I will cycle back home

Can the mind be mended to do a steep climb even though it haven’t climbed in years? It is just a matter of eating well, having slept nicely and wanting to do that climb. A few months ago I went along the same climb up to 1100 meter, on foot with a trailer. I want to reach that immense beautiful field of openness again, now with a bicycle. I am sure I can do it.

Just a few days before we would drive to Una national park in Bosnia for extensive walking, I decided to take my bicycle along and cycle back home. I didn’t search for a route and I didn’t know how far it actually was. The bicycle hadn’t received a change of oil in its Rohloff hub recently but a year ago the old cracked tires were replaced for new ones together with a new Shimano brake-set. The panniers are old and broken, collected holes from mice overtime and have lost their ability to be waterproof. I hope they hold.

The weather forecast showed rain. Only rain. But I had to go, could not wait any longer. The psyche needed this trip as much as a whale needs to be in the depths of the ocean.

For all things embroidered, click the photo

When Geo and I seek places to sleep the night it has to accommodate a large yellow van and my tent. We both need to feel at ease: I can be okay with someone’s property but Geo not. Geo is fine with a parking at the road but I am not. When the rain is slashing around and the predictions are measured in such volumes that it has become an alert we search for an abandoned house.

That night a flood wipes out much of Donja Jablanica. Mountain flanks brake off and slide down. Rocks roll and like slow bowling balls take along what is in their path. Back in South America and Oman I always took care not to camp in a quebrada when rainfall would be a possibility but now I’d forgotten everything. Being out of terrain other than woods I simply didn’t think of these important facts of nature.

Not only that, I also skip news. I hardly ever check the news. So when I start cycling and am optimistic I can mount that mountain that brings me to Rujište and over, I again was wrong. Breathing like a sickly doe that has been hunted for all night I stop several times to rest. When I rest more than I make progress I try to form another plan. None of them as promising as where I wanted to go. But obviously, I don’t have the power to get there. A German oncoming mobile home driver gives me a thumb up in encouragement of what I am doing, or rather, attempting. I turn around nevertheless.

The M-17 route from Mostar to Jablanica is surprisingly quiet after summer season, besides a group of self announced watch dogs there was not much to be worried about.

Over the previous couple of years I have been kickbiking or walking mostly over paths in the forests and to be on a narrow main road with trucks and cars is not my idea of pleasant touring. Since I didn’t plan anything other than going via Rujište to Konjic I am now stuck with only one main road (M-17) along the beautiful Neretva river. So be it, my yellow vest, mandatory in Hungary, will surely protect me.

Geo and I didn’t walk a bit (except for 2 hours). The rain made us decide to sit in the floods of Bosnian smokey cafe’s and eat janjatina and cevapi until my pee smelled of Colombian Arabica and mutton. Then we drive to Međugorje to have an English mass. The atmosphere is tangible different, it is here we should have slept the night before I set off to cycle back home. Instead I choose a grotty parking lot at the back of a health center and right in view of everyone else. I am nervous and sleep terribly bad. Without a shower for days but with two coffees consumed in Geo’s comfortable company I set off back home.

The dynamic when with Geo is so very different. Now I have to do the talking and can’t lean on Geo who speaks Bosnian, which also opens my own doors and indeed brings a whole different experience. Now, I am the solo cycling lady again, yet I never fail to mention my husband somewhere along the lines. Being in a supermarket becomes now all of a sudden a joy where I interact with the always friendly personnel and clients. ‘Are you going to Sarajevo?’ asks a bulky man in the first supermarket I visit. I answer ‘no’ but also that I don’t have a plan so I don’t really know where I am going, except towards Croatia and Hungary. The bulky man tells me there is a lot of damage by floods and some roads are impassable. My ever present optimism, or arrogance, thinks it’ll be okay. With panniers bulging of food I continue.

Until a police halts me and considers whether I can cycle on: ‘You can go, cycle to the far right of the road and never in the middle, there are a lot of trucks and the road has rocks and it is very dusty and just be careful.’ Will do.

Unbeknownst to myself, I pass Jablanica. In awe I witness what the floods caused and am quietened by nature’s force. I sure need to find a safe place for tonight. I succeed in that but the wind in the evening is so forceful that it reminds me of Patagonia. I sleep but not fantastically.

My spot at the head of the island in the middle of the Rama river might be free of land slides but it doesn’t do an excellent job in breaking the wind. Also, it stinks of dog poop: with a waft of disgust I eat and dry the panniers from the inside after the rainstorm.

Bosnia is a small country and lightly populated yet the vastness of it’s land is overwhelming. At times it makes me feel I am in South America. Because of road touring with Geo and the high amount of beauty and comfort and mountains while speeding with a certain mileage, I have forgotten to think in cycling terms. I just wanted to be dropped off as far as possible from home. Cycling back home now feels high aimed and when a cycling friend writes me it is ‘a nice ride of almost 1000 kilometers’, I nearly faint. Thousand? I didn’t think it would be so much?

Geo encouraging words works better, together with the homely photos he send me, I am enjoying but not yet to the fullest. I am aimless. Every route has a steep climb coming up, something I try to avoid. When I stand in a village, clumsily half on a zebra crossing, tempted to buy some more burek I try to figure out a route on Maps.Me that doesn’t go up. There is none. I appear to be in some sort of a bowl and can only climb to get over but I don’t want to go on the main route and be among cars and trucks, some of which will happily offer me a ride. Going back is not an option, although it contains not much climbing. I wonder why I wanted to cycle because sitting in a van seems to do the trick too.

So I pull out. I find myself a good spot looking towards a mountain hill and will drink extra chai while embroidering and wondering why I haul gear that I don’t use. Tired, I sleep well after I have opted my options.

With several possibilities I choose a coordinate that Geo had send me on his route back home. There I will go. Via smaller numbered roads, some of which turned out to be rather busy, some of which are pleasantly quiet. My aim is Suhova along the R-415.

Photo 1: seen from behind the window of the Renault van. Photo 2: Suhova region along the R-415 on my bicycle.

From then on the mind is set and she can do it. With a heavy laden bicycle I soon feel powerful, equipped with a mind that is in tune with what she has to accomplish. Going home plays a big role in this but what I mostly want is to be where I am.

Sure, I have cycled enough and nothing is new any longer yet Bosnia & Herzegovina on a bicycle is. To feel truly connected to a place one needs to be in direct contact with the land, literally. There may not be a space between your feet and the land you are in. Walking would be the best, cycling comes with a price: the saddle that I dislike but the distance I can make is better than on a kickbike. When I climb and look back I am in awe, when I stop and admire the distance I cycled I see the fruit of my own labor. The beauty thrown at me is what I need.

Photo 1: climbing and looking back. Photo 3: The view from behind the Renault window makes me always want to get out and do it on my own Photo 4: I have reached the highest point and will soon be in awe of where I am.

Continued in, the better half, Beyond Lake Ramsko to Hungary

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