Junk in the trunk

Cycling Pittsburgh is fantastic. Yes, the terrain is hilly and steep; yes, the roads are crumbly and in tatters; yes, my internal navigational system (INS) is still in development, but honestly, I couldn't be happier. I quite like biking uphill. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, and I never turn down an opportunity to wear a shit-grin oozing of pride.

Yesterday, I learned from experience, that them thar hills are all child's play until you add one key element: the loaded pannier. After filling my saddle bags up with a ton or so of precariously obtained fudge (seriously, tons of it), I began my ascent up to good ol' Geneva. Now perhaps it was the order of fudge and chocolate creme chilling like lead in my belly, perhaps it was the fully loaded bags, but damn was I glad for grandma gear. The cold air filled my lungs with a burn, and my legs were reminded of days past traversing the alps. Worst of all, the guy in the fixed gear was kicking my ass up (so long shit-grin oozing pride).

So props to all those cyclists in Pittsburgh, carrying around 20 lbs. of gear every day. Ya'll are my heroes. Seriously.

-The Velodict

You take what road...Scoff

Phipps Conservatory today (super cool albeit overly festive). Despite the steep museum prices in this city, I am actively trying to visit all I can. I really need to snag myself a Pitt I.D. (free museum entrance). Along the way with a friend, I realized a very interesting fact about Pittsburgh biking.

Prelude: if you are feeling cartographically inclined, please open a google map of Pitt (or reference my hastily inserted one), and notice that there is absolutely no grid system to it. Some communities try, but they ultimately fail. This leads to the phenomena I aptly dub, "path preference".

Basically between any point Alpha and point Omegatron, there lay a myriad of viable routes. Each velodict seems to have their own personal path preference. That path is, of course, far superior to anyone else's path (dur). Even as a fledgling, I have developed my own personal maneuverable preferences through the city. This only leads to problems when two cyclists try to bike just about anywhere together. Each thinks they know the way, but if they are not leading, they are probably wrong, and will undoubtedly have to make a sketchy stop for an undoubtedly sketchy left turn that was "oh so unnecessary." Clearly the best way was to take the pedestrian bridge and not Craig to Forbes to Oakland Avenue. Right? ANYWAY. Just another crude observation as to why I love this place.

-Senorita Velodict

Velodict: the American Adventure

So I am officially solo now. No Scott, no Andrew, a lone addict to the art of biking. Well, maybe not lone; Pittsburgh has a great biking culture. In actuality, I am a small fish in the raging of velodicts, and quite frankly, this anonymity gets me really stoked! Nothing like cycling the veins of a breathing city.

I have decided to continue my blogging adventure. I pledge my many...few...one (is anyone out there?) readers to try to stick to the biking blog, but you never know what else may get tossed in pot.

January 2, 2011

Place: Pittsburgh

A new year, and some new goals: Fix up my apartment, sell some fine felted jewelry, write and illustrate my cookbook, and bike. Things are off to a good start. Today I fixed up the salt stained long haul, installed my trusty rear rack, and set of with my blazing red panniers. I assumed that I could easily locate the grocery in East Liberty/market district. Wrong. Turns out there is a huge set of railroad tracks, and the grocery is tucked somewhere between two bridges/elevated roads. Sometimes this city is quite confusing. That's probably why I also lost my way riding home. No problem though, I am just a little more Bloomfield savvy now.

ANYWAY. The sun was even shinning today; a rare mood-boosting power source that leaves my pasty face inexplicably shit-grinning. Fucking love it here.

-The Velodict

Where East meets West

Golly Gee it's been some time since the last blog. I am ashamed to announce that I am all the way in Bratislava, Slovakia, meaning you have yet to hear about the quirks of Graz and Budapest. Wondering how we got here so fast say you? Well thats becuase we are just a pair of badass bikers on a mission. Graz was a super nice city: a cocktail of both ancient and modern architechture (pics to come, I promise). Scott and I got pretty lucky and met an enthusiastic hotel clerk in a hotel in graz. After chatting about biking and the fact that America is afraid to show nipple on television, he gave us a nice room and warned us against Hungary. In fact, everyone in Graz seemed to imply in one way or another that Budapest was barbaric and sinister to the core (that is a slight over-dramaticization). Heeding no warning, Scott and I decided to head on to Budapest.

As far as I could tell, Hungary may be the windiest country I have ever been to. There was nothing but flat fields and wind all the way to Budapest, making for some painfully slow biking. Luckily we had yummy goulash soup to keep us going. Budapest was also quite the refresher. The city is so dynamic, a nice break from the tourism of most cities. The city also housed the largest biking scene I have seen in Europe. Hip kids in tight jeans on fixies EVERYWHERE! I can't blame them really, Budapest was a fun city to bike. It also had the best hostels and bath houses. I don't know where the idea that bath houses are gross came from, but I must report quite the opposite opinion. The city has a variety of really cool baths; my favorite of which was a giant whirl-pool that whipped you around and awesome paces.

Scott and I have also biked through our first day in the rain: no downpour but a substantial bit of water. It was exciting for the first 30 miles, but soon tired me out. We extended our bike ride to Bratislava by a day, and warmed up with some soup. It was no Hungarian goulash, but damn was it good: :)

-The Velodicts

It's been a pleasure Croatia

Today we head into Slovenia! Possibly even make it to austria if we are feeling ambitious on this rainy day in September. If you are wonderng how we got so far so fast, let me spin for you, my children, a little tale. It all begins with a mountain:

A giant mammoth mountain divides the regions of Dalmatia and Zagreb. The plan was to ride over this mountain, into Bosnia, and then on to Zagreb to meet Scott's cousin; a jouney that would take approximately five days. That was until we crossed the mountains and rode directly into a giant hand signaling stop. Luckily for us this was a friendly gesture, bearing the offer of beer and sandwiches.
The hand belonged to a gruff man dressed in a red and white checkered shirt. In fact, all his cronies donned matching uniforms. I quickly decided to a gang of specific breed, football hooligan.

Wreaking of booze and cigarettes, the ringleader told us how they were on their way to Croatia for a European cup qualifying match against Greece. They insisted that we join them on the drunken adventure because biking to Zagreb was " impossible" . I kindly thanked them but said we were stopping in Bosnia first. There was a rise of commotion, we were presented with more beers, and the ringleader shook his head and said, " Bosnia no good. You come with us to zagrebia. Possible."

There was no arguing, and i was already on my third beer, so off to Zagreb we bussed.

Running out of battery here but long story short we got dropped off in the middle of croatia's capital city dazed and confussedI suppose the hooligans felt the same way after watching a no-goal game and got back onto a bus and rode int the night.

-the velodicts

Catching a Ride

Time to take a day off from biking. We decided to take the extra time to bus to Plitvichka National Park. The places was pretty amazing to see, as it is filled with 50 lakes flowing and, here it comes, waterfalling into one another! In fact, the park houses the largest waterfall in Croatia, although Im not too sure how many waterfalls there are in Croatia. I even got my nerd on looking at all the lakes, which are filled with this awesome algae that makes each pool shimmering green!

We also executed one of our most epic fails yesterday: we waited for the bus back to Zadar on the wrong side of the road....ooooops. Scott blamed Andrew and I, Andrew blamed me, so I guess it was my fault. ANYWAY.....We watched our bus drive up and drive away thereby stranding ourselves in the cold mountains. Nothing left to do but stick out a thumb! Just when the sun was beginning to set, two guys going all the way back to Zadar (a long ride) picked us up! Missing the bus turned out better than expected! We got to listen to some good Croatian jams, see the countryside, talk to some super nice Croatians, and even drink some homemade liquor! The driver had a mountain house outside of Zadar, where we stopped and tried his home-brew. Making liquor seems to be quite the common tradition here in Croatia. Our breed was flavored with herbs, but Jacob said his mother made some with oranges and cherries. Once tipsy and warm, we headed back to Zadar for more Karlovochka (cheep beer).

Unfortunately, this is the conclusion of Andrews leg of the bike trip. Scott and I have not a clue where to go next, but I´m sure we will mull it over some homemade schnapps and figure out something awesome!

-The Velodicts

Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast

I think we last left off with a video of andrew's snoring that I am unable to upload. Hopefully I can repost all the videos later. Sorry bout that. We have been in Croatia for quite a few days now, but have only done one full day of biking. We arrived in split by boat and spent one night at the ever-luxurious Hostel Adriatic. The place was actually kinds nice just not well kept and it hosted the typical range of middle class college students spending time in Croatia to simply party and drink on mommy and daddy's credit card. ANYWAY... We decided to hitch another ferry to an island called Hvar. I believe the island is a world heritage site that has been growing olives since before the Greek empire. I somehow dodged a case of potential pink eye and so we stayed on the island two nights. We spent the second day on a rented 5 hp motor boat cruising the nude beaches of Hvar. In our usual fashion, we also fortuitously encountered the only cavernous trench in the Adriatic sea with our anchor: a little 120 kuna gem of a blunder.

We just spent our first day biking to sibenik, and today we are off to Zadar. We'll keep you posted!

-The Velodicts