{"id":249,"date":"2012-06-10T15:40:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T15:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/?p=249"},"modified":"2012-06-10T15:40:20","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T15:40:20","slug":"revnice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/2012\/06\/revnice\/","title":{"rendered":"\u0158evnice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally got myself together, assembled my bike, and went exploring. \u00a0Obviously after I spent most of a warm, sunny Saturday inside reading it would be cold and rainy on Sunday, but it’s never actually been asserted by anyone that I make the best scheduling decisions.<\/p>\n

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Let's go!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be fair though, in Philadelphia the weather forecasters are arguably not very good at forecasting. \u00a0In Prague they take it to the next level and clearly just don’t give a damn, making up whatever they feel like. \u00a0Today’s forecast as of this morning when I left was 65, sunny & clear all day. \u00a0An hour later the actual weather was 50 and raining steadily. \u00a0Such has happened on several occasions already.<\/p>\n

Roads, Trails, Dirt<\/h3>\n

Riding in the downtown core of Prague itself is basically a ridiculous proposition. \u00a0A long time ago some guys and I were kicking around Philly on a ride near Christmas. \u00a0We hit Germantown Ave at Cresheim Valley and it was the most amazing fiasco—cobbles, trolley tracks, ice, snow, busy traffic patterns, angry holiday shoppers, chaos! \u00a0Somebody half-fell into ice water, somebody rode into a car waiting at the light, I slammed my rear wheel into a parked car to correct, it was a disaster. \u00a0For years that entire group would know exactly what you were on about if you yelled “Cycling apoc-a-lypse!”<\/p>\n

The core of Prague puts that to shame. \u00a0Forget Germantown Ave, every<\/em> road here is cobbles, with multiple trolley tracks, all going in crazy directions. \u00a0And it rains off and on all the time so everything’s crazy slick. \u00a0Plus there’s the lack of interest among European city planners in stop signs, yield signs, etc., and the resounding support that attitude gets out of every driver.<\/p>\n

Once you get out of the core though, it’s actually very ridable. \u00a0Many of the roads that are more straightforward to navigate are somewhat busy, but they’re all in surprisingly good shape and traffic seems very accommodating. \u00a0In general it also seems like the Prague area really empties out on the weekends, an observation corroborated by several guidebooks and websites I’ve read, which is perfect for long Saturday or Sunday rides.<\/p>\n

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Looking down CZ115 going out of town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Looking down CZ115 going back into town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The thing to watch though is that it’s real easy to go from a perfectly nice, smoothly paved local country road, to something much more amenable to a cyclocross bike, sometimes even a mountain bike. \u00a0Similar could be said of many places in the states, say, in Vermont. \u00a0The difference here is that dirt roads seem to not be differentiated on maps.<\/p>\n

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This isn't even the worst of it; a short bit before there were fist sized rocks everywhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similarly, there are actually a ton of fantastic bike paths around that go all sorts of places. \u00a0They’re actually fairly impressive, the network is in most ways much more substantial and interconnected than any similar system I’ve seen in the states. \u00a0But they’re super hard to follow at times as they co-exist temporarily through the occasional driveway or side street and it’s real easy to wind up off track or at a dead end. \u00a0Signage is at a definite minimum and fairly inconsistent in its placement and conventions. \u00a0Similarly to the local country roads, a lot of them also have significant gravel or dirt sections and there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell on a map.<\/p>\n

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Perfectly lovely little bike path...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Scenery along the little path...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This is going to be great, what a nice little path! The map says this goes all the way into Prague, so I'll just ride this all the way back and it'll be awesome! Mmm... What's around the corner?!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Oh. I see. No, Joe Kopena, no! How could you be so wrong?!?! Go back to start! Do not collect $200!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notably, that photo sequence is on bike route 3, where the classification scheme indicates “Single digit route:\u00a0International, very long distance route.”<\/p>\n

In many ways though the most nerveracking part of riding around is just not having any concrete idea what the signage is saying. \u00a0Usually it’s pretty clear. \u00a0This sign was a good guess to mean “Cyclists dismount,” which it does. \u00a0But does it say more (it doesn’t)—that’s a lot of words for “Dismount!?!?!” \u00a0At speed on bigger roads there’s an awful lot of “Wellppp, hope that didn’t say anything important…”<\/p>\n

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Hmmm... ???<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
All that said though, I was surprised by the conditions of the roads and trails. Almost every road I saw today was in pristine shape and very smooth. \u00a0Interestingly, though not of visibly different composition they seemed a bit more slick than most American roads, but certainly not troublingly so. \u00a0Traffic was also steady enough that I never felt alone, which I consider mostly a positive in unknown territory in case things go real sour, but generally comparatively quiet, even on numbered inter-city routes. \u00a0It will be interesting to see how much that picks up during the week when Prague and the surrounding area are busier.<\/div>\n
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The A1, one of the main bike paths in & out of Prague. Another perfectly awesome path with just a few quirks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u0158evnice<\/h3>\n

Heading out I had the loose goal of riding to\u00a0\u0158evnice, a town about 20mi south of Prague. \u00a0Poking around on Strava<\/a> this seemed to have one of the larger road climbs in the area, most of which is slightly rolling but lacking in steep or long climbs. \u00a0In general this has been by far the most interesting use of Strava<\/a> for me, even back home, exploring areas for good places to ride. \u00a0In this case the Explore view yielded a King of the Mountain segment<\/a>\u00a0in \u0158evnice. \u00a0It seemed like a bunch of locals ride it often, so I went to check it out.<\/p>\n

Without anything in the way of a “route” planned out per se, I was moderately surprised to actually make it there<\/a>, especially after a couple dead ends, some gravel, the rain, and a brief but somewhat nervy ride on the local equivalent of US30 or 73.<\/p>\n

In the end as I approached \u0158evnice\u00a0I was rewarded with sighting the first two racing-oriented-looking roadies I’ve seen here. \u00a0Neither acknowledged me, except the one guy had to when I pulled up right next to him at a blocked train crossing. \u00a0It definitely seems to be the case that in a complete reversal from American protocols, runners here all wave while cyclists of all stripes steadfastly ignore each other…<\/p>\n

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A short ride from Prague to Revnice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0\u0158evnice climb itself was definitely worth the trip<\/a> as well. \u00a0Hopefully I’ll be able to find harder, it’s basically a twisty, ~3.5 mile version of Shawmont Ave, but definitely a really pleasant little forested climb on which a pretty good workout could be put on. \u00a0I’m reasonably sure if I rode there fresh and was doing more than tooling around I could mount a credible challenge to the current Strava KOM<\/a>. \u00a0Beware, Frantisek Padour, beware!<\/p>\n

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Looking back on the top of the climb out of Revnice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Heading down into Minisek pod Brdy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally got myself together, assembled my bike, and went exploring. \u00a0Obviously after I spent most of a warm, sunny Saturday inside reading it would be cold and rainy on Sunday, but it’s never actually been asserted by anyone that I make the best scheduling decisions. To be fair though, in Philadelphia the weather forecasters … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “\u0158evnice”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[26,27,54,62],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road","category-travel","tag-europe","tag-exploratory-ride","tag-prague","tag-road-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}