A peaceful, foggy and cold morning ride


For this weekend I planned to ride another flat route with a target distance of 70 kilometres. Cycling loves company, so I posted the ride on the Bike Cruising Facebook group to invite other riders to join.
There were several interested people, but most cancelled for various reasons. Finally, only one rider joined me - Vlado - a friend from my previous company.

Going through the bad luck early in the morning
This morning I got up early, ready to wait for possible late arrivals on the designated meeting place of the ride. When I went to get my bike, I found that the front tire is flat. No point in kicking myself that I didn't check the bike last night, I  pulled out the spare tube that I planned to take on the ride and replaced it. I didn't bother to fully inflate the tube, just rushed to the meeting place and got there by 7 AM.
No sun this morning
I went to the meeting place, and continued fiddling with the tire, inflated and adjusted it. Since nobody arrived by 07:10, I started towards the secondary meeting place to join Vlado.

The weather was cloudy, with a bit of fog. As I rode towards the outskirts of the city, the fog got thicker. When I finally met up with Vlado, the visibility was quite poor. But we decided to go on.

Relaxed ride on a nearly empty road
The early morning and the fog actually helped us - there was very little traffic. We were able to ride next to each other and talk for the better part of the ride.

After we cleared the city limits, visibility conditions slowly started to improve, and although the air was quite humid, it wasn't cold and the visibility was good.

We kept a good pace, around 27 km/h for most part of the ride. Since Vlado rides a great vintage Peugeot road bike, going off-road was not an option which cut our route by 10 kilometers. We rode past Rzhanichino, then took the asphalt road to Oreshani and back towards Drachevo and Skopje.


Back to Skopje and the fog

Back to the city and fog
Skopje greeted us with fog, and a lot of traffic. Riding next to each other become a very dangerous idea, and we went on single file. Once we entered Skopje, Vlado turned towards home, and I went on to reach my distance target - rode to the other end of the city, then turned back and added some kilometres by riding up to the Zajcev Rid hill, then down and finally home.

Morning on Zajcev Rid hill by Spirovski Bozidar
The total distance I rode was 65 kilometers, at an average speed of 24km/h. Here is the Strava recording of the route


The ride was great, although the riding conditions were not perfect. Some people may avoid the ride because of the fog. To all those, I send regards with the following slide.

Perfect Conditions by the Wheel Brothers

What is your weekend ride? Tell us in the comments!


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About Bozidar Spirovski

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3 comments:

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  2. Skopje greeted us with fog, and a lot of traffic. Riding next to each other become a very dangerous idea, and we went on single file. Once we entered Skopje, Vlado turned towards couponforessays.com home, and I went on to reach my distance target - rode to the other end of the city, then turned back and added some kilometres by riding up to the Zajcev Rid hill, then down and finally home.

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