Day 6. May 2. Augustow - Bialystok on a bicycle

Distance: 97 km, Augustow - Bialystok

Total distance: 560 km

Expenses: 3,49 PLN (50 RUB/ 0,87 EUR)

Highlights: dead hedgehogs, crosses

Continuing with the life of an early riser, I got up at 6 a.m. today. So productive: I planned to leave around noon so I had plenty of time to do my workout (crunches and pushups, holding the squats for now), download fresh podcasts for the day, have two breakfasts and cook some bulgur for the road.

Weather was great today: while it was a bit chilly at times, there was almost no wind, some sun got out of clouds once in a while and overall it was very pleasant ride. Most of the time I was able to do 30 km/h.

As I ran out of raisins, I stopped at the local "McDonald's of the retail" LIDL. No raisins. Only some luxury mini pack of some yellow fancy ones which wouldn't be enough for even one snack break. So I had to supplement the bananas I got with a small pack of cookies.

Mood of the day, despite the nice weather, was very anxiousey-cemeterey. First, there were so many dead hedgehogs on the road. Second, closer to Bialystok there was a huge chunk of road where every 100-200 meters there was some kind of cross/grave thing which made me think about drunk drivers and accidents and compare amounts to Russia. It was hard to believe that people here would recklessly kill more people on the road. Maybe it was just a rule to put these here for each death on the road, and in Russia only a few would do that?

I started my Polish language lessons on the road with "sklep" - store (it's fun to compare to Russian as "sklep" means some kind of burial vault in Russian.

Having arrived to Bialystok around 8 p.m., I found my host's house and was pretty soon asleep: no energy for dinner, just finishing the apple chips.

Next day: relaxing in Bialystok