Day 9 - Pärnu, Estonia - Avoided the Rain 

Tony's View

We got up this morning, looked at the weather forecast and radar for where we were at and where we were going, Parnu. It showed that where we were at was an 80% chance of rain at 10:00am. It also showed a 100% chance of rain from 11:00am to 2:00pm in Parnu, so we decided to leave at 8:30am. What I really mean is that I decided to wake Joan up and get on the road. Plan was to try to get halfway before the rain drenched us. I wasn't as much worried about getting wet as I was getting cold. It was 47 degrees. All I wear is a bicycle shirt and bib shorts. I do have a raincoat. For you that are worried about Joan, she wore 2 layers of pants, 2 shirts, a coat and a raincoat all covered by a poncho. Also, remember half of her body is covered by the front fairing. 

Well we just kept pedaling hard and decided not to stop at two small grocery stores and a lookout point you could climb that was at least 3 stories high looking over a prairie. Otherwise, it was just like any other day, nothing but a road going through a large forest. So much more remote than anything we have experience. Every time we stopped for a bathroom break, we would check the weather and it would say we have around an hour yet. We did make it dry, yeah!!👍👍.

Lesson learned, weather coming off the Baltic Sea is unpredictable.

Along the route we saw this old Russian War Plane, now decked out as a Batman plane

One of the bathroom breaks, we pulled off the side of the road and really disturbed these turkeys. Joan would talk to them and they would gobble back loudly. She decided to get closer for a picture and have a conversation with them.

We had to slow down and get a picture of this robot mower. It is huge. I would say 42" by 42". It is 4 times bigger than the one I have.

This beautiful old church was out in the middle of nowhere.

Our first real bridge that we crossed going into Parnu and I had to get a picture even though it is a little under whelming.😀

Went to this neat little restaurant Called Alice's Backyard. You guessed it it. She turned her backyard into this neat restaurant. Great idea.

Joan got a smoothie and I got a beer.

I got a Bacon Cheeseburger and Fries, and Joan got Fish and Chips. I could have used an "a n d" between the drinks and the food, but I am trying to keep my sentences short and not run on for Tisha😡 If you Zoom in you can see they have edible flowers on my Burger. The wildflowers are beautiful here, like Crested Butte, Colorado (that is for you Tom Winslow). They even make my burger pretty.😒

The bill from Alice's Backyard came in this cool box. You open it up, and there is your invoice with a note and a QR code engraved on the box. I thought I better throw this in for all the woodworkers following the blog😂

We did get to our first beach today after bicycling, part of the Baltic Sea. It is beautiful and the water is only 12 " deep for a ways out there. I kept walking out there to freak Joan out😉

There were many things to do on the beach. They really catered to the families. Joan and I were saying this would be a great beach to take the Grandkids to. This was one of those cool things, an elephant slide out in the water. Remember the water is only 12 " deep. 

Just because I know you're all curious, the Baltic Sea is brackish since most of the water comes from freshwater rivers and it isn't dominated by the North Sea. 

More good news, our bags have already shown up at our last Airbnb in Vilnius Lithuania. Another World's Record. If you followed our previous blogs, it was quite the adventure to get them to the final destination. The last one, we paid 280 Euros to mail it from Zurich to Brussels. The Brussels host held onto it until we got there and we got the bags one day before we left on the plane. Scary. Belgium also charged us 300 Euros in tariffs. More than what they are worth, but you can't find them everywhere, very rare. What an adventure. It was similar to getting the bags to Budapest. Well, this one cost us a total for both bags 42 Euros and got there in 3 days. Yeah! 👍👍The first Airbnb hosts that we stayed at out of Tallinn said they would take care of mailing them. When the bags got to Vilnius today, Joan What's Apped our hosts from that Airbnb, Margus and Ana, and told them the bags got to the final destination and thanked them for all they did. They responded, "Normal people help each other. Everything is fine👌."  That is so wonderful. People are good.

Back to reading signs, after studying this sign so many times, I decided it is Jeff Puthoff chasing Mitch Thobe. Jeff never seems to catch him😡😂

This sign Is for my sign reading buddies to respond what they think it means 😁

Joan's Extras

This one is for all my tennis friends!

This is our celebration photo that we took when we made the 45 miles without getting wet! I wore my lucky pink rain poncho on the whole ride. The rain clouds seem to go another direction when I wear it. 

We are in Pärnu for two nights, so we'll be dodging rain tomorrow also.

Dinner tonight is food from a grocery store because the rain is supposed to be coming yet???