Day One in Warsaw
Assembling a bike on the footpath outside an airport usually attracts the odd interested person, a question, even in a foreign language; often a look of astonishment, a couple of old farts down on their knees trying to work out which way up the rear derailer and twisted chain goes onto the bike frame, not here. In the USA one of us would take up a PR role to answer questions while the other got on with the job.

This is what a bike looks like ready to fly

The Road
Val did her usual good job of navigating us to our Warm Showers street address, we needed to get a few confirmations along the way and apart from me failing dismally to ride my fully loaded bike up a twelve step bike ramp, but only making step 6 and making a graceless landing back at the bottom with a grazed elbow and a wake up call on jet lag stupidity.

People
In general the Polish people on the street are very self constrained, hard to make any contact with,  a nod of the head and a smile from you, will earn  a blank stare in  return. By the same token, riding your bike on the footpath among pedestrians  is fine, there is an unruffled acceptance and co-operation from both parties.

Our Warm Showers hosts Anya and Bohdan were welcoming, friendly, informative, everthing  and more than you would expect from Warm Shower hosts. We stayed three nights, fell in love with their boxer dog Long John Silver - rescued from the pound with a broken leg - and left feeling as if we had known them for years. Both spoke excellent English.

Waiting for Anya on arriving in Warsaw

Anya farwells us loaded for the road.

We've only been on the for a couple of days and we have had two amazing contacts with the local country people.

Day before yesterday we were stopped by the roadside looking at our map when a man called from his car which was stopped at a red light, "Can I help you", He pulled off the road, came over and we then discovered that he was a local businessman who had just been to a meeting at the NZ Embassy, where he had met the Minister for Trade, Tim Groser.

It was my Silver Fern flag on the front of my bike that caught his eye. After introducing ourselves, Marcin  invited us to camp on his lawn a ride of 12 ks. His wife Agnieszka was an ex English teacher , he spoke very good English and is the Polish Agent for Canterbury Clothing Company among several other agencies and also owns and runs a rural produce Depot for Blackcurrants, Cherries, Apples and whatever else grows in this fertile part of Poland. I went out with and met a farming family harvesting their black currants with a very efficient harvester that stripped all the berries on one side of the row before turning and doing the other side. When I grew Blackcurrants we picked them by hand and I think made $100 from pick your own one year. Poland is a major producer of Black Currants.

Agnes and Val bonding

An introduction to Polish Dumplings

They were passionate about their district, took us to a Polish restaurant where we had a meal of tradional food. Then next morning a tour by car to Chopin's birthplace.

We managed to get on the road around 4pm, rode 20ks towards Lowicz the town of stripy clothing. Around 6pm we saw a young woman sweeping the driveway of her house and called out
 "Hello" in our new found Polish words.
 "Do you speak English" I asked as she walked towards me,
 "Yes I do".

The outcome was a hilarious evening camped in her Fathers garden, where she interpreted for her parents as we drank a beer and found out about each other. Her Mother ended up putting on the tradition stripy dress that had been in the family for more that 100 years, while her Father clowned a round cracking jokes in Polish.

The lovely Magde and intrepid cyclists

Magda also happened to be a high school English  teacher on holiday  from her home in Sweden with her partner and young daughter and staying with her parents .
Both of these "Roadside Angels" apart from the English Teacher commonality, were both pregnant.

Bodies
Still jet lagged and on day 6 we have only ridden around 80 ks

Sorry there are no photos, my Computer is not accepting any photos and we are looking for an English speaking IT person.

I found this great person named Marcen, in the town of Ozorkow,  he fixed the photo problem and we are now friends on Facebook.