Blizzard day on the Pusta

Today we didn’t cycle anywhere!
Today we didn’t sail anywhere either!
Today we flew from Kosice in Slovakia to Encs in Hungary 🙂 🙂 🙂

This time the weathermen were right. When we looked out from our window over the roof tops in Kosice’s old town we could see snow blowing around in the air. It was easy to decide to stay in bed for an extra hour. The wind was strong and it looked cold outside, but the forecast promised the wind would come from the north and since we were going south we decided to go for it.

Once outside on the streets we found out that it wasn’t so cold, only -1 degrees, but the wind was indeed very strong and it came straight from the north.

The road from downtown Kosice towards the Hungarian border was straight to the south and never in my life of touring cycling have I been able to continously cruise on a fully loaded touring bike between 30-40 km/h for kilometer after kilometer. It was an amazing feeling to fly with the wind with snow whirling around us.

There wasn’t anybody at the slovak-hungarian border but we made a brief stop to follow our routine of taking some photos every time we cross a border.

About some 25 km and 50 minutes after leaving the border we came to the first gas station. It was right outside a little town called Encs. Since we hadn’t used much effort to get there we were cold and hungry. The guy who fills people’s tanks felt pity for the two cyclists who came cycling in the snowstorm and invited us to park our bikes in the washing hall.

An hour and a couple of cups of coffe later we decided to go into Encs town to try to ride east on a small road towards Tokaj. Normally when you ride a bike and look straight down, you will see the top tube and under it the pedals. Today it was not like that – we had to lean towards the wind like windsurfers and when looking down we saw the road, not our pedals.

Besides poor balance, mother nature had also arranged for some snow and ice on that little countryside road too and we were simply blown off from the road a couple of times.

The wind was roaring so we had to shout to communicate and after a few hundred meters we nodded towards each other that we had got enough. We turned around and went back into town and found some shelter behind a building and discussed what to do. The temperature had fallen to -5 and the strength of the wind had apparently increased significantly during the past hours and we felt that riding with the wind into our backs was no problem, but even the most tiny side wind would cause us balance problems. The small road to the east was impassable and the big main road to the south was possible to ride on as long as it was straight with the wind. The tiniest change of wind direction or turn on the road would cause balance problems and with trucks passing us all the time, it would be seriously dangerous so we decided to stop where we were.

This was the first time in my cycling career that tailwind has made me stop cycling….

We circled around to find somewhere to stay, but everything was closed. A gentleman at a bus stop told us that there was a motel 2 km further down the big road, so we flew there with wind on our backs. This hotel was big and open and the guy at the reception told us to park in the garage.

Since it was rather early in the afternoon we spent some time on maintainence. I cleant all of our 4 chains, the cassettes and the chainrings while Wej went over all the panniers.

The storm seems to cause problems to the infrastructure here too. The light flickers a bit and the internet is really slow and uploading any picture seems impossible. Before it got dark we saw three guys going up to fix something on the roof. I guess they were securing some parts from blowing away. It really feels good that we decided to stay away from the road this afternoon.

We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The forecast says the wind will ease, but we will decide on if and where to go after we have had breakfast.