No pictures today. Well, only one. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to finish and get out of the rain. We started the day in the midst of a heavy downpour and in the middle of rush hour in Tirana. It was not pleasant. We leave Albania tomorrow and while I have enjoyed the scenery I will be happy to leave Albanian drivers. It is not that they are doing anything wrong and, in fact, they have generally been very polite to me. However, they have a way of driving that I would have trouble getting used to. They appear to be heavily focused on what is in front of them and totally unaware of what is beside or behind them. As a result, they do things that I am not prepared for such as slamming on the brakes when they pass an open parking spot and start backing up against traffic to get the spot. They seem to not care what is behind them and the cars all seem to move out of the way for them. They also will make sharp right turns right if front of other cars ( or bicycles). If someone in the car needs to run an errand they will stop and double park backing up traffic for blocks. At rush hour a two lane road becomes a three lane road and bicycles just need to squeeze in wherever they can. I could go on but you get the idea. It all seems to work for them just fine but it made for very hectic riding until we were out of the city center.
Today was an easy ride of about 100Km and we experienced a wide range of Albania (except mountains and I am not complaining). We started off with the city traffic and then we moved to the outskirts of the city. Still heavy traffic but not as intense. In this section we went by at least 50 furniture stores. They all had similar names, first the word for furniture (mobilje) followed by a first name (maybe the store’s owner?). Such as Mobilje Reyna. Next we went up into the foothills and saw small farms, small villages, pasture land, small industry, and then finished our trip on a major highway back with the traffic.
The rain was continuous until about 11 and then it was intermittent until about noon. After that it stopped but by then we were all totally soaked. The group hotel tonight is a combination gas station and hotel. It is many levels below the one we stayed at in Tirana. However, they did not have a sufficient number of rooms for the whole group so 4 lucky riders, including me, get to stay in a nearby hotel which is several levels below that hotel in quality. The good news is that it is only one night.
Tomorrow we have a long ride with significant climbing at the end of the ride. We enter Montenegro. It is also supposed to rain again.
