Swarm of bees

We passed a couple of dark decisive days in the city of Vlore, but also had a nice lunch. We were on the verge of using an escape pod in the form of a ferry to Italy but both had coincidental night-thoughts and reconsidered. The weather was meant to be just as rainy if not more so, and we are both stubborn enough that we wanted to see Albania through to the end. We had made it through the mountains and were heading to the flats and felt like we could finish it out, for good or bad.
Our last night in the Vlore was a restless one at best. It turned out to be Easter maybe and much of the celebrating outside seemed to involve shooting off explosives randomly and through out the night. I had insomnia of a tossy turny nature and got a lot of reading done, but failed to sleep very much. I contemplated just about every thing on Earth in the dark hours and left little out. When I finally did surprise myself by falling asleep I was unexpectedly awakened by either celebratory explosives or someone screaming outside like a drunken omega wolf. It turned out that omega wolf was our neighbor and quite possibly American, surely drunk, and obviously having a deep emotional breakdown, meltdown, or cry for help situation. The smoke from his cigarette seeped in to our room. The loud soundtrack to whatever horrible movie he started watching at 4:30am rumbled our walls and caused Shannon to think that it was thundering. Between the soundtrack noise and his continued howling i started to think that our neighbor was possibly part of a Finnish death-metal band on tour. Eventually the movie ended or something, the smoke stopped and we slept for a serene hour before going to get something for breakfast, including many coffees. Leaving, Vlore didn't see us shedding a single tear.
We rode about 60 miles yesterday before I got a flat tire that I had to fix. The wind and rain started shortly after that. We found a place to stay and slept.
Today we rode a hard 45 miles, mostly covered in mud and filth after a trip through Durres, or Durress maybe. Terrible roads and deep puddles greeted us there and we did several hard miles through that town that we shall never speak of again. We made it Lezhe tonight and are about to go see about a bite to eat. I realized yesterday while riding and passing some of the most stagnant and poisonous looking ditch water, passed some very dour people, that if Racine, Wisconsin was a country it would be Albania. Tough place, rough people. The big difference is that people in Albania all seem quite friendly.
Time for food.

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