Day 17: Gospic-Knin (107 km, 802 m ↑)
Yesterday, we somehow managed to leave the Sports Café in Gospic at a decent time, and this morning, we left at nine o’clock – one hour later than we normally do. There was one bakery that was open on Sundays in Gospic. So first thing we did was to make a stop there to get some croissants, a coffee, and a strudel to go. They have strudel everywhere in Slovenia and Balkan, and it’s a good energy source for during the day. Today I had apple strudel.
Our first fifty kilometres were pretty flat today. In addition, we had tailwind, and Udo started, to quote my English teacher, Mr. Mychajluk, as if he had a torpedo in his ass. So we had a very high pace to start with.
What stopped us after ten kilometres was that my rear brake did not work properly. I had already noticed that yesterday, but today I felt like I did not have any brake power at all. Actually, the brake has always been a problem with this bicycle. Now, fixing brakes isn’t something I had done before. But Udo said, we should try to fix it. We removed the brake from the frame, opened it up, and took out the brake pads. For some reason, there was no visible opening and closing movement of the pads. One cause was that the metal clip meant to keep the pads apart was bent. So, we straightened it. Another reason was that the pistons, which are supposed to push the pads together, were barely moving. So we adjusted the brake cable until the pistons started moving again. In the end, we screwed everything back together, and now my brake works better than it ever has.
There were hardly any towns or villages on the route today. Our first possible coffee break was after forty-five kilometres. Some time before, though, we passed a house with two plum-trees in the front yard which were full of plums. I got tempted to pick a few. Then the grandmother who lived there opened the window and said something in Serbo-Croatian – I don’t know what exactly, but apparently she wanted to say “go ahead and pick as many as you like.” I said “hvala, hvala” and filled my pockets with some very sweet and juicy plums.
The café we eventually reached was called “Café Rustik”, and rustic it was, but also cozy. We had two coffees each, and then came the only longer hill of today’s route. After we crossed the pass, we had a very long, almost twenty-five kilometres’ downhill stretch with a spectacular view. The remaining twenty or so kilometres to our destination, Knin, another small town, were relatively easy, just very windy at times. The house we are staying at in Knin looks shady from the outside – east-block big apartment block style – but the apartment inside is very modern and nice. We had a nice Italian dinner at restaurant La Rossa and look forward to a working day tomorrow.
