end of the riding, 2026

So… that wasn’t much of a bike tour. After crossing into Bulgaria from Greece, I called it quits. Maybe it was the crazy ambient heat, or the similarly hot blasting fire of wind in my face for most of that last riding day, or the fact that in Bulgaria there is essentially no shoulder to the road and folks seem to drive just that much more aggressively… yeah, all of the above. Safety first, they say - and, on occasion I listen. So I called an audible at the line of scrimmage, as everyone here surely refers to it, in Kardzhali - where naturally the first people I meet are two Bulgarian-Canadian cyclists who stubbornly vow to continue their similarly majority-of-day-miserable cycletrek. (I see them later in Sofia, and they, too, are thinking differently by then about dealing with heat and riding) Yes, in the moment they’ve shamed me, I suppose, but I am nothing if not resolute. Riding’s over.

But the trip ain’t! The good news is that, in Europe, anyway, there are trains.… and they take bikes. So that’s what I do, next spending several nights each in Plovdiv, Sozopol, Veliko Tarnovo, and then finally over a week in the capital, Sofia. It’s a highlight tour of Bulgaria and of those places fill that bill. Thracian, Roman, Byzantine, medieval, and more recent history lessons abound here, where cultures have met (and clashed) for millenia. There would also be some bobbing like a cork in the Black Sea, too, when it wasn’t mountains, valleys, ruins, and generally friendly dealings with these easygoing people - although, to be fair, I steadily curse the fact that so many people smoke here, a surprising relic of the past that is still very much alive here. and Greece, though less so there. For such troubles I learn a new alphabet, cyrillic, but not a new language, in the process. (Bulgarian is a Slavic language, which upon my studying some Slovak nearly a decade ago, I summed up as structurally German… before making everything more complicated by a factor of three for the extra cases, word endings, and more.) In the touristy areas, English is out and about, luckily enough, but as soon as you leave those, it is gone, baby gone. I manage.

Oh, and by the way, that country where they nod to say no, and shake their head you say yes? This is that country… and that has gotten me into only minor troubles to date. Stay tuned?

Meanwhile, I’m determined to try as much local food as possible, and in this area I am very successful indeed. Hearty, tasty food, thankfully. They do love their yogurt, bread and cheese, and seemingly will find a way to put those in almost everything, but… so be it, and soooooo… I walk… a lot. In the effing heat methinks sometimes too much, but I walk. Now there’s no biking to help burn that stuff off, so… walk, TripTrumpet, walk. Play your silly horn in between if you must.. Sure, I run, too… all of once, and where I almost immediately tripped on landmark-sized cobblestone to catch a bus. That scraped a lot of skin, gave minor bruising in a few places, plus as a bonus it smashed the screen of my ancient iphone in the process. True, I really needed to update the thing since it sports the now-unsupported X version, so now I guess that moment is suddenly at hand… when I get back home, anyway. Thankfully, the thing still works and is quite useful the way things are done these days. Maybe I will again be donated someone’s castoff old iphone or I will actually plunk down some change to move a few more steps toward whichever is the current generation. Whatever. Let’s face it, the first version of the iPhone already did everything we wanted; we’re just stuck with this shitty system of forced updates and replacements for no appreciable improvement or upgrade.

In general, Bulgaria has been easy on the wallet, but apparently just a year ago it was significantly cheaper as they’ve just now switched to the euro and there have been the usual hijinks of businesses playing games with prices in the confusion which has not been excepted here.

As for the bike, I will be leaving it here in Sofia, or so I have been led to believe and do think it will happen today or tomorrow with this university student I met in Sozopol, who offered to let it stay at his father‘s house in Sofia. Assuming that all works, I should ride next year from Sofia toward KrakówPL under hopefully somewhat better weather by starting earlier. We shall see, but I do believe my days of just putting up with crazy heat and/or humidity while cycling are pretty much through. There are good rides to be had, and those will be what I will have. Having to get up at 5 or 6 to get in some cool air riding before holing up somewhars for most of the day to escape Sauron’s watchful eye of a fireball ain’t acceptable any longer for me.

From Sofia, finally, I will head to London in several days for a couple of weeks (I won’t post about that, you’re welcome, but many thanks to Igor for the stay!) and then home. Work will start up a few days later. Someone has to teach those pesky university students to pull their heads out of their arses - and I guess I’m that person, for a little bit longer, anyway. Hope everyone’s having a good summer; I now feel quite confident that my house won’t be burned down for me to return to. The same will not be able to be said about hundreds of thousands of acres of forest nearby. The Little Giant Fire is a big’un and will churn away for a good while yet, a Top 10 fire in the nation. Yay. Boo.