I stayed up far too late last night hanging out with a crowd at the hostel. Along the way I learned a great deal about the Czech Republic power grid, as one of the group members works in the main control office, where they recently had about a quarter of the country go dark.
I left the hostel about 8:30 am after the hostel-provided breakfast. The first 20 km out of Riga had bicycle path. The roads here however are so inconsistent that at one point I was riding on paved bicycle path, next to a gravel road!
On the one hand, OSMand incorrectly identified roads today as unpaved; I rode all day on paved road. On the other hand, that means I can’t rely on the data from OSMand for whether roads are paved. On the gripping hand, the low level of traffic I had hoped for failed to come to fruition. Not until the last 30 km did traffic decrease enough to enjoy the surroundings.
I’m spending the night in a hostel (that isn’t a hostel) in Aizkrakule. To reach it I had to cycle through a tunnel underneath the dam.
I heard back from the South African couple, who congratulated me on being in Aizkrakule one day out of Riga. They are staying in a hostel on the other side of town after two days of cycling to get here from Riga.
Research shows that roads are significantly better in Lithuania. I’m curious what happened to all of the EU money for Latvia that I saw correspondingly spent in Romania and Bulgaria on road improvement.
Need to spend more time tonight with the map, but I think I’m going to route myself more southward and end up in Lithuania tomorrow instead of three more days in Latvia. Should also put me closer to my intended schedule.