Let's Go Ride a Bike

After lunch, Emily, Melissa and I decided to take a bike ride.  Evidently, the camp has purchased a “fleet” of bicycles for the use of those who are here.  Delightful.  I haven’t gone on a bike ride in a long time (despite the $$ I spent on a nice cruiser last year).  We chose three bikes, and after some seat adjusting, brake testing, and general consensus that what we had was just going to have to work, we set off.  Our original target was the store in town.  By ‘store’ I mean general collection of stuff you might use at some point in your life.  Granted, there was some sad produce, and a refrigerated cooler stocked with various types of beer, and some dry goods.  BUT, the real treat came from looking at the “other stuff” that was there.  Emily, bless her heart, brought me mascara from here yesterday, which sat on a shelf with playing cards, shaving cream and other assorted bathroom accoutrements.  Just below, there was bug killer, “American tshirts” and notebooks.  Behind the counter, where all the truly valuable stuff rests, was a wall of vodka and other assorted alcoholic beverages.  Thankfully, we had been advised while in Warsaw to pick up a bottle of vodka because we’re out in the middle of the forest and there isn’t anything else to do.  To my surprise, this piece of advice came from the veteran teachers, both veteran in experience at this camp and in life.  Funny advice to receive, especially since I don’t like vodka at all.  Welp... when in Rome? Anyway, back to the store... it really was a delightful hodgepodge of stuff.

Here is the store

After the store, we decided to roll on to the next town.  We were feeling fierce and ready to rock these bikes.  It was a nice afternoon, peaceful surroundings and great company.  AND, to add some gold to the picture, I was sporting my prized possession from the Grand Marais Ben Franklin store - a fishing hat with bug netting that rolls down from the rim to protect you when needed.  Yup.  Rocked it on the bike.  Melissa had a hat that was almost as cool, it doubles as a fan and folds up when not needed.  A gem she picked up while living in Vietnam.  Emily, she had  Michigan hat on.  Which was worse?  Michigan or a bug-proof hat?  Jury’s sill out.  

We turned toward a village that was listed as a mere two kilometers away.  I know I’m not entirely sure of this whole metric thing, but for reals.  That was way more than two kilometers.  Most of it was uphill too.  Pretty still, but yeesh.  At one point, there was a young man in bright yellow shorts who was riding just behind us, but he disappeared at some point and we lost him.  Where he went, we have no idea.  

Victory was ours when we finally landed in the downtown of the village.  By downtown, I mean bus stop and trio of homes.  At one of these homes, an outbuilding doubled as a store.  We saw a guy come out of said store just as we arrived, and we spotted racks of different beverages and other such goods.  We got off the bikes to look around and take pictures of their super cute mailboxes.  After doing a 360 and seeing the entirety of the town, we decided to stop in what we thought was the store.  I approached the door, and sure enough, there were hours listed, so in I went.  Wait... no I didn’t.  I COULDN’T.... because the owner had locked the door and shut us out.  Evidently three women on bike-back speaking English really makes people nervous.  After I tried the doorknob once more just to make sure I wasn’t making this up, we gave up and returned to the bikes.  As we mounted up, the owner came around the side of the building and asked us something, but we had no idea what it was - as I know less Polish than many of the other languages I’ve studied.  

We decided at this point, instead of curving back down the same hill, that we were going to venture into the trail in the forest.  This is where Emily started questioning our friendship.  Off we went on a dirt/gravel/sand path.  It was well traveled either by field vehicle or automobile, so it had to go somewhere, right?  At first, I thought it could be someone’s driveway back to their farmland.  No homes... we just kept biking.  Fork in the road, we go left.  And keep biking.  We work our way up another hill, and keep biking.  I’m starting at this point, to really regret that I chose the bike that does nothing but 7th gear.  We kept biking.  We came to another fork in the road, chose left again and kept biking.  We were rolling through sandy paths now- Melissa afterwards stated that she didn’t know which was worse, the wet or the dry sand.  They both were bad to try and traverse.  We kept biking.  We wound down and around what seemed to be the forest that we started through, we kept biking.  As a team, we collectively were getting a bit nervous as to the choices we (mostly me) had made - directionally speaking.  We kept biking.  Emily stopped to question if this path was going to lead to any sort of civilization or not - meaning the trio of homes we saw earlier our our “town” with a dozen or so homes in it.  We kept biking.  We ran through some puddles, up and down small hills as we kept biking.  We plowed through sandy trails (and by plowed, I mean the way that a snowplow does on 94 in Stearns County after 10 feet of snow... slowly but steadily) and kept biking.  Finally at one point, Emily took a left (when internally I thought we should have gone right) and it took us to a paved road.  AND, the bus stop not too far down the road said part of the name of our town on it.  Turns out, the part that was different was actually significant.  Emily said we should go right, I wasn’t quite sure, but she looked at a map that appeared on the side of the road across from the bus stop and was convinced that we were to double back towards where we came from.  I decided that I should stop and ask a lady who was out in her garden.  I entered her yard, passed the barking dog, and tried to get the attention of the woman sleeping (or dead) on the porch.  It didn’t work, so I kept going deeper into the yard, around the house towards the garden that I saw originally.  I entered the fenced off garden, paused for a minute as she stood up and she immediately greeted me with a “dzien dobry” and I returned the greeting in Polish.  Followed by “I don’t speak Polish, I’m sorry” and I gave her the card of the camp that had the name and the address on it.  I pointed to the left, and then to the right and shrugged my shoulders.  She gave me much more in response, but essentially pointed the same direction Emily wanted to go and said “trehs kilometres!” I smiled, thanked her and we were on our way.  

We returned home safely- tired, hot and an hour and forty five minutes after we left.  We were done biking.