disheveled and stumbled downstairs to put the finishing touches on our pack lunch spread for the next day. We promptly lost control of the spread (Kaitlyn was all about overly ambitious spreads, and soon I found myself building a waterfall of meats and cheeses, using an elevated series of boxes and aluminum foil). The guests came out of breakfast way, way before we had told them we would be ready, and began making themselves sandwiches without respect to the damage that they were doing to my delicate cascades of ham.
Suddenly all twenty-five of them were in our pack lunch area with a mammoth series of requests. We were frantically trying to stay on top of all of the requests as they arose while continually restocking parts of the pack lunch extravaganza when Liam cheerfully arose from behind a lake shaped veggie platter and told me that hey – he had loaded all of the luggage into the van and trailer – was he cleared to leave to deliver everything to the next hotel?
I assumed a look of deft competence (I do this all the time – ahahahahaha) and told him that yes, Liam, you’re cleared to go. He nodded and cut behind a volcano of M&Ms to leave the building.
Kaitlyn went into another room with all the guests to deliver a route rap about the days’ bike ride. I was supposed to clean up our mammoth production, then run outside and drive the van (loaded with all the guests’ bikes) to the town of Estergom.
A NOTE ON THE CORRECT WAY TO SAY ‘ESTERGOM’ OUT LOUD
Angrily, with emphasis on the TER and GOM part.
Es-TER-GOM!
Actually, this is just how I say it.
…. Anyways, in Estergom, I was supposed to take all 25 bikes off the roof racks and display them so it looks nice, then Kaitlyn and the guests would arrive in a bus and see our bikes all nicely displayed in front of a spectacular river and it would be great. Meanwhile, Liam would be well on his way to drop all the guests’ luggage in the next hotel, then backtrack on the route in time to provide extra support for the afternoons’ difficult series of hills.
I started working on disassembling the massive jungle of lunch supplies and M&Ms when Kaitlyn poked her head in the door.
“Hey Robin – you’ve got to get out of here. The bus is coming in five minutes, and you have to have all those bikes displayed before we get there.”
“But….the snack table…”
“I’ll do it.”
I took a slice of ham and ran into the parking lot, jumped in my van and drove off.
After about ten minutes on the road, I got a call from Kaitlyn.
“Robin – where the heck is Liam?”
“Oh – I told him he could leave to deliver the luggage.”
(sounds of muted swearing)
“Kaitlyn?”
“He’s supposed to wait to take all the snack stuff with him.”
“…ah.”
“….”
“sigh. Hold on”
I drove on a little bit, wondering how we were going to transport several collapsible tables, tons of silverware, bowels, plates, leftover ham waterfall remnants, etc etc, to our next hotel – the Hotel Salamander in central Slovakia, 120 Km away. I couldn’t do it, or there would be no bikes when the guests arrived in Estergom. Liam couldn’t do it, or he’d never have time to drop the luggage off and make it back in time to offer support on the afternoon hills. Kaitlyn could hardly bring piles of ham on the bus with the guests.
Huh.
I was in the process of pondering all this when Liam passed me at probably three hundred miles an hour, going back to the hotel. I gaped at him. He shrugged. He was gone.
I called him.
“Oh yeah man, I guess I have to go back to get all the snack stuff.” He whistled a bit, and then a note of gentle reproach entered his voice. “Kaitlyn called.”
“Ah.” I said, wondering how this was all going to work out.
“Don’t worry, man,” he said. “I’ll make it work.” (Somewhere in the background was the sound of the sound barrier being broken.)
“Uh…Ok,” I said.
“Cheers!” He said.
“Uh…cheers,” I said.
He hung up.
I arrived at the staging area shortly thereafter, and I pulled the ladder along with me as I jumped from the van…
A SPECIAL NOTE ON HEROIC JUMPING FROM VANS
We spend a lot of time jumping from the vans – a good friend of mine had to sit out the second half of the last season because he heroically jumped onto a glass coke bottle and broke his ankle. Heroic jumping is not something to be trifled with – don’t worry, we’re trained professionals. Here at Thrilling Adventures, we begin with heroically jumping from the couch to get a soda, and work our way up. Be careful out there, kids.
…And grabbed twenty bikes off the racks faster than I ever had before, and ever have since. I was finished by about ten seconds when the bus rounded the corner. I waved cheerfully as it pulled up in front of me. Everyone piled out chattering away, got their bikes, took some pictures, and rode off.
Kaitlyn was riding bike support this day, and left with the bulk of the group. I tidied everything up and drove to support the route. We crossed the border from Hungary into Slovakia and hit the plains of southern Slovakia.
After several hours we were approaching the start of the afternoon hills, where Liam and I execute a very complicated series of logistical maneuvers with two vans to prevent all the guests from hating us. You see, they’ve already ridden like 90Km, and THEN they start a 15Km series of mammoth hill climbs.
The idea is that the luggage transfer guy (Liam) was to drop the luggage in our next town, a preserved, tiny mining town called BANSKA STIAVNICA, then drop the trailer in a separate parking lot and come back to meet me at a small café right before the hill climbs start. There, as the riders arrive, we would be brutally honest about the difficulty of the next section. Liam would load up a van full of those not willing to do the ride and take them straight to the hotel, and I would support those willing to ride the hills.
As I approached the café when Liam was supposed to meet me, I was pretty nervous. I mean, after all, the "snack return snafu" must have cost him 45 minutes to an hour. There was no way he was going to be there when the riders got there, which meant there would be nobody to take the shuttlers straight to the hotel. This meant I’d have to stall the group (“Hey look! They have GREAT beer here! Ha-ha – HAVE ANOTHER! I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING HAVE ANOTHER BEER! HAHA!”) until Liam showed up – maybe even an hour later.
I called him. He picked the phone up cheerfully.
“Hey Robin! Sup man!” He was yelling over the sound of a van being driven faster than vans should ever go.
“Hey Liam – where are you?”
“Super close to the café, man!” He yelled.
“Really? How is that possible?”
“Ha-ha well I’ve had to some less than safe driving!” He screamed.
“Uh. Really?”
“Yeah! You know the trailer? A couple of times I’d hit a bump in the road, and THAT FUCKER WOULD BE AIRBORNE! AHAHAHA!”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be there in a second!”
I hung up, and in he pulled, glee all over his face, about a minute before the guests arrived. I shook his hand in admiration.
We racked all the bikes of those not into tackling the big hills as the sun emerged from the clouds, setting the scene for this part of the ride to be about a billion fucking degrees. Liam took off with a van for the hotel. He was then to wait there, greeting guests and putting bikes in storage, while I drove around the remaining part of the bike route, giving people water and encouragement.
I drove past Jerry (remember Jerry? “I think Thrilling Adventures is going to be losing my business soon” Jerry?) on a huge hill, and he gave me the signal that he needed support. I pulled over to the side of the road and got out, opening the back doors of the van to set up a water station. Jerry pulled up and got some water, then rode on.
I got in the van as he rode off, and drove the van back onto the road. After a few minutes, I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed that the back door was wide open.
Shit. I pulled over and ran around, took a quick glance inside (didn’t seem to be missing anything) and closed the doors. As I was walking back to the drivers’ seat, I got a call from Kaitlyn. She riding with an older guest who was determined to finish the big hill, but let’s be honest here was probably hyperventilating from the way his breathing sounded. She mentioned that they needed a little water, (Guide speak for: We’re completely out of water. Get here ASAP) so I turned around and drove back down the hill.
When I finally reached Kaitlyn and the guest, I pulled over to the side of the road and got out. I walked over to where they were waiting – he breathing air in gigantic gulps, her wearing that regal look that ultra athletes wear when doing distances that “normal” people consider hard. I grabbed his water bottles for him, offering to fill them up. He nodded, panting, as Kaitlyn offered vague words of encouragement.
Man was it hot outside.
I walked around to the back of the van, opened it up, and saw a big gaping hole where the water jug should have been.
Holy shit.
My mind whirred, standing behind the van. Of course. The back of the van had been open, facing the side of the road, when I gave water to Jerry. As I drove uphill to get back on the road the water jug must have just dropped right out. I just didn’t notice that it was gone when I did my quick check.
I stole a glance around the side of the van: Kaitlyn chatting away with the guest, him sweating buckets and looking really…well, thirsty.
I looked back into the back of the van at my lack of water. I wondered if my water jug was just sitting, intact, on the side of the road. I calculated how long it would take me to get there and come back down here, and how much credibility that I’d lose with the guest at this point.
I looked back at the guest.
Shit, that guy could be a poster for thirst.
I looked back into the back of the van, and noticed my camelbak (a water-holding backpack) was still there from the day before. Crossing my fingers, I grabbed it – still felt like there was some water in there!
I opened it and poured it out into his water bottle. Just…full! Yes!
I walked back around the van and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he gasped, and took a big old sip.
"No problem!" I said, hoping that no one else wanted any water. I got in the van and drove back to where I thought the water had probably fallen out.
When I got there, I noticed something grim: The gentle downhill where I had parked eventually turned into a sheer, impossibly high cliff.
That jug was gone forever.
Hmmmm.
I called Liam, and as his van now had the only water jug we had, sent him out on the route. I headed back to the hotel.
And that was that for the Jug Incident. All of our guests, for better or worse, arrived at the Hotel Salamander, had a sit down session with a local historian, then ate dinner at a local restaurant that is so small that we have to fax our dinner orders in a day early.
I took a walk by myself after dinner to stop by a hotel that I’d stayed at during my FAM, then went to bed after brainstorming with Kaitlyn about where we could possibly find another water jug in central Slovakia.
A PAUSE IN THE STORY TO TELL A SMALL SIDE STORY ABOUT BANSKA STIAVNICA THAT I HAD FORGOTTEN UNTIL NOW
This is a cool town. It’s all spires and sharp roofs and narrow buildings squished into each other with impossible amounts of old wooden stairways from story to story within each building and buildings painted in shades of pinks to greens to blues and statues all over the place. It was a small silver mining town for hundreds of years, but as the mining industry dried up, most of the population moved away, and now the city sleeps forever and small amounts of tourists trickle through on their way to bigger draws but I loved it there.
During my FAM, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I spent almost a whole week slowly losing my mind due to day after day without talking to anyone. When I arrived in Banska Stiavnica, it was around ten at night, I was exhausted, and needed to find a place to stay.
I wandered around, poking my head into hotel after hotel (full, too expensive, just plain weird, etc) when I stuck my head into a tiny, pink one, and was face to face with the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. She didn’t speak any English, and I don’t speak Slovakian. I tried her Italian and she tried my German (no luck) and then I sat down with her in the flickering light of the lobby and drew her pictures until she understood that I wanted a room. They had one, and I stayed the night.
Every time I came downstairs we both blushed a lot and had funny gesture-conversations, and I went out to grab a pizza and a few mugs of crisp Slovakian beer and study Slovakian history and look at my notes - but I couldn't get this girl out of my head.
I came back and plopped down in the lobby – I think that I was the only guest in the hotel that night. She laughed and we drew more pictures, and then eventually the night grew late and I headed to my room and went to sleep.
The next morning she made me breakfast. Still smiling and blushing she bustled around and I ate breakfast, and then while I was paying the bill I suddenly had a violent urge to just stay right there, learn Slovakian, marry this girl that I had never exchanged a single word with, and run a hotel in the town of Banska Stiavnica.
I came out of this reverie as she was handing me my credit card receipt to sign. I made eye contact for a long second over the pen she was holding out, then signed it, told her that I’d be back the next week with a group of “people on bikes,” and left.
She wasn’t there when we came back – just an old man who couldn’t understand me either – and that was that.
Poof.
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