18
The interesting part is I still remember 940. I don't have particularly great memory for no-context information, but that was what I wrote on the pay stub at the gas station at the start of the trip. Tachometer said 71940. 10:30 phone call, 11:14 gas station. 95 octane for once, because I know I’ll spend almost all of it within the day, 10% ethanol, thanks a lot, Ursula von der Hitler. (My bike's not really rated for ethanol at all, but if I keep the diluted stuff only for a while, not over winter, it shouldn't become a problem.) Writing it on the slip I thought maybe I was misremembering the tacho, doubting myself. 940, 25 euro and change, and the lady didn’t have a 5 cent coin so I told her to take it easy and have a peaceful shift. She was nice about it too. I was about to embark on a long trip, unsure of my health, so paying the ferry(wo)man, tipping the temple of the god of travel seemed like a a smart move. Being nice probably counted for more than 5 cents.
I had a 1.5 liter bottle of the nice, expensive mineral water, a can of white monster, two packets of chocolate cookies and all the camping gear needed to cook up rice but critically, no rice. I would find it in the evening on my windowsill, packed in an old ice-cream tub that seals well. I discovered its absence around the time I was offered 3 different dishes with meat in them. It seems every serious moe motorcycle adventure includes heat exhaustion and lack of nutrition.
The route thereBratislava center to Lozorno is interesting because you pass through Záhorská Bystrica, and you’re not sure if you’re in or out of the capital. The truth is, both. Bratislava isn’t a city, it’s 15 villages strung together by a tram rail network and ZB doesn’t connect to that. It’s a true village, a place away from a place.
Past Lozorno, every map, not just OSM with its potentially out of date info, will tell you you’re on the 501. The 501 is a reliable, tried and trusted “old road”. Every country has its regional claim to a route 66, because you ain’t nothin’ until you’re a version of an American thing, but the 501, when the sun is at your back, really is something. Gentle roads with plenty of twists, and good scenic views in most directions. Castles and mountains to your east, long fields to your west. For some reason the fuckers started relabeling the road to 142 and it starts at Pernek, one of the endpoints of Pezinská Baba, west slovakia’s premier touge. This means that regardless of how well the final crossroads is imprinted on my mind, I thought I was in some other country at the sight of the road signs, and I wasn’t alone, some dudes with big boomercycles were also checking their phone maps right there. They honked at me in encouragement as they left.
4 minutes after noon I stopped at the entry to Kuchyňa to check how my face was; I ride with silium ii SHOOTING glasses, helmet visor open, which sometimes leads to a funny thing happening. A big old honeybee got caught on my forehead, right above the glasses, and was still alive and kicking when I stopped. Poor little guy was trying to hide in the helmet and eventually I found a leaf and some grass to put him down in. Was walking in circles, clearly shocked, maybe hurt. I wish I could have helped more.
30 minutes later I stopped at Buková, a village somehow existing inside the carpathian nature preserve. It’s also home to a protected water reservoir, and on the wall of a dilapidated hotel I saw the remains of a sign that said it’s illegal to camp and fish in the protected zone. Past the building were about 5 camping tents, on the other side some 20 fishing rods set up for man’s pleasure. Where I put my feet in the shallow water was also a dead fish, big adult one, about the size of one of my feet. Where I wanted to ride to, the south side of the reservoir, was already blocked off. No entry sign said only special boys and girls, property owners, allowed past this line. Now, on motorcycle, you can ignore that, but it left such a pit in my stomach I just ate a few cookies and was back on my way. I originally wanted to record the Buková forest road riding but I think the really nice and exciting one is the eastern one and so I just accepted the ride in silence and with no views, no viral, no hashtag. Incidentally, around the same time, japanese motorcycle enthusiast Junk Motorcycle uploaded a surprsingly similar woodland ride to the one I had now and also last time I passed through Buková.
Sobotište was good to me, but I actively neglected to buy food along the way (the local coop stores usually advertised Sat closing times just before I entered their village) and forgot to take the rice I prepared so I only had some walnut cake and my monster. Heard some more exciting local history, took a walk but did not find rest on account of buddy’s talkative relatives. Explained motorcycle to one of his kids. He called up a contact of his, turns out they’d been looking for an English teacher in the village but already found one. So it goes.
I forget when it is we rode out, me on two wheels and him in his car, but I let his kid turn the key and press the ignition switch. Before 19 I was stopping at a gas station not for gas, but to take a picture of the huge clouds coming on. I decided to the 502 south instead of going Šaštín-stráže and taking the highway because I understood where the sun would be shining all ride long. A funny thing happened, and I had to go past Horné Orešany to Suchá nad Parnou and then Dolany, because villages can just decide to rip up their plumbing and put a tier 2 road going through their dinky burg completely out of comission for however long they like.
The route back
I really thought I’d go all the way to Trnava and the map tells me the detour led me more than halfway there. Eventually the signs showed how to get to the exploded village, but also a sign that said Modra to the left, and I took that. A few villages later I did in fact pass Modra. I'm still not sure if I did or did not stick to the 502 in there; either it goes through Dukelská but neglects to indicate this turn, or it goes as I originally thought through the industrial section park and then fails to indicate the next T-junction to Bratislava is a left turn. Instead of Dukelská, I took one of the really nice historical promenades (easternmost one) and got a good look at a bunch of interesting-looking churches. I want to visit again sometime. The reconnecting point to 502 only has a stop sign and doesn't tell where left or right go, so I took a break, had a cookie and watched cars pass by. I took a smartphone with osmand maps with me, but stubbornly refused to keep it in a pocket, and left the phone holder at home as well, instead keeping a glasses etui on the handlebars. I used the map several times, but I always put the phone back in the same box as the cookies, and wrapped it all up in the drybag, to make using a smartphone as uninviting a proposition as possible.
I went to take a pic of the unlabeled T junction, and a man on a cool, American-style motorcycle passed by just that second. I thought to myself, hell yeah. We all have the same brain damage. I thought about phoning a friend but wouldn’t know when I’d be in, so I let it go. I thought of another friend who also used to live in the northeast of the city. I felt I was about to decode a hidden message.
Past Modra is Pezinok and motorcyclists in west Slovakia know this intimately, seeing as how it’s the other end of Pezinská Baba. You start feeling an unpleasant variation of déjà vu, where things seem familiar again and they should and that’s because you’re no longer traveling and adventuring off the beaten path, you’re where you’ve been before. The misery of normal life is now lodged back in you. You’re passing by the vehicle inspection place you used a few years ago. You’re seeing pizza and kebab shops you’ve passed a few dozen times. You’re tempted to buy a bottle of wine for no good reason.
I turned into the homie’s part of town and phoned, but no response, so I bought a bunch of tofu I’d been meaning to get ages ago and rode on back home. I showered and by the time I had a bathrobe on it was drizzling outside, the exhaust still hot but the blanket had to go on. I slept well. It rained most of the night, then clear and sunny in the morning. Wasn't to last.
19
I slept a good 15-16 hours of this 24 hour cycle we call the 19th of July 2026. It rained much of Sunday. I didn’t have much in the way of dreams, I ate some when I was awake and able to work with sharp things and electrical appliances that get hot. During this period of reconvalesence I tried to walk once a day, and usually it was to a nice lookout at the parliament. I told the boys I’m too fucked up for games, they too had matters to attend to. I used to want to stab people that cancelled on game night, and I wanted to jump off a bridge when I was the one cancelling. It’s nice we all mellowed out in the exact same way at the exact same time. On the way there I saw the cat in a neighbor's garden. She pancaked herself under the gate. The cat pissed against a wall after she was satisfied with backrubs and then pancaked herself right back under a neighbors gate to adventures awaiting.
At the view, I laughed very hard at the closest Austrian hills. Most of the year I walk to that lookout point and yearn for travel. I pine for those piece of shit hills, I know there’s nothing of value on them and yet I’d give my right arm to be passing them by or riding up them, or something. But not now, now I’m fresh off almost 200km beside hills much like those, better hills, stronger, forested, legally protected. This evening the sky is brought to me in Vice City colors, and they are shining down on entirely unremarkable geographic formations that I feel no yearning for at all. I felt only a bit of a pang in the side on the way there, and none on the way back.