Mental Maps

Day 348
Pula to Porec
Time: 5:19:00
Distance: 76.0 kilometers
Avg Speed: 14.3 kph
Terrain: Rolling
Location: N 45˚ 11’ 41.8”, E 13˚ 35’ 24.2”

My mental map for the day was about 50 km with an early afternoon arrival at a nice guesthouse. Reality took us over 75 km to Porec and a campground. So much for mental maps…

What is a mental map exactly? I picked up the term after reading a book about survival by Lawrence Gonzales. It’s the idea that when we approach a task or event, we have certain preconceived ideas about what will be the outcome. Mr. Gonzales presented different case studies and tied in the survivor or victim’s mental map. They expected to do a,b, and c while d, e, and f happened.
I’ve been trying to not pay attention to my mental map, but I think that it is human nature to formulate one. I’m getting better at not having any expectations and just being open to whatever the day brings. I think it’s a process that will last my entire life.
I picked the destination today based on the symbols on the map and the proximity to a certain town I want to visit. In addition to lovely beaches, the Istria Pennisula is said to have beautiful medieval looking towns. When we arrived at the town, there wasn’t much action and basically no guesthouses. I hadn’t really planned on anything else since guesthouses seem to be readily available. We stopped for a food and water break and made a new plan – actually a couple of them. In the back of my mind I suspected that we would end up at a campground for the night. It definitely wasn’t the first choice but a reliable one.
As we traveled down the road to Porec we found not much in the way of available or affordable rooms. We pedaled the way of the campground and stopped one last time to check out two possibilities. When we found no one at the guesthouse we rolled down the driveway to the pension (B & B). It was very nice – a quaint stone house surrounded by a vineyard and a pool. Chris found the host and quickly went to work discussing options. The man spoke a lot of Croatian, a little Spanish, and a little English. As the conversation went on we figured out that a large group had just called and was on their way to fill up the remaining rooms. We could tell that he was a little disappointed because we were ready to stay for the rest of the week, especially after we found out that the room rate included breakfast and dinner. He poured us each a glass of wine while we waited to see if his phone call panned out. As he examined his schedule book to see about any open rooms, he asked us about the distance we rode today. When we told him 70 kilometers his arms flew up in the air and he rushed to pour us another glass of wine. I think he might have even said a hail mary too.
So tonight we are in the campground after all. However, we won’t be here all week. Our new friend has an opening on Tuesday so we’ll pack our panniers and head over for four nights of home cooked meals before sailing over to Italy.

Here’s to a few glasses of wine after a long hot day on the road,
LK

Coco Butter Bread Spread

Day: 347
Labin to Pula
Time: 3:15
Distance: 49.8 km
Avg Speed: 15.3 kph
Terrain: hilly
Location: N 44˚ 51’ 25.0”, E 13˚ 48’ 53.0”

We got up early in Labin to get our day started and as it turned out, visit with our little hostess. We had our usual bowl of muesli and had planned on grabbing some coffee downstairs with Anđela (that is our hostess’ name). She had shown Leslie that she grinds her own beans and had a drip coffee maker. Anything is better than Nescafé, so we weren’t too hard to convince. She apologized that she couldn’t cook us breakfast, but since her leg was bad she had trouble getting around. We got packed up and ended up sitting in her kitchen where she had made us a pot of coffee and sliced us some bread. She went through the sugar (šećer), milk (mlijeko), bread (kleh), butter (maslac), marmalade (no special word there) and her pride and joy; a container of coco butter left by the Canadian cycle tourists a week before. She left the room to go and get some paper work for us and I quickly grabbed the coco butter to examine it. It was brand new, thankfully, and had never been used. I also verified what Leslie and I thought it really was. It was coco butter skin cream, not coco butter bread spread. She came back in the room and Leslie and I had poured ourselves some coffee and were putting butter and marmalade on our bread. She started to talk about the coco butter some more and I thought to myself ‘we have to tell her…I just don’t want to embarrass her or confuse the situation any more’. Leslie must have been thinking the same thing, because she grabbed the container and pointed to the back of it and made the motion of putting it on her skin. Anđela got it immediately and just started laughing like it was the best thing she had ever heard. She grabbed the coco butter from Leslie, looked at the back of it, laughed some more, rattled off a bunch of Croatian and put the container on her ironing board. Evidently my fears were unjustified. We finally got on the road and had a great ride cruising the back roads south. We pulled into Pula around noon and quickly found the campground and settled in for our daily tan and swim. I fell asleep and missed my swim time so we got changed and headed into town to check out the Roman Coliseum built in the first century. We got sidetracked at a colorful, lively square, but finally found it. Very cool, very old and not very touristy. We had our fill of sight seeing and went to find some dinner. One of the specialties of the Istria is truffles (the fungi, not the chocolate). I was weak and couldn’t just do truffles so I got a meat dish, but Leslie was good and got truffle ravioli. Hers was way better than mine.
We are now back in the tent where I met the hitchhiker I had picked up today. I think I got him last night since I had stored our tent bag on the ground. While unpacking the tent today I came face to face with a little scorpion who rode through the countryside with us. I set the bag on the ground to grab my camera and when I turned around the little guy was gone. He is probably in amongst the pannier bags waiting to see where we will go tomorrow.
CK