On saturday I ride out from Prague, still aching a little from my time with Batrider. but it was very good to see them. Sarah, Sam and Steph came and picked me up in Prague. It took no time at all for realations to be perfectly normal (well as normal as can be) and the 4 months apart to seem like no time at all. As it always does amongst good friends. Swim in a river, jump from a tree into its fast flow, on our way to their next venue, about an hour north of Prague. and the gig is fun, Batrider are in great form, and we spend the night in an abandoned mental asylum, with some Czech bands, pushing each other around screaming and laughing on an old mobility scooter, dodging the piles of desks and beds.
The next day we revisit that same river on our way back to Prague, and lie in the sun after a picnic lunch. The evening is blurred, my camera battery won’t charge, so I have no record of how it went. But Sarah, Sam, and Steph, played fifty metres beneath the ground in a labyrinth venue. We bolted as soon as the dance music came on, and jocks descended from the other levels. A bar before bed in a friend of friends apartment. Its going to be great to see them again soon.
Its slow progress along the intermittent quality of the Czech cycle path. Thirty kilometers out of the city I realise that I have lost my phone, a loss made more painful because I am desperate to talk to Caroline about my decision not to go back for her Birthday. In the next town I call me, and a czech man answers. Fortunately he speaks English, and I board a train back to Prague, and cycle to where I think he lives. I have the address wrong but after a few more slightly confused conversations, stuffing Kroneys into public phone boxes, he comes to where I am. Not only does he deliver my phone, but then takes me and Rose back to the town where I caught the train, and driving slowly along the river path, we choose a good place to put down my tent fro the night. He is a member of that great fraternity of cyclists and very kind.
He had found my phone half submerged in a river, and as it dries, its functions return, slowly, so that before I sleep, a can send a good night message to Caroline.