Читать книгу Danny Beer. Tourist on Wheels. A European Adventure - Danny Beer - Страница 13

The day starts out alright even if the highway is very busy. Traffic is generally courteous but often a truck would come by too close and too fast pulling me into is slipstream. Buses are the worst. They never give room and they never wait. At least they don’t try to force you off the road like they do in Taiwan though.

By lunch time you get a flat. This time it’s the front. But that’s okay. You’ll just put on the spare and fix the puncture in the evening. But wait. Why is the valve so fat? It doesn’t even fit through the hole. Looks like you’ll need to repair the flat now after all.

So you put on the patch but the tire doesn’t seem to want to inflate. So you try again. And again. You manage to inflate the damn thing a little. Enough to walk the bike but you can’t ride it.

So you walk. Five km to the next town, Levoca. There you’ll be able to find a service station and perhaps even a bike shop. On the way you find a restaurant and stop for lunch. Your one embarrassment is that you leave the seat up in the women’s bathroom.

You find a service station just out of town and inflate the tire easily. But just one km later it goes again, totally flat. Once again you start walking. This town is quite attractive. Why isn’t it in the guide book? Oh, it is. Lots of pretty buildings and even a 16th century cage for putting impure women in. You ask for directions to a bike shop and sure enough, success! A pretty young girl even follows you to make sure you find it.

So you buy two new tubes and a bike pump. You even get the guy to inflate it for you, after yet another unsuccessful attempt. Yet again the tire blows after riding it for a little while. You go back to the shop and the guy finds the reason why. There is a hole in the actual tire itself. So you buy a new tire. You think it is a little smaller than the old one but you’re sure it will be fine. You hope.

But now it is almost five. It is starting to get cold and dark. So you’ll stay here tonight. You don’t want any frantic searching for accommodation on dusk like last night.