We are preparing for a rainy day. Plenty of clothes on, especially rain gear. With Daan I leave on the tree bike towards the Czech Republic. We deviate from the route to avoid boggy forest paths. Thus we get right into trouble. We climb and climb for more than an hour (9.5km/h) from 380 meters (Radkow) to 780 meters (Karlow), 400 meters uphill. In “turtle” mode. Slowly but it works. Nice and rainy we arrive in Karlow, at the top so to speak. We pause for a coffee and then hear that Sanne is not getting the E-bus charged. The passes don’t work. The question is whether she can get back to Radkow to get the car on the 220 charger there. We wait and think of all kinds of scenarios for when it won’t work. From cycling back to arranging new places to spend the night. But fortunately, we don’t have to. So we can cycle on, a nice long descent at 25 km/hour to Duszniki where Sanne is also coming with fresh batteries. We hand out some trees to interested locals and have a hot lunch in the restaurant around the corner. We need that after all the climbing and descending in the rain. The town turns out to be a spa and Chopin played here when he was sixteen, we were proudly told. We are glad that we can continue after lunch and hope to reach the Czech border so that we can be in Zamberk tomorrow, where Wijnand and Veronika, our acquaintances in the Czech Republic, have arranged a contact. But that’s at least another thirty kilometers. We’ve only done twenty and it’s already 2:30. The first part is now false flat along a stream, you can tell by the fall of the water that you are climbing. It was dry but starts to rain again. We continue and ride on the Polish side along the border with the Czech Republic. It goes down gradually now, which is nice, and good flat asphalt, what more could we want? A little sun maybe. Our hands are getting cold. It’s barely ten degrees. And then, at Mostowice where Sanne is waiting for us, there we cross the border. We take a picture, of course, and decide to cycle on despite cold and wetness. We are about thirty kilometers from Zamberk. The landscape along the border is immediately different here in the Czech Republic. Maybe I am imagining it but it seems more cultivated, a bit neater too. Here too, except for some cars, we encounter few people. We stop in Bartosocive, thirteen kilometers from Zamberk and park the tree bike on a square with more cars. Must be going well. After sixty kilometers we get into Sanne’s car and drive in a winding road to Nekor, southeast of Zamberk. It is just before seven when we load everything into our apartment and decide to go pick up the e-bus and trailer from Radkow after all, even though it is still a three-hour drive there and back. There is no other way. Sanne goes with Daan. I answer the outstanding emails, and call the lady from Zamberk who is in contact with the mayor. We are expected at 12:30 tomorrow. Totally awesome! Will do. And also she tries that we can hand out tree saplings at a school. It is finally past one o’clock in the night when Sanne and Daan come in. What happened? You can’t make it up. After first proving the E-bus was not sufficiently charged, it had to be recharged en route. That didn’t turn out to be easy. It is now somewhere in Poland. And then the car with trailer got stuck on a forest path because the navigation indicated to go there. Back and forth, hitching and unhitching, pushing and pulling in pitch darkness. Nobody knows how, but we managed, with the help of the ‘neighbor’, to get the car and trailer back forty meters on that much too narrow path. Fortunately. We eat something more and go flat. It is two o’clock. The cake is all gone.