Day 1 - almost beat the rain

I was pretty excited to finally start riding...so after some photos, it was time for me to be on my way. It was a little odd after all of the races I have done; there was no published start time and no starter's gun. But I have ridden the beginning of the route a few times, so it was kind of like just another workout.

Getting out of Germany was uneventful. I did see lots of other cyclists with full pannier bags, especially on the bike path out of Neustadt. And I had to take the obligatory border selfie.

It was now about 1pm, so I figured I'd stop for lunch. There was a duty-free store complex only a few minutes down the road and they had a restaurant. My lunch of pizza, water, and coke was pretty good. And cheap.

After lunch I continued heading eastward and noted that while the landscape looked very similar to Germany, the road quality was definitely lacking. This was not surprising, so I'm glad I bought new gloves and my handlebars have the "squishy zones."

Once I got to the next set of climbs, I was just pushing along while trying to keep things easy. This goes near the spa town of Mariánské Lázně, but I wasn't close enough to see anything. Plus, I was not stopping until I got to the top.

At some point, I started hearing thunder, so that definitely motivated me to pick up the pace a little bit. I only had 10km left to go when I turned onto a beautifully paved road with a slight downhill. For a few minutes, it was absolute bliss.

But then the road got bad again and it started raining a bit. I stopped briefly to put on my rain jacket and within a few minutes it started raining really, really hard. It was getting difficult to see out of my rain covered sunglasses, plus the bike computer's screen was also completely wet. I then realized that my hotel was at the top of this ridiculously steep hill that now looked like a waterslide.

Somehow, I made it. Once at my hotel, there were more challenges. The staircase up to the rooms was crazy. This is the view going down:

You may notice that the steps are notched like filing folders. The pitch was so steep, that was the only way to have enough of a step. Needless to say, I did not bring my bike up. After detaching my bags, the receptionist/bartender gave me the remote to the garage so I did not have to leave my bike in the hallway. There was a cool, old school Skoda in the garage.

So that's my wrap up of day 1. In all, I had a great time! However, I am glad that tomorrow is going to me more downhill than uphill.

Thanks for reading!!