[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/267.html

We've been in Croatia for over two weeks now. The apartment we've been staying in in Medulin is getting well lived in. Neda is out all the time with her girlfriends and I am relishing all the time I have to sleep and do nothing in between sleeping. I even manage to get some blog posts written up!

The weather has been holding up very nicely. Everyone here remarks how unseasonably warm it is for Istria. This is good news. It means we don't have to pull up stakes and ride the bikes to some place warmer. I think Neda could stay in Istria for a very long time, she's very comfortable here. However we both would like to avoid the winter, and I'd like the option of staying mobile. Having the bikes snowed in for months is not too attractive a proposition for me.

But it looks like we don't have to worry about that for quite some time.

Rather than another "Didn't do anything. Life is good" blog post, here's a fun Istrian road trip we did recently:

The cast of characters for our road trip: The Pula Girls!!!

Yes, you can place the blame for the amazing weather we're having on the Pula Girls, Iva and Tajana. I remember just how sunny our Spanish tour with them was and how much fun it was to hang out with them on their vacation. They've offered to take us on a short tour to show us some other places in Istria that I haven't seen before. So on one fine sunny day (they're all sunny these days), we all jumped into Iva's car for a mini road-trip.

Our first stop of the day, the town of Roč

Roč (prononced "Wrotch") is about an hour's drive north of Pula. It's located in a area called the Glagolitic Alley, where artists have erected several monuments to celebrate the origins of the Glagolotic script, the oldest Slavic alphabet.

Walking through the gates of the walled city of Roč

 

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Pumpkins everywhere tell us we're late in the harvest season.

Roč is the geographical centre of Istria and the town has been set up as a shrine to the Glagolitic alphabet and its inventors, two Byzantine monks who traveled to this area to do missionary work.

A statue commemorates the Saints Cyril and Methodius, the two brothers who came up with the Glagolitic alphabet

Saint Cyril and Methodius transcribed the Bible into the Slavic language, devising the Glaglotic alphabet, which is the precursor to the Cyrillic alphabet that countries like Russia and Serbia still use today. Neda told me that she studied all of this in her history lessons in school. When we first started dating, she transcribed my name in Glagolitic on a beautiful card that she had made up by hand.

Remembering this and the kazun she gave to me when we first met really made me realize how connected she was to her Croatian heritage. We had met each other during her very first few months in Canada.

"RideDOT.com" in Glagolitic. Not a phonetic translation, just the keyboard alphabet transliteration

Enjoying the beautiful weather up on the stone walls of Roč

 

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After walking around Roč, we hopped back in the car for a very short drive to Kotli, just a few kms away. There's a small waterfall there where we could go hiking around and then sit at a nearby cafe overlooking the water.

Hanging out in old familiar haunts

There's a watermill at the falls in Kotli. Neda told me how when she was a kid, her dad used to get called out for field work in this area. She would accompany him and they'd pack a ham sandwich for lunch and eat it here out on the rocks by the falls. She told me that she remembered thinking that those were the most delicious ham sandwiches ever.

I could listen to Neda talk about her childhood all day. Her stories about the memories she made in all of these places are way more interesting than any wikipedia article I could cut and paste.

Tajana and Neda hanging out at the waterfall

I made a new friend!

Autumn leaves collect on the water

 

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After the waterfalls, Iva and Tajana took us to the nearby town of Hum

Hum bills itself as the smallest town in the world. And also proudly boasts being part of the Glagolitic Trail

Walking through the gates of the medieval town of Hum

Hum is pronounced "Hoom". Population: 20

 

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Childhood friends just chilling out

I'm a bit mystified by female friendships. They lack the common bonds that typify male friendships, like burping, farting and making jokes and laughing about burping and farting. Also, I've noticed female nicknames are more endearing. Usually they're a cutesified version of their real names. Tajana's nickname is Tayo. Iva's nickname is Zoof (for her last name).

Men's nicknames are usually bestowed after the least attractive part of their body or the most embarrassing thing their friends have seen them do (most often while drunk). They can get so insulting and demeaning that if anyone outside the circle of guy friends were to use that nickname, it would be instant grounds for a fist fight.

Neda and I have pretty much been each others sole source of companionship for over three years, literally joined at the hip for all that time. We're husband and wife, and each other's best friends. But it's difficult to fulfill the other's need for same-sex friendships. Actually, it's only difficult for me, since I've got a million nicknames for Neda (she's still not too happy about "My little Smartie") and I constantly make burp and fart jokes around her anyway...

I can see that being back in Pula with her childhood friends is really filling that need for gals-only time that she was sorely missing while being on the road. I suppose I could learn to paint toenails and talk and talk and talk for hours and hours and hours. And not burp and fart so often... No, that last part's a dealbreaker. Not gonna happen.

I see how Neda is when she's here and happy and laughing and enjoying herself. That makes me so incredibly happy myself.

Talking about girl stuff. And then minutes later, they broke out the toenail polish...

In comparison, men just like to hang out with each other and be dogs,
chase bitches around and sniff each others butts. Well maybe not that last part so much...

 

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Watching the sun slowly move across the sky in a familiar country, the NedaLands

Thanks Iva, for the great picture of us!

Half the population of Hum live in the buildings in this picture

The other half live here...

What a great day, hanging out with old friends!

Smell roses

You can travel for years and years, turn miles and miles beneath your wheels. You can chase every burning sunset to the ground of a different country every night, lie awake till morning to breathe in the foreign sky of a brand new day. Laugh at how funny these new words feel when they're rolling around in that same old mouth that you use to smile at strangers and talk and drink their wine until nobody's strange anymore. Or until everybody is. Fall in love with this, and leave. Fall in love with that. And leave.

And then sometimes you can stay awhile. Laugh with friends. Tell stories that you've told a hundred times to people that have heard those same stories a hundred times before. Because they're in those stories. You can watch the same sun fall to familiar ground every night. And you can smell roses in your own back yard.

You can stay awhile. Laugh with friends.

 

[Dougnuts]

Gene, this was my favorite update in quite some time. Thank you for sharing your story, your life, with us.

 

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Thanks for the encouragement! Appreciate it!

 

[G Beasley]

When I forget to check in for a few weeks and come back to two pages of beauty I feel like I have won the Superbowl. Thanks for taking the time to post your travels for the rest of us to live vicariously through.

 

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/268.html

Wow! Almost a month in Croatia and the weather is still amazing, which means that there's absolutely no reason to leave.

Here's a bunch of stuff we've done in the past week or so:

Putting around downtown Pula in the last few weeks of Fall

 

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We gave a presentation at one of the high schools in Pula!

One of Iva's friends, Nataša, is a teacher. She teaches English in a high school and when she heard that we were in town, she asked if we could come in and talk a bit about our travels to her kids. That way they could get more exposure to native English speakers (that's me) and still have some link to Croatia (that's Neda).

We've done a few presentations about our travels during the past few years. But talking in front of teenagers is very different than speaking to a group of adults. The biggest difference is their attention span. I found that you couldn't rely solely on the material to engage them. Especially not for 45+ minutes! I kept their interest up by asking questions like, "What's the weirdest food you've eaten? Here's a picture of some grasshoppers we ate. Oh yeah, I also ate brains in Mexico!" "EWWWW!!!" haha, kids are the same everywhere.

The girls loved hearing Neda talk about how we met and about our relationship on the road. And they all loved hearing about and seeing pictures of all the animals we saw on our travels: giant turtles, camels, cobras, llamas, penguins, marine iguanas... I really like giving presentations to teenagers, they're so much more expressive in their enthusiasm. Nataša had to shush them a few times when the topics got very interesting! They were such a fun audience!

I also like that we got to relive our trip all over again. We've been stationary for so long now, and still trying to decide if we should stop or continue. Talking about our experiences really got us excited about travel again, if only temporarily. I still kinda like not moving and not doing anything. Need more of that.

After the presentation, the kids followed us out into the parking to see our Round-The-World machines

They had so many more questions once they saw the motorcycles. All the boys wanted to sit on the bikes.

 

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Our social life has gotten much busier as well. One evening, Neda's friend Vedrana and her husband Zoran invited all their friends over for a beer-tasting party. It was a beer pot-luck, so everybody brought a case of the most exotic beer they could find. We brought Croatian beer...

Zoran took care of the food:

"Pod Pekom" literally means "Under the lid" in Croatian

There is a unique Croatian style of cooking called "pod pekom". It involves baking food, typically meat and potatoes, in a ceramic dish covered by a cast-iron dome. The domed lid ("peka") is then covered with hot ashes and the food inside is slow-cooked for well over an hour. What makes peka cooking so delicious is the lid is air-tight so all the steam and juices are locked inside.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one entranced by this traditional method of cooking. Neda's friends (Yes! The Croatian ones!) were also gathered around the peka taking pictures of Zoran as he walked back and forth between the fire pit carrying shovelfuls of hot ashes to pour on top of the peka. So it's not like every Croatian has one of these in their back yard and they eat peka cooking every night...

You don't want to peek too often "pod pekom" so you keep all the juices inside. Our food was ready in an hour and a half!

Meanwhile inside, Vedrana had the beer-tasting menu all set up Let the games begin!

Good times!

 

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Iva lives just down the street from us in Medulin, so she's over all the time to hang out. One evening we got to talking about what she was going to do on her vacation time over the holidays. "I'm going to Thailand for a couple of weeks. I've been planning this trip for months!", she told us with excitement. And then she added jokingly: "You should come too!"

All conversation halted as Neda and I looked at each other with wide open eyes. We were both thinking the same thing. Why were we so fixated on staying with the bikes in Europe over the wintertime? Even in the most southern parts of Europe it's still friggin' cold! And we've heard that it's so much cheaper in Thailand than it is here, so at least our travel funds won't hemorrhage as rapidly over there. It just makes perfect sense.

Iva looked at us incredulously. "Really? Just like that?"

A few days later, we had booked ourselves seats right beside her on her flight from Zagreb to Bangkok.

I forwarded her our itinerary via e-mail. She responded, "I hate you guys"

Note the smiley is outside of the quotes...

Prepping the bikes for winter storage

It's quite fortuitous that all of this is happening around Pula. Neda has family here who have generously allowed us to store our bikes in their garage over the wintertime.

We're normally so bad with bike maintenance. We've left our bikes behind a couple of times before to visit Toronto for a few weeks and we've always managed to come back to flat batteries. So this time we're going to do things right. I picked up a couple of battery tenders and bought some fuel stabilizer. We might be gone for quite a few months so we want to make sure the bikes are going to be okay when we get back.

*Hopefully* everything will be okay when we get back.

Goodbye, babies! We're going to miss you soooo much!

We still don't know what our future is going to look like, but at least we'll have a few months in a much warmer climate to figure it all out.

It's interesting to see how our meandering route over the years has taken a couple of drastic turns that we could not have foreseen. Lately, we've been so heads-down on a path that's seemed laid out for months ahead of us and now everything is wide open again. It's very exciting!

RideDOT.com winter vacation in Thailand! See you all on the other side of the world!!!

 

[Herbie]

Yay! That's so awesome. Fortune favors the bold, Gene and you both are so very bold. Hope it's a great time!

 

[profdlp]

Yay! That's so awesome. Fortune favors the bold, Gene and you both are so very bold. Hope it's a great time!

Very well put - it does indeed! :coffeedrink: