Oct 17 – 73km
Oct 18 – 72km

The roads from Mareda were pretty busy and and the surroundings were swallowed in the signs of the tourist economy now going into hibernation. We tried to buy some meat from the roadside pig roasts without asking the price first and the man tried to charge us something like 30 euros at the register. Naturally we balked and continued down the road, sure to find another one at a reasonable rate. The fresh roastted pork was a hungry vegabonds dream and we stuff ourselves only to have to ride into a hard climb, belching the whole way up. For most of the day we were trying to out run the dark clouds behind us but eventually got caught right as we needed to pitch our tents. It rained hard enough to soak our shoes through but not for long enough to keep us inside our tents. Yet again, we found a great seafront site.

The next morning, just as we were about to head out, Chad made a painful discovery. The prior evening he carelessly moved his bike from one tree to the other so that it could be closer to the tent. He forgot to check to make sure all of his bungee cords were properly stowed and this morning when he saw a small bungee that was missing a hook, he instantly feared the worst. And so it was. Broken spoke by the sea. This is exactly why we both left for this journey with extra spokes, but we never figured it would be human error but rather a cause of nature, the nature of constant riding a bike day in day out for months.

Chad kept calm for the most part and got busy repairing the wheel, and did a decent job for being his first. We headed to Pula, the next big town to find a bike shop to true the wheel only to discover that it was sunday. Nothing is open on sunday, so we took our chances and headed dead on into the wind up the Istrian coast to get us to a campsite near the Brestova Ferry to Island Cres.

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Campsite near Fazana, croatia

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Striping off the tire to replace broken spoke

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Roman Ampitheater in pula, croatia