Leaving beautiful Lake Ohrid

So I climbed about 3600 feet again yesterday, a decent road with two lanes generally in the uphill side, it just seemed like it took forever to grind out those uphill miles. But you can always tell by two signs when you’re near the top; One is that you can usually feel the breeze coming downhill from the other side when nearing the top; second thing is is you can see the sign that says merging traffic when the two lanes uphill merge into one because so the two lanes can be given to the traffic on the other side. It’s funny how those signs are so welcome when you’re a cyclist in the hills!

I met three British cyclists along the way, they were riding super light, with bikepacking gear not traditional bags like I’m using this trip. They are doing closer to 100 miles a day, probably all in their 20s, one is a journalist and in theory he’s doing this for his work as long as he writes about it every day. They are basically doing one big circle of Macedonia, no other countries and doing it in one week. Super nice guys but their pace it’s not my pace.

Got into Gostivar and there are mosques nearly every half mile, so once I got into town it was common to see people in various states of Muslim dress. And in this case it means really just the women, as the men normally are wearing just whatever normal street clothes.

Found the Green Hilton which claims it’s a Hilton but clearly it is not. But for me, that is not an issue. I just want a reasonably clean room with hot water and air-conditioning! And it had all of those!

I was pretty tired after a couple days of climb in the mountains and after I got cleaned up and did laundry, I walked around the town a little bit looking for a restaurant. Not easy to see where they are, sometimes there’s just a little entry on the front and the restaurant is actually open out into a back courtyard. But wandered around for a while and eventually landed on a fast food place that is just all burgers. I hadn’t had a burger this entire trip. So with some language difficulties, figured out that I was going to order a burger that had onions and cheese mixed into the meat. When it arrived, it was monstrous, seemed like a half a pound of meat, maybe not quite that, but a lot! That huge tasty burger with some fresh tomatoes and lettuce and a handful of french fries cost the equivalent of $2.92.

Earlier walking around town, I went past several shops selling clothing, couple of which had Muslim style clothing with head coverings on display on manikins. Me as American, I don’t have a lot of exposure to the Muslim community in America, at least not in Portland and certainly not so in Anchorage. So to be in the midst of a community in which half or more of everybody walking around is clearly Muslim, it’s just different.

My hotel room window looks out to a mosque with a tall minaret with speakers on it. It’s probably 300 feet away from my window. About every two hours, a voice in Arabic sings a kind of spoken song, of course I can’t understand a word of it but after a few times of listening to it, I almost look forward to hearing it. The Voice is usually a male, but so far at least once I’ve heard a female voice.

In Islamic tradition, Muslims are called to the five scheduled daily prayers (salat) by a formal announcement, called the adhan. The adhan is called out from the mosque by the muezzin.

Next morning and the error…

So I spent the night in the hotel, got everything packed up and got on the road in the morning a little bit late around 9:30 AM. I was blissfully on my way to Skopje on a quiet back road when for some reason I decided to look in my front pouch to confirm my passport was there. Well, guess what! Not! It was back at the hotel.

Most places I have stayed at take a quick photo of the passport and and hand it back to you when you pay them for the room, this one kept it in the drawer and I was so tired yesterday on arrival and didn’t catch that bit of detail passing before my eyes. I will call this my technical mishap for the day!

Anyway I was already about 10 miles out of town and had to turn around. That made for a 20 mile day before I would even start my trip to Skopje, so I elected to just stay here another night.

Unfortunately I’m getting close to the end of my cycling time here until I meet the gang in Bucharest. I will probably finish cycling tomorrow in Skopje, and then take a bus from there to Sofia Bulgaria, and then another bus the next day to Bucharest. I really don’t have enough time to make it to Sofia without making it a brutal death march style of a bike ride, and I’m not interested in that at this point. So will take my time over the next few days getting to Bucharest.

On arrival in Skopje tomorrow, I will meet Boro‘s dad and possibly a cousin for dinner. Probably Monday morning I will catch the bus to Sofia and as I think it’s about at least five hours, I will probably stay the night somewhere there before catching the bus the next day to Bucharest.

All in all, by tomorrow, I’ve cycled about 9000 km or about 540 miles. I think my total climbing in that period of time was about 25,000 feet.

My objective was to have a good trip and see the sights, not necessarily get to any particular place at any particular time, and I feel like I’ve totally accomplished that! So the next few days I will be more like a basic tourist, not really cycling any miles until next weekend when I start the supported trip with Paul and Kris and Edgar and Prash and Herb.

It’s been great so far…

Random photo comments:

-So you see in the photo, I went by an under construction large greenhouse complex that clearly looks like it’s going to be growing pot! Guess I was surprised to see that in Macedonia!

Sidenote: medical marijuana is legal in Macedonia, but not recreational. 13 states of with EU affiliation have legalized medical marijuana. So presumably this was a facility to grow for medical purposes. Macedonia is on track to join the EU in the next couple of years.

-The minaret just outside my window, and next to it the clock tower, built in the 1600s during the ottoman empire.