| Time | Minutes | km | kph avg | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7:47am | 2.9 | getting ready to go | ||
| 7:50am | 69.4 | 91 km | 79 | |
| 8:59am | 2.8 | farm pano stop | ||
| 9:02am | 21.0 | 26 km | 75 | |
| 9:23am | 2.1 | selfie stop | ||
| 9:25am | 13.3 | 17 km | 78 | |
| 9:38am | 4.2 | photosphere stop | ||
| 9:42am | 14.0 | 13 km | 56 | |
| 9:56am | 6.5 | gas stop in Germany, Aral | ||
| 10:03am | 79.3 | 84 km | 64 | |
| 11:22am | 4.9 | just across the border into Czechia | ||
| 11:27am | 27.4 | 28 km | 62 | |
| 11:54am | 4.5 | photo stop, video riding next to river | ||
| 11:59am | 32.3 | 30 km | 56 | |
| 12:31pm | 27.8 | picnic stop near Church of Saint Stephen Kostel svatého Štěpána | ||
| 12:59pm | 28.9 | 26 km | 53 | |
| 1:28pm | 4.1 | ATM stop | ||
| 1:32pm | 24.2 | 28 km | 69 | |
| 1:56pm | 8.7 | gas stop in Czechia, F1 | ||
| 2:05pm | 49.0 | 51 km | 63 | |
| 2:54pm | 8.2 | not a food store, DIY store | ||
| 3:02pm | 2.6 | 1 km | 32 | |
| 3:05pm | 13.2 | Penny Market food store | ||
| 3:18pm | 25.4 | 17 km | 41 | |
| 3:43pm | 7.7 | Dirt road in the woods, turning around | ||
| 3:51pm | 43.0 | 37 km | 52 | |
| 4:34pm | 3.0 | photo stop | ||
| 4:37pm | 5.8 | 6 km | 63 | |
| 4:43pm | 1.9 | arrived at my hotel in Primda | ||
| 9h07m | 7h10m moving | 453 km | 63.2 kph | 79% moving, 117 minutes of breaks |
We woke up at 4:10am to get Kathi's taxi to MUC to arrive 2 hours before her 7:00am flight.
The taxi didn't show up, so we called another which arrived in about 10 minutes and cost 39 euros. Maybe AMT will reimburse us or credit it toward our next tour.
Chris went back to sleep until 6:00am, then took a shower, loaded the bike, and had a leisurely breakfast. Started rolling at 7:50am. On the way out of Freising, it took a little while to get used to riding on German roads. I was so used to just following and not really paying attentition to navigation and being in the right lane. I got into the wrong lane and almost had a bad detour through Freising, but I cut through some construction, banged the left side bag on a construction barrier, and knocked some sense into myself. I did much better after that.
The first part in Germany from Freising was unlimited autobahn, but I was worried about the tablet blowing off, so I kept it to no more than 140 kph. That was about the first 50 km or so, then the roads turned onto farmland. Germany has some really beautuful farmland with gently rolling hills. Notably, they do not seem to use irrigation. No pivots or big wheeled irrigation structures in sight anywhere. No pumps either. The rain must be pretty reliable compared to the American West. But, other than that, much of the terrain could have been the Willamet Valley in Oregon with a little bit more hills and a larger variety of crops.
Another notable thing about Germany is the absense of overhead power lines in towns. There are some overhead lines between towns, but within the towns themselves, there are no poles for power, telephone, cable, or lighting. This really makes everything a lot neater and prettier.
Another noteable thing is the solar panels. They are everywhere and many roofs have large rectangular areas with no penetrations so they are covered with a nearly seamless rectangle of solar panels. Some farm (dairy?) barns have a frick-tonne of panels, like 8 x 30 x 250 watts so maybe 120 kW peak! This being almost the longest day of the year and relatively sunny and maybe 20% cloud cover, I wonder what fraction of their energy came from solar today. And then compare to Dec 12... Sigh. It's simultaneously impressive and a depressingly huge waste of investment. They could be 100% carbon free for electricty 24x7x365 if they put even half that much investment into nuclear power. Oh well. At least they make pretty infrastructure with the wires underground.
I bought gas in Germany before the border at about 200 km, so I'd have the option of not buying gas in Czechia before the evening if I had to.
The Czech border crossing was a no-op. Without the signs you wouldn't even know you had crossed.
The Šumava National Park, Národní park Šumava is wonderful. So many people out walking, biking, (and in the winter they would be cross-country skiing). There are hotels everywhere. Barely open in the summer. You definintely don't need advance planning to ride a motorcycle in Czechia in June.
A few km into Czechia I bought gas. I also found an ATM and got some cash. The fee was 99k or about $4.65. I changed 5,000k or about $230. But so far, the card works everywhere: gas, coop, ATM, my hotel, ...
I stopped about a dozen times to take pictures. Farm panoramas, tunnels in the trees, rivers and streams. Kathi would absoluetly love the forest bathing opportunities here. Someday we should come back just to tootle around western Czechia for a few days.
After checking into my hotel Hotel V Podhradí, I walked up to Hrad Přimda, the oldest stone castle in Czechia, built 903 years ago. It's just a stone box with exterior dimension 16x16m and inside maybe 10x10. Very thick walls of granite blocks.
I walked back down and there are only 2 restaraunts in the city open on Tuesday. I used google translate to tell the waitress / propriter to suprise me with something local. We tried to talk about the menu for a while, then I pointed at a salad. She mimed flying (turns out it was swimming) and I said, I'll have that. Then I waited for a while and got a really good warm shrimp salad.
The hotel vacancy rate must be well over 95%. There are so many hotels here and almost no guests.
Worked on my program to make track logs and wrote up some more while waiting for Kathi to land.
Note that The Czech Republic or Czechia is spelled Česko and pronounced ches-ko, so the Č character is "ch".
There were only two restaurants in town open this evening, this one Restaurant & Hotel Laguna on the way back to my room.
No English was spoken or written, but I could read Saláty. The waitress was game for pantomime.
She did a good pig and cow, and what I thought was chicken (flying thing). Turns out it was swimming thing; shrimp.
My shrimp salad with cucumber and red peppers was delicious.
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