Category: 2025

• Tuesday morning we woke up and continued rolling through the beautiful Polish countryside
• We’ve noticed that the Poles are an incredibly tidy people: all the houses are well-kept (to the point that they almost look brand new), the yards are maintained , and there is almost no trash in the streets anywhere. In fact, we’ve seen several people sweeping up the sand in the streets with brooms
• Speaking of sand, a note about the roads on this route. We’re mostly following Eurovelo route 11, a cross-Europe bicycle route that is still in development. For the most part it’s been great: primarily very quiet country roads, and a surprising amount of shared-use cycle paths. There’s only been a few times we’ve had to ride on busy roads with little shoulder, but the drivers have been really respectful. However, several times the quiet country roads have lost their pavement and devolved into little more than ruts in sand, and often the sand gets deep enough to become unrideable even with our relatively fat tires. So we’re also getting a bit of an upper body workout from pushing our bikes – but it’s still a good time!
• Several times we’ve encountered old men who have insisted on trying to have a conversation with us in Polish as we just stare back at them with dumb looks on our faces. Most of the other cyclists we’ve seen have also been old men, so maybe there’s a connection?
• Public bathrooms seem few and far between. Also, now I know to watch out for stinging nettle
• Tuesday night we had dinner at a cute little restaurant, where I had my first Polish pierogi – mushroom and buckwheat, with a side of four different slaws. Absolutely delicious!
• We found another great camping spot in a small forest

• On Wednesday morning, the bakery we were looking had apparently closed several years ago (at least that’s what we think based on the hand-gesture conversation we had with a local), so we went back to the same restaurant we had dinner at. Some kielbasa and delicious crepe/pancakes later and we were back on the road
• We stopped for coffee and lody (ice cream) in Lomza at the cool town square
• Mostly just another day of rolling through gorgeous countryside and cute villages – we followed a river for a good part of the day
• We slept last night at a bicycle camping spot in someone’s backyard. The owner spoke no English, but we managed to communicate the important bits in french (except me misinterpreting 6 fingers to mean the price was 6 zloty – about $1.50 -instead of 60 zloty)
• He didn’t seem too perturbed that we washed clothes and used his clothes line

• On Sunday, after hanging out in Old Town Warsaw with Djivann, we raced back to Katarina’s apartment to fetch my clarinet, because we were invited to jam with Djivann and his french host Florien.
• Katarina showed up at Florien’s as well, and we had a great time making music: me on the clarineo, Djivann on his portable piano, Florien on guitar, Katarina on ukulele, and Zach on tongue drum (or handpan?). Katarina also taught me a Polish song “Hej Sokoly”!
• We all grabbed dinner together at a decent restaurant (though the waiter hated us for some reason) and then rode home late into the night

• On Monday morning, we packed up our things, said goodbyes to Katarina, and rolled out (but not before locking ourselves out of the building while shuttling our gear haha)
• We slowly made our way out of Warsaw, heading mostly along the river at first, then eventually into the farmlands
• We managed to get our first Polish grocery trip in – fairly straightforward, though we still don’t understand the ‘nutritional score’ on many items, where Trix is a green ‘B’ but muesli is an orange ‘D’?
• We split half a loaf of challah bread at a bakery…managed to find camp fuel (after some confusion) at a hardware store….saw a bunch of storks
• We met a guy at a gas station who was very excited to talk to us when he realized we weren’t Poles, but it took us a while to understand he was asking where we were from – he kept saying something about ‘action movie’. When I said I was from California, he did a great impression of a San Francisco hippie
• We ended up finding a great camping spot in the forest as it began to rain. We were both so bushed we went into our tents at 9pm without even making dinner. Hopefully we’ll be over our jetlag soon

Our trip is off to a great start!

• Met up with Zach in the giant Amsterdam airport, with just enough time to board our flight to Warsaw
• Zach’s bike travelled fine, but unfortunately neither my bike nor my bags made it on the plane with me! It was a little nerve-wracking at first, but eventually we confirmed they were both in Amsterdam and would arrive on the next flight. We ended up hanging out at the airport for about 5 hours waiting for the (delayed) flight, and voila! my bike and bags showed up without issue!
• I quickly put my bike together, and after a brief bit of confusion navigating away from the airport, we found ourselves on Warsaw’s amazing network of bike paths and headed into the city.
• From the very beginning we could tell this is a beautiful, amazing city – there were so many people out and about, and the vibe is just very relaxed
• We grabbed some pretty good food and took a sunset ride wandering through the city as we waited for out warmshowers host Katarina to return from a play. We managed to stumble upon a pedestrian street packed with people – it was beautiful. Then we headed down along the river, which seemed to one giant dance party
• We finally met up with our amazing host Katarina at her gorgeous apartment in a quiet section of Warsaw. We traded stories late into the night until Zach and I were practically zombies (Warsaw is 10 hours ahead of pacific time). I also never learned how my last night name is pronounced in Polish – it’s like “mee-HALL-letz”! Katarina was a bit taken aback when I told her how we butchered it
• We slept in on Sunday, and then Katarina took us to a very cool Chopin concert in a park. There we met up with Djivann, a French bike tourist who is 2 months in to a trip around the world. He is a musician and is travelling with a portable keyboard that breaks up into 3 pieces. Here’s his blog: https://www.polarsteps.com/LaChevrePiano/14706823-tour-du-monde-de-piano-a-velo
• We all had a delicious lunch at a Georgian restaurant, then Zach and explored the city some more, including the historic “old town” which had mostly been destroyed in world war II but was rebuilt.
• Ok more to come it’s time for bed!

Made it to the airport, and my bike and bags are checked in. I’ll meet up with Zach in Amsterdam where we will fly together to Warsaw. I found a cool warm showers host to stay with for two nights, so we should have a fairly easy adjustment and time to check out the city.

I say this every year, but this might have been the most last-minute scrambling preparation of any tour yet. I had a bicycle/music campout last weekend that rolled straight into an overnight camping/hiking in the sierras, so I only had two days to prep. On top of that, our crazy government got even more crazy this week and I had a bunch of extra work to do in addition to wrapping up my projects. But it was all totally worth it (the camping, not the fascism). I’m pretty grateful to have great friends to go on adventures with.