The wind that makes you lean to go straight
On the third day I left the most beautiful road in the region behind me and rode to the sea. We set off a little after ten from the hotel near Nova Gorica, a short stretch of Slovenian freeway, then Rijeka, then nothing but coast road via Crikvenica and Senj. The coast was the road.
No regrets. Croatia is coast. Coast is views, a feast for the eyes, a coast road wrapping itself around the rock formations.
And then there was the wind.
Anyone riding to the Croatian coast should know one word before setting off. Bora. A downslope wind that comes crashing off the Velebit range, often lasts for days, and keeps changing strength and direction. That last detail is the decisive one. A steady crosswind is an arithmetic problem: lean into it, hold the steering input, done. A wind that changes direction every second is a control loop with variable gain - you correct against a force that disappears exactly when your correction takes hold.
On the side of the road the warning signs were electronic message boards. You can’t miss them, and they’re switched on when it’s necessary. It was necessary. The day before, signs had warned of motorcyclists falling over; now boards warned of the wind.
That day it wasn’t the full version. It was the edition where the road stays open and you still learn what the word means.
There were stretches where, at 100 km/h, the bike held a constant ten to fifteen degrees of lean - to ride in a straight line. That’s the image I haven’t been able to shake since: you’re leaned over like in a brisk corner, the horizon stands dead level, and your inner ear reports an error it can’t resolve. The body says corner, the eye says straight, and the mind says: shut up and ride.
The naked bike was both curse and blessing here. Blessing, because a naked bike has little sail area up top - a tall touring windshield acts in a crosswind like a rudder somebody else is steering. Curse, because you take the whole load with your upper body. After two hours of bora I had sore muscles in places I hadn’t known were involved in riding.
In that wind, the lee of a truck was a whole new discovery. Not a nice one. A truck has a shielded zone, and the moment you reach it, the force you’ve been working against at fifteen degrees of lean disappears completely. The bike shoots toward the wind. Two seconds later, as you pass, you get it back double.
That was the moment I learned, as a beginner, the most important thing there is to learn about crosswinds: stay loose on the handlebars. You’re constantly pushing on the bars and correcting, and your arms still have to stay loose. Tense arms pass every gust straight to the front wheel. It took me half an hour to talk my hands into it.
It was very quiet behind me. Lisa looks forward, and she doesn’t see much that way. I’m 1.90 m tall, she’s 1.54 m.
And then came the sea.
For two and a half days it had only been a destination on the map. Since Rijeka the coast had been beside us, but on this road it’s karst, scrub, scree and heat for long stretches, and in a bora you look at the pavement, not at the water. Then, on a hilltop, the landscape opened up, and there it was.
I don’t have a good description for it. It isn’t the sea itself. It’s the combination of two and a half days of sitting, five countries, a wind that had tilted you over, and then this opening up of the landscape below and to the right, where suddenly there’s water, blue to the horizon, with islands in it as if they’d been laid there.
Just over two months earlier I had never owned a motorcycle.
Lisa punched me in the ribs. Not a word came over the intercom, just a sound that was neither one thing nor the other, not laughing and not crying.
On the crest we took a short break first, then rode down to the water. Helmet off, gloves on the tank, boots off. She went in up past her ankles, in full riding pants, legs rolled up as far as that works with riding pants.
We stood there for a good hour. The goal was reached. After two and a half days.
And that left the one question the whole trip still had open.
What do you do once you’ve arrived?
That’s the real crisis of any trip with only one condition. As long as you have a destination, you have a direction. The moment you arrive (and we arrived on day three of nine), the bike is standing in a landscape without a vector.
We talked it over. Twenty minutes, at the water, boots still off.
South. As vague as the original condition. Maybe Montenegro. Maybe as far as Dubrovnik and then see. Maybe just down the coast until it stops being beautiful.
And then there was a ferry in the way.
I’m writing it exactly like this because that’s exactly how it was. On the map, a road led down to the beach. We took it, and all of a sudden there was a ticket booth for a ferry, and a café next to it. I didn’t think about it for long.
Prizna to Žigljen, Jadrolinija, twenty minutes. The shortest connection to the island of Pag, and it didn’t cost much.
Twenty minutes is too short for a sea voyage and too long to just stand around. In that time you do exactly one thing: go forward, stand at the railing, say nothing, salt air in your face. Behind you the diesel rumbles, and the motorcycle stands on the car deck between a travel trailer and a few cars.
And then you arrive on Pag, and Pag is different. The northern half looks as if somebody delivered the moon and didn’t pay the bill for the vegetation. White-gray karst, stone walls across bare hills, a few sheep that are supposed to taste of sage and sea salt and reportedly do. Hardly a tree. The most inhospitable beautiful landscape I know.
A sign with a bed
And we still had no place to stay. Nothing to be found online. So we rode toward the next town, and on the side of the road there was a sign: bed, vacation apartment.
We found it by riding past it. Three hundred meters on, we turned around, and it was worth it.
The man was in the yard. He spoke German, a Croatian-German from northern Germany. Apartment free, key there, no form, no fuss. He told us where we could eat: three, four hundred meters down the road, a restaurant, good.
It was fantastic.
Meat, grilled perfectly. Local oil, bread built for oil, and a wine whose vintage I didn’t ask about, because the question would have been silly. We sat outside, Lisa in a dress, and Lisa is always cold otherwise. Over the karst hung a starry sky you can’t buy in central Europe anymore.
Three, four hundred meters back on foot. That’s worth something too after three days in the saddle.
Day 3 in numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Distance | 264 km |
| From - to | near Nova Gorica - island of Pag |
| Passes and elevation | Coast road, no pass |
| Countries | Slovenia, Croatia |
| Ferry | Prizna - Žigljen |
| Overnight | Vacation apartment on Pag |