Margaret coins the label agribiking for the style, where we web the Czech countryside on dirt or gravel or fragmenting asphalt roads abandoned by all but farmers imprinting tractor treads in the mud, perhaps their teen sons sometimes on coughing motos. The edge of fields grown over, but with the telltale dual track hint of way round and there and to. Kilometers and turns and silence unless we’re laughing at the small wheels in the ruts and holes or grass clumped in the derailleurs. Small islands of woods, ornate iron crucifix at hardly used forks, rural cemeteries. Learning countours as they were before the unimaginative linearity of paving for cars, and catching something of the reserved smiles of Czechs in modest roadhouses.
Joe Cruz 