Because the Serbian food recommendation that our host Mirka gave us was too far away from where we stayed, we went to the fancy option she mentioned when she got us settled into the nice short-stay rental apartment she and her husband are running besides their regular jobs. Our gin tonic, coke, sparkling water, burger, plate of pasta all’arrabiate, and four scoops of ice cream came to CHF 30, which is rather expensive for Serbia, and almost equalized our housing cost (EUR36).
We slept very, very well in the comfy bed (and me also because I had a dry day). After getting up and burek leftovers, we rolled out of town at 10.00. The route today would be long at 90km / 56 miles, but basically flat.
The flats and proximity to Beograd brought rather boring sights and busy roads. The only remarkable landmarks were the churches we looked at in Valjevo and Ub.
What we looked at and wondered about more along the way were the rather deep tire tracks on the side of the road, which further resulted often in pronounced rims at the edges toward the outside of the road – exactly where a cyclist would want to ride. My theory is that they form due to heavy trucks and bad road foundation. Liz was trying to find out if they are more pronounced in uphills, but did not come to a definitive conclusion.
It was also raining on-and-off, so we stopped a few times for putting raingear on and taking it off again. For lunch, we stopped at a Pekara for burek, and then got in a heavier rain again.
In this rain is when it happened, and a ridge like the one above was to blame for my fall. I think I was not paying enough attention to the road, because I was also focusing on not riding too close to Liz for the water spray from her back wheel. This is harder than it sounds because my default behavior, and it’s been default for many kilometers now, is to ride close enough to draft.
Anyway, my front wheel was going up the ridge, or snake as Liz likes to call them, but because it was wet, the wheel slipped back down, so my bike stayed on the left of the ridge while my body had acquired good momentum going to the right. The result was one of those slow-mo moments where all you can think is “ok, I am going down”. Because it was flat, we were going at least 20km/h / 12mph, so there was quite some deceleration as I hit the gravel driveway of a house, using my hands and right elbow to soften the landing. I yelled for Liz and then got up, seeing some blood on my hands and elbow. While I was annoyed at myself for not paying enough attention, I was also feeling very, very lucky, because looking at where I crashed, I realized that if I had fallen three meters later, which at 20km/h is only half a second, I would have hit the concrete ditch and would very likely have ended up with broken bones. After checking myself a bit more, I found only flesh wounds.
We took a breather, washed the wounds out with water, and then carried on. In the next town, we stopped at bar to wash the wounds, and then bought disinfectant, gauze and bandages to wrap my elbow and left palm which got it worst.
Cycling the last hour to the hotel was actually not too bad, it was only annoying that I could not hold the handlebar properly. And shortly after the fall, we could switch from the busy main road to the old road to Beograd that follows the river, which had much less traffic.
As we entered the city, we stopped at a bike store to buy new handlebar tape, as the one we have has shifted and ripped too much by now and is not providing much cushioning anymore.
The routed road going to the city center would have been very busy, but thankfully, Liz spotted a cycle path following the river, where Liz took the picture at the top. The cycle path brought us almost to the hotel, which we reached after a short climb up the hill. I am glad we have two rest days here, so I can recover a bit before going on. As I am writing this a day later, the wounds already started to scab. Our bodies are such amazing machines with their self-healing powers!
Total distance/elevation to date: 4870km/41’068m
Rest days: 16
Route and Stats
Relive Video
The 1948 Tour 
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