Snakebite

It’s an 8 kilometers ride to the city center so nothing to get exhausted.
On the bike path, already struggling, i met a cyclist on his bike and he was waving hello. ‚Hey, that’s nice!‘ I thought and tried to do the same with the next one I met. His look gave me the title ‚Fool of the day‘ so I let it be again.
There are not many chances to get such titles anyways because there are not many bicyclists.
That’s why I never felt as save in an inner city of a bigger town as here in Lviv to leave my bike locked at some gate. None seems to be interested in something like that. Bicycles? What?
These 8 kilometers to the inner city got everything for a tricky cyclo-cross track. Friends of rigid forks may know the tingling in the arms after going down trails with stones and roots. Jumping over big fat holes and mean gully covers, tram rails… everything an adventurous cyclist needs. Cobblestone streets (what we call
Cat head cobble stones) with stones big as childrens head (so actually
Children head cobble stones) are framed by sidewalks high as buildings. One would be mad to drive without helmet, totally out of mind. Which I did yesterday. For today I grabbed the casque and replaced the 30mm tyres with the 35mm cyclo-cross ones. Three fourth pressure and i was flying over the streets.

When I met Nazar in the city he told me that he wouldn’t leave his bike anywhere under any circumstance. So maybe all the bikes which are not there got stolen. Well. Took my bike from the place I had locked it to and Nazar showed me around. He told me a million things about his city and history of Ukraine and I was asking myself if I could tell anything about the history of Chemnitz. We drove through the inner city, went to a park with wooden houses of different ages and ended up drinking beer. After we had finished we went in the city again enjoying inner city life. Amazing how many people go there, dancing, eating, drinking, talking… of course weekend tourism included. Nazar had to leave so I was wandering around for another hour.
When I drove back on the cyclocross track to get some sleep I used the pavement. Three fourth of the pressure seemed to be not enough therefor so I got a snakebite. Shit. An hour walk through suburban areas added to the list of the day.

Thanks to the bureaucracy of Poland and Ukraine! Their paperwork made it possible to meet Nazar which I wouldn’t liked to have missed! Always welcome to Germany!