Sure, sunrise pics are cliché but I almost never get to see it over the true horizon, so here is one. Sorry notsorry.
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Márton Salomváry
@mrc@mastodon.berlin
mastodon 4.7.3Freelance software plumber. Cyclist, coffee addict, nature-lover, bread maker, masochist train traveler. He/him. English/Deutsch/magyar.
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Joined January 20, 2023
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Nagymaros, Hungary
Can't get enough long tailed tit pics :) So many cute looks, so much fluff! 🐥 ❄️
#LongTailedTit #Birds #BirdPhotography #Photography #Schwanzmeise #Őszapó
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We spent the first two days on the Slovenian coast, exploring Isola, Piran and around, watching sunsets and taking the first dip in the sea (water is 24C!).
#travel #BikePacking #Slovenia
So I bought this fancy camping pot with heat exchanger hoping to speed up cooking in small quantities.
I was suspicious seeing the spot welding on the exchanger so I made a test at home to compare how much faster it boils 250ml water, compared to a basic steel cup with tinfoil lid, using my Esbit stove.
Results were underwhelming: basic steel cup beat fancy cup by 10 seconds (5 min 20s vs 5 min 30).
I really hope the EU will soon force the hands of the railway companies to get their shit together and come up with reasonable ways to book international train tickets.
I took me almost 2 hours to realize there is no way for me to find a reasonable route to get to the French Mediterranean coast by train, taking bikes from Hungary.
I was wondering why we did not get any hosting requests on #Warmshowers all summer, while we normally get at least 1-2 inquiries every week in peak season.
When I signed in today, I realized Warmshowers got a drastic redesign, and I had to get though a password reset an re-onboarding process.
Which makes me wonder if they screwed up and inactivated all accounts in the new system until everyone signed in the first time :D Would not surprise me tbh.
As it is one of the very few plants still blossoming in the wild around us after 3 months of no rain, I transplanted a few yarrows to our garden. I hope they will thrive here next summer! “Normal” people consider it as weed…
Guess which country I am in :)
A flock of long tailed tits visited our tiny garden right while we were having coffee on the terrace. They spent a few minutes surveying the garden, looking every corner, then left. Interestingly, a great tit also joined the gang. This is the best shot I was able to get.
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We are (hopefully) getting to the coast today! And because we are masochists, taking a train (2h 40 min) instead of a bus (1:35). Which of course is delayed by 40 min (and counting) from Ljubljana.
It’s currently 10C and the waiting hall has been demolished, we are drinking tea in a bar.
#trains #Slovenia #travel
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Spent a nice day “sightseeing” in Ljubljana, mostly drinking coffee, eating burek and walking in the nearby woods.
#Ljubljana #burek #börek
Autumn crocus season in ON. 🌷
They’d look even prettier in front of a green backdrop, but that’s not what we have after this record breaking hot and dry summer :(
Went to the local open air #cinema today (which sounds more fun than it is thanks to smokers), saw Hen directed by György Pálfi, which is the best weird movie I’ve seen lately:) Starring an actual hen (many of them as the protagonist), fox and other animals, and some human trafficking at the Greek countryside never visited by tourists. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
#movies #cinema #hen
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Day 6: managed to start early before the Plöckenpass gets motorcycle infested, but the long rough steep “gravel” climb to Rif. Marinelli in 30C+ heat killed me and was considering giving up. Fun descent, then the siesta incident, “dip” in the river (too cold to submerge) and the pleasant surprise of the next climb is fresh Champagne gravel (with a punishing chunky loose part at the end)! Sleeping in Rifugio Sorgenti del Piave.
#BikePacking #Italy #ChampagneGravel
Are these AI generated posters/ads/billboards the modern equivalent of using Comic Sans and MS Office clipart pictures in Word for the same purpose?
(Pics from different nearby venues and events in Nagymaros, Hungary.)
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Day 5 was a great one, took a ex-railway bike path, climbed a “closed” road, avoided rain under a bridge and got myself a hotel room. This region is perfect, almost no foreign tourists, not even Germans, no Dutch caravans, 100km to the nearest American. Very low motorcycle infestation (closed road probably helped).
https://strava.app.link/AUfoJy9Dm5b
#BikePacking #Italy
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Day 4: second half of the day I cycled up Sella Sompdogna (passing a mandatory road closed sign), had a beer, found a mostly dry riverbed, hung out with baby salamanders and a tiny snake, had a wildcamp. Got passed on the (closed) gravel road by Guardia di Finanza in a large pickup, then back 30 min later. Did they control the “internet not working cash only” rifugio? ;)
Strava track with more pics: https://strava.app.link/uHx3qamsm5b
#BikePacking #Italy
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Day 7: First part was a beautiful gravel road following roughly the same elevation around a valley with spectacular views. Then a fast asphalt with hairpins, dirtbag lunch from the one only supermarket not doing siesta.
#BikePacking #Italy
I finally got to publish my revised bikepacking packing list \o/
Unfortunately I ran out of CR2032 cells for my scale last time I went for a trip so I don't know the total weight but I can lift the loaded bike with one hand, can carry it on stairs and board any train without removing anything from the bike.
What gear do you use?
https://blog.salomvary.hu/2026/09/05/my-bikepacking-packing-list-2026.html
People with a green lawn like this after a near-zero-rain summer should be publicly shamed.
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Day 6: made the classic traveling in Italy mistake of arriving in a village hungry at 13:30, having passed multiple restaurants on a descent, having forgotten this thing called siesta. Even fucking Spar closes in the afternoon :D
But I was lucky to get to a place where they were willing to serve me spaghetti before closing \o/
#BikePacking #Italy #Siesta
It took me quite a few attempts to set up a minimal Git over HTTP server, mainly because Apache HTTP Server is a beast and my httpd.conf skills are rusty, but here is a Docker compose.yml if someone ever needs this: https://gist.github.com/salomvary/17f9c0fb01733c84f33edd882aae88a3
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Day 3: uneventful first half of the day, brutal hike&bike detour to the ridge of the Karawanken. Climbed 750m at 15% average grade on loose rock. Never again :D Slept at a nice camp site in Gozd Martuljek.
https://strava.app.link/xDofHHY7j5b
https://strava.app.link/nOJ8zQZ7j5b
Today I cross into Italy and probably wildcamp somewhere in the mountains after Tarvisio.
#BikePacking #Slovenia
Speaking of #gardening, I was about to free up roughly a square meter of ground to plant wildflower seeds for next year, but had to give up because the soil is so dry and hard as rock. The holes for the three small yarrows took 15 minutes of hard work. I hope it will get soaked enough in autumn before it gets frozen…
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Day 4: going well so far, crossed i to Italy, took a dip in this wonderful gorge at the price of going down and up 60 meters on decayed stairs and passing a bridge in a similar poor state. Dirtbag lunch in Tarvisio.
#BikePacking
TIL there is a movie shot in 2025 on a 2008 Sony Ericsson phone at 144p.
Local cinema will screen it on a big screen, and I wonder if it'd be bearable to watch or would I die from complications from visual horrors?
Collected my Strava activities from my recent bikepacking trip in Slovenia and Italy, embedded on a single blog post. I would love to write proper travel diaries, but I never find the time. This is better than nothing: https://blog.salomvary.hu/2026/08/12/bikepacking-ljubljana-dolomites.html
Today in #programming:
- Tried to connect GitHub Copilot in PyCharm to an MCP server (Figma) - a first MCP thing for me - gave up after 2 hours
- Tried to figure out why some of our GitHub Actions are stalling, gave up after 2 hours
- Spent 2 hours fixing some flaky Playwright tests (as usual, unlike humans, Playwright can click on things before they are ready to be clicked on)
Not a fun day.
Summer heat took a break today so I wentured into the local woods. Not a pretty sight, half the foliage is already on the ground :(
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Both climbs had a mandatory “road closed” sign, both bullshit. What they did not have a sign for is the Rifugio at the top being closed for the season, a sad surprise if you depend on food/drinks/bed after climbing 1000 meters (I knew, only by having coffee and talking to a local in the valley).
The other thing they did not have a sign for was a huge rockslide obscuring a road (barely passable by bike).
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This happened again on a long descent, stopped when I pedaled a bit. Asked a bike shop on my way, they had no idea what it is.
Back home, LBS has seen this, freewheel hub needs an overhaul. Claims internal hub parts are available, should anything be broken, but Shimano actually only sells it as a unit, costs little over half as much as a full new hub.
I don’t think I will attempt a repair/have it repaired, seems to be a time sink. Sheldon says don’t do it: https://sheldonbrown.com/rebuild-freewheel.html
#Cycling
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@yvg@indieweb.social The wheel runs freely and noise free when pedaling, this is something in the freewheel section. Bearings or other parts. Thanks for the offer, I will yolo it then and keep going until at some point I guess it completely breaks.
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Day 3: arrived in Gozd Martuljek, enjoying a long awaited dirtbag lunch where I get to choose the protein-fiber-carb ratio:) Then off to a side-trip.
#BikePacking #Karawanken
Which country am I in now?
Today was the last hot day of this awful summer. It was hot as fuck and we did not have a significant (as in not evaporated in a few hours) rain since May. Also no thunderstorms at all.
And they say this it the mildest summer of all the remaining summers I get to see…
Dandelions decided for a late blossoming 🌼
Which made me think about growing them indoors for spring vibes on dark winter days. Would that work?
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Considering that the hub has done 8700 kms but the wheel was recently rebuilt due to a broken rim, I might buy a full hub for donor parts. Might break even if I need to replace a few more small things.
Fun fact, I bought this hub in a fully built wheel for 85 EUR in 2019...
First thunderstorm I get to see at home and pretty much the first significant rain of the summer. 🌧️ 🕺
Took a lot of patience to succeed at watching a movie that I foolishly did not download in advance in Apple TV. Seems like the folks in Cupertino can’t afford to test their shit on non-highspeed connection. There were more bugs surfacing in the UI than features.
Ps. go watch Arrival, it’s a good movie.
Had a minor #WildCamping incident last night: a fox stole the trash bag from the covered entrance of my tent, and as a revenge for chasing it away (I got woken up by the noise), it chewed through the plastic straps of two hiking poles we left outside :D
The annual swarming of burrowing mayflies (Ephoron virgo, Uferaas, dunavirág) has started on the Danube.
They were extinct in Hungary due to water pollution for 40 years and only returned in 2012.
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Funny to see people here with fresh sunburn in August ;)