One of my favorite bike rides while I lived in Poland was a trip to Zab, which means “tooth.” The ride began in the small village in which I lived and climbed to the highest village in Poland, Zab.

It was a 72 km ride (44 miles) with 664.5 meters of climbing (2180.1 feet). Not too long, but that’s a lot of climbing. Sometimes I went the opposite way, but as you can tell from the map above, that’s even more demanding.

Now, when my family and I go back to Poland to visit, we always drive this way to visit my wife’s mother’s family, who live in Zab. I’m sure they get tired of my running commentaries about how “this part of the climb is especially brutal on a bike.”