Nov. 9, 2010

Woke up sore, poorly rested. Head out. Buy sandwich and much-needed water at a gas station. Try for a ride, but no luck. Get stopped 3 times by police in about a 2-mile stretch. 4th time total thus far. They feel the need to radio-in my passport information each time only to hand it back with a 'hvala' and drive off. Legs not cooperating today. A couple of hours and they are spent. Rest at an on-ramp. Within 5 minutes, find a ride with a logging trucker. We talk about Serbia, NATO, USA, Detroit, etc. Not exactly sure what about, but it was a steady conversation. Drops me off about 160 km shy of Zagreb. Legs now stiff from brief inactivity, I plod along for an hour or so, getting no rides, until I get to a gas station and see Isidora's brother, Alexa, waiting for me. He had spotted me on the way to Rijeka and now I had a familiar ride almost all the way to Slovenia. Being a horrible co-pilot, I slept half of the way. We parted ways outside Rijeka, and within 10 minutes, a guy named Bojan gave me a lift to Novigrad, in the N.W. corner of Croatia on the Adriatic. He showed me a spot in town where I could camp for the night, and I dozed off under so,e evergreens and a clear sky.