Balkan bikin'

I made it. After 9 hours of flying, 10 hours of airport sitting, 2 bus rides, a 2-hour car ride and a 4-hour train ride, I am sitting on top of a mountain in the Slovenia Alps, looking out over a beautiful green valley toward Austria.

We're at The Mountain Bike Park Hotel, a beautiful hotel on the side of a mountain in a beautiful valley in northern Slovenia, just south of Austria and a couple of hours from the capital Ljubljana. We're doing a sneak preview of a new 8-day mountain bike tour to be offered in 2009, with 4 days in Slovenia and 4 days in the Istrian Peninsula region of Croatia. I arrived to find Doug, Sacred Rides über-client (5 tours so far) in heavy relax mode on the porch of the hotel.

The hotel is also a working organic farm, with cows, pigs, chickens and a variety of fruit trees and vegetables. It's a pastoral paradise here, and you can almost feel the clocks slow down as you arrive.

Dixi, the owner, greeted me with a shot of local whiskey that could have peeled the paint off the next door barn, but which tasted surprisingly good. Tomorrow the rest of our trip mates join us: 2 writers, 1 photographer, and 5 of our clients. For now it's just me, Doug, Dixi and his family, and a lot of livestock.

After a delicious homemade lunch prepared by Dixi's wife using local vegetables, Doug and I were itching to hit the bikes. Dixi had to do some farming, so it would be just us two, me and Doug deep in the heavily forested Alps of Slovenia. Luckily I can speak Croatian, which is similar enough to Slovenian to help out in a pinch.

Dixi's son gave us some basic directions ("go that way, then stay left"). We headed up the road, climbing in the late afternoon light. The road soon passed a farmhouse then dropped into the forest, a nasty, burly affair that had us on the backs of our seats and on our brakes. We dropped into an overgrown section alongside a creek, with branches whipping our legs and arms. At that point we were pretty sure we hadn't followed Dixi's son's directions, had made a wrong turn, and were lost in Slovenia. Eventually we came to a creek crossing and found a local who pointed us in the right direction. We eventually ended up back on the road and followed it for a while until we spied a tantalizing climb on our right.

We jumped at the chance to get off the asphalt and began climbing. After 2 days of traveling, it sure felt good to be climbing on a bike again. After about 3 or 4 km of climbing, I spied the faint remains of a trail dropping in to the forest. We dropped our bikes to take a further look: the trail wasn't much more than a game trail, but looked like it had been ridden, perhaps ages ago. We didn't need much more encouragement. Doug dropped in first and I followed. The singletrack was rough but beautiful. The forest was full of giant fir trees stretching 100 feet into the air, with little underbrush: perfect territory for mountain biking.

We whooped and hollered our way down the trail as the afternoon light faded. Eventually the trail spit us out back onto the road as the sun ducked behind a balkan mountain. There wasn't a car in sight for miles, just quite farmland and spectacular peaks.

It's going to be a great 8 days.

Mike