On the road again in the Czech Republic with Mirek - year two.

It was almost exactly a year ago that I rode a multi-day bike tour in the southern Czech Republic with my Prague son's father in law, Mirek, and his wife Hanka.  As we were going self supported, I rented an e-bike to compensate for the weight of the panniers. Mirek speaks no English and I speak no Czech, but Google translate made it easy to plan the trip and make daily decisions on stops, route changes, and meals.

Google translate is an amazing tool. If you have any language anxiety keeping you from foreign travel, forget it. Google translate not only allows easy text translations, in conversation mode it has speech recognition as well as "speaking" the translated phrase. Get a SIM card or overseas data package for your phone and using Google search and a map program, you will soon be just as comfortable planning and traveling as if you were at home in the US.

For our tour, using an e-bike was equally amazing. You can forget about packing light and basically travel with any gear that fits in your panniers.

The three of us had such a great trip that we agreed to try to do it again. So here we are a year later planning another tour.

I tried TikTok to keep in touch with family and friends last year but found that not being able to edit or add content was too restrictive. This year I am going to try an iphone blog. I'm doing this first entry on my Macbook where it is easy to change and add. We'll see how this works on the road.

A few pictures from last year below.

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Mirek and Hanka



Moravia and our (approximate) route.



Conferring (with Google Translate).


The riding.











Food was always a highlight after the days miles.




And at the end of the day, a beer.














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