Biking and Kayak Races

We don't want to make all of the Midwesterners reading this jealous, but we've really had some beautiful spring weather here.   :-)   Friday was gorgeous, and I ended up taking two of my regular classes outside to have conversation while sitting on the grassy area in front of the school.  It just so happened that the lesson plans didn't involve any written materials, so it worked out well to soak up a little Vitamin D!!  


I rode my bike alongside Tim as he walked to volleyball, since my trip home would still be in daylight, but it would be dark for his return trip after basketball.  It's nice to be riding again!  

On my way into our block of flats after volleyball, carrying bags of groceries and pushing my bike through the lobby and into the storage area, one of our neighbors from upstairs was also heading into the storage area.  We rode the elevator up together, and she randomly gave me these two jars of home-canned produce.  I think one contains some pickled peppers (eat your heart out, Peter Piper) and the other may be red cabbage.
How sweet of her!!  (And of course our conversation was lively, but without much mutual understanding since my Slovak is so minimal!)  

Then on Saturday, Tim and I went bike riding together, doing some shopping and errands at places farther away than our usual walking expeditions.  Along the way, we "stopped to smell the flowers" a few times!!  :-)

A colorful yard through a fence.

The first daffodils of spring will always remind me of Nancy Linden.      :-)                   (Thanks for the bouquets over the years, dear friend!!)

Some pretty tulips!  

More daffodils and tulips.   As we rode, I kept yelling ahead at Tim --- "I'm stopping for a picture!!"    :-)

And yes, my favorite spring flowers are blooming here in Slovakia ---- violets!!   :-)

Today we had a pleasant walk to church in lighter coats and wearing 'normal' clothes instead of extra layers for warmth!  Jan translated for us today, and the new female pastor did a great job.  After listening to our sermon online at home and having Sunday dinner, we did some skyping (so awesome!!), then headed out on another bike ride.  We headed towards the river to see how far the bike path would take us along the Vah.  On the other side of the river, we saw big crowds of people, many cars parked, and a lot of foot and bike traffic heading across the bridge to whatever was going on.  So we decided to check it out!!

We knew there was a white-water area somewhere in the area, and that's where all the action was.  It was evidently a kayak racing competition!

It was quite exciting watching the competitors paddling through the gates, much like slalom skiers go through in races.  

We had heard about this whitewater area, which is a man-made training and competition area.   It's huge!!  

There was a huge bleacher area for spectators too, but everyone was out along the banks watching instead.

There were judges set up in little booths all along the race course, to make sure the kayakers went through all the gates correctly.  

The boulders they had to paddle around looked pretty scary!! 

This area ran parallel to the race area, and it seemed to be more of a training area with less difficult rapids to negotiate.  (The Vah River is over to the left along the treeline, and the race course is to the right of the sidewalk and bicycles.)

There were several bridges over the race course, and it was really cool to watch the kayakers from up above.  Some of the fans would run alongside on the shore, shouting encouragement to their favorite kayaker.  

We just kept walking farther and farther to see the whole race area.  (We started at the finish line, so kept going upstream until we got to the starting line and the holding area upstream from that.)

The whole area was packed with vans and kayak trailers from all over Europe.  This was a Czech team's van.

I got a kick out of the start line - spelled Štart - which would be pronounced like "shtart" in Slovak!            :-)  

When we went across the bridge and over to the official-looking areas, we found the bulletin board describing this as an international competition, and it was interesting that the signage was in English.  Since the competitors were from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy, Russia, and Poland, to name a few, the common language is English.  

One of Tim's students is a kayaker, and we even found her name on the results board.  We got to talk to her a little bit, but were disappointed that we missed seeing her compete earlier in the day and yesterday.

Not being kayak experts, we were curious about how the kayaks keep from filling up with water.  These 'skirts' evidently attach to the kayak to seal off the opening.

Another one of our students was working at a vendor booth selling popcorn, and this was delicious!  It tasted a lot like kettle corn, but it was much prettier!!  (Beth, you'd LOVE it!!)  

It was fun getting a close-up view of the kayaks drying out in the sun.  

After we left and were heading back across the bridge to town, I took this picture to show where the whitewater course rejoins the Vah River.  The water is diverted from the river much farther upstream, to flow through the man-made race course.  Pretty ingenious!  

This is taken from the town side of the bridge, looking back towards Liptovsky Mikuláš's old, original part of town, called Vrbica, across the hill with the garden plots, and to the Western High Tatras beyond.  The church in the foreground is where we went to the contemporary service on Easter Sunday,  and to the Ash Wednesday service.  

We continued riding on the bike path down the river, and there was traditional music coming from the other side.  This is the Roma (gypsy) housing area, which is quite a distance away and isolated from any other buildings. 

We really enjoyed our bike tour along the Vah River on such a beautiful spring day!  We hope the rain stops and the temperature warms up soon back in Iowa!