Penguins Bike

July 11, 2026 - biked 0 km (0 mi) - biked 932 km (579 mi) total

I ended this last decade biking and I’ll start this new decade doing the same. What can be better than doing what you love with the people you love? I’m grateful.

I chose to bike along the Mediterranean because I wanted to evoke the same connection to water I did when biked along the Pacific Ocean in my early 30’s. It doesn’t hurt that the Mediterranean Sea has the perfect water temperature.

I wanted to do this epic bike trip to prove that 40 isn’t too old to do epic physical challenges. I loved turning 10, 20 and especially 30, but forty is such a big number in my mind.

I witnessed a tragic 40th birthday party as a child. My uncle turned forty with black balloons, black cake and dark Over the Hill banners everywhere. Maybe there was a skeleton picture somewhere over the hill.

It was a surprise birthday party from his fellow teachers. But if you knew my uncle at all, you would know he hates any sort of attention, let alone this kind. He looked miserable and the dark decor shook me as a child. I thought, if I ever get to 40, that means I’m really old, one foot in the grave.

Well my big anticipated day arrived and it was filled with things and people I love. And most importantly it wasn’t macabre.

I woke up to breakfast in bed, a family tradition. I was offered eight different pastries, and garlic, onion and spinach egg scramble complete with a procured cappuccino.

At 11ish we all headed down to see the Ljubljana wind orchestra play a free concert under the London Plane trees. A flea market nearby sparked my interest and I found a simple silver ring as a spontaneous birthday present to myself.

After the concert, we headed to our reservation for wine tasting. We found ourselves pretty tipsy as we aren’t used to much day drinking, but my mom and Peter saved the day as they ordered bread and cheese for the table.

Day drinking requires a scheduled nap time. After the nap, I chatted with some siblings and then caught a 45 minute river boat ride. The boat road through the river in Ljubljana and had some historical information but mostly just light jazz music.

The boat floated in at dinner time and we strolled to our dinner reservations at an Indian restaurant we saw when we went wine tasting.

Conversation was light as we ate such spice-rich food, further confirming the best food in the world comes from places other than Europe, with Italy as the exception.

I ended the day with a nice bathtub soak feeling so grateful for all the birthday texts, videos of happy birthday songs, and birthday cards. Perhaps this will be my best decade yet.

July 9, 2026 - biked 60 km (37 mi), train'd 62 km (39 mi) - biked 932 km (579 mi) total

There is a cliff between Italy and Slovenia. This means there aren't many trains there Italy. The original plan when we planned on skipping Italy was to take the train all the way into Ljubljana, but computers told us that in order to walk on our bikes, it would have required a really early and long day ending in a night train from Austria. I love a train but that is too much train. While researching this, I learned there is a bike trail that follows an old rail grade from Trieste, up that cliff, into Slovenia! So what if we biked that, then took a local train in Slovenia to make it a quick day and be able to meet our parents on time?

That was the plan.

First fun thing of the day, we finally met the owner of the bike shop in Trieste where we stored our bikes in for the night, Dario. He was so incredibly excited to meet us and hear about our trip and seemed very sad to be trapped renting bikes to other people rather than riding them himself. He said his last big trip was from Rome to St. Petersburg during Covid. It took three months. Now who is inspiring whom? He was so pumped to learn that our penguin's name was Gabriel. It's meeting people like this that reminds me that, while travel is fun, it's the people that buckle down and make things happen who are the ones that make the destinations worthwhile.

And we were off! The start of the day in Trieste city was miserable and full of traffic and then straight uphill, but eventually we got to the bike path and it was amazing. Uphill, yes, but very gradual by bike standards. (And apparently not by train standards, which is why it isn't used for that any more.) There were good views, soaring bridges, old tunnels, baby cows, and signs for "wine cave".

We kept seeing signs for "wine cave". And we agreed, if the "wine cave" was right off the trail, we'd stop. As the trail skirted the Slovenian border, we saw all these wooden arrows that said "wine cave" pointing to a rocky path. We leaned up our bikes and head down, across the border taking our first steps into Slovenia. 50 m down, we eventually come upon a picnic table, and as we looked back at the hill there's a hobbit door with a big sign that says "self service free entrance". I open the hobbit door and it is pitch black, so I run back up to get my headlamp. We go inside and there is a big table in a 2 m high cave made of an old sewing machine table with benches on each side. On the table are these two locked aluminum cooking pots that say "wine free", another pot with cups in plastic bags to keep them dry, and a third box with "goat cheese 15€". We drink the cave wine. We have no idea if it's home made or Slovenian or what but it is red and delicious. And then we notice we are surrounded by silent, motionless huge spiders.

I cannot think of a better first few steps into Slovenia.

After two paper cups of cave wine, we sign the logbook outside, chat with some Italians who just hiked in, and get to riding again.

The rest of the trail is chill. We make it to Divača where we plan to take the train. It's a spooky station and eventually I find a ticket machine and we buy two tickets. And then the train is there! It says Ljubljana! We leap on to get moving. And it slowly twists and turns across the hillsides. Eventually the conductor looks at our tickets and tells us the train doesn't go all the way into Ljubljana. There's something wrong today, so there's a bus that will take everyone the second half of the way. But no bikes on the bus, so we have to wait for an hour at the next station for a train that will go all the way. This sucks as we watch everyone get on a coach bus and leave us. At this point we're another 30 km from Ljubljana.

So instead of waiting an hour for the train and another hour on the train, we just bike it. We lost some time initially because Sarah took some convincing. Initially, it's not too fun, as the first half is on the side of a main road with no shoulder, but it is all downhill and we go so fast. It even starts raining on us, big fat drops, the first rain the whole trip. We were thinking about sending our rain gear home, but will this change our mind? Nah, it's warm rain. My phone hates the rain though and refuses to work in any way until it dries out.

Once we get near Ljubljana, things get way nicer. There's cycle paths 15 km out of the city, and we see lots of folks on bikes. Even in town is really chill. Feels like a good city.

We navigate right into our parents open arms, who wait for us outside our Airbnb for the next week.