September 19

I awoke with a vacant,  stupid cow-like brain this morning, jet-lagged to the extreme. Mary is not much better. We ate an enormous buffet breakfast, most likely ensuring a fragrant bus ride to our meet up with our bicycle guides from VBT. Mahler in my head all night, as well as the memory of several tall Czech women who stick out in the right places.

We began meeting with our new companions. This is always confusing, and a bit more so on this trip. I think there are five sisters here, and several Marys in addition to my Mary. It will sort out. We were placed on the bus by a local guide, not a cyclist, but a person hired by VBT to make sure we all arrive at our first day stop. Unfortunately, she decided to give us a little information on Prague and the environs. She might have been a little more boring if she read from the Prague telephone directory. The bus had an annoying 12-second repeat of its GPS transponder, not fixable until we are long gone.

Filip and Zuzana, our bright, effervescent and athletic guides show up at a road side rest area, and things get better right away. Filip wears a wool scarf around his neck, because he is fighting a cold (which, fortunately, he does not pass on to any of us during the trip). They are a fountain of information, they pass out forms for us to sign away all of our rights and award our bodies to medical science. And they tell us about our first destination, Krumo Zeste is it? No, Ceste Krumlo, an important city dating from the 1300s, cut clean through by the Vltava River (which is much smaller in CK due to it being up stream from Prague).

We are introduced to our local walkabout guide, Stan the Man, who takes us through some important pathways and buildings while our bags are sorted and loaded into our rooms. I like Stan. He takes us into the very neo gothic church and says, "The interesting thing about this church is that it has Baroque equipment inside. "And indeed it did.

Some of the group's names are matching up with their faces, and we go off with a couple of them for a nice lunch at a vegetarian restaurant along the river. We quickly return for our first bicycle outing. Several adjustments to the bikes and instructions to us follow, and then we are off on these clunky beasts over irregular cobblestones, dodging literally hundreds of tour groups, each with its own guide corralling the participants. I wonder how this can end well, but soon we are on our way out of town, and things improve. We don't go far enough to escape the suburbs of Ceste Krumlo, but we do accomplish our objective of finding a way to stay on our bikes. I observe with more than a little interest a tour bus almost clip Mary as it exits one of the lots.

We stop on our way back at the VBT snack layout, hardly necessary given the short ride. But, impressive nonetheless. They have everything one could possibly want to eat on a ten minute break. Zuz and Filip are both outstanding, paying attention to details, making sure everyone's seat and handle bars are adjusted.

Stan the Man