Romania

Day 49

284km in 2 days!

It has surely been our most action-packed 48 hours yet! Three days ago, as we assesed our route for the day, we knew we were in for a long ride when our guide book basically said, Good luck finding accomodation in the next 140km. We started our ride an hour early and were hoping for the best when we leaned into some of the strongest cross winds we've encountered thus far.

After a good 20km, done at about 12km/hr, we left the shoreline winds behind only to jump onto rocky, deep gravel for another 10km. Here was where we had a casualty with Lucas' bike seat - it just broke off. This was the kind of riding that vibrates your feet off your pedals, so it was no surprise that something would rattle off.

We put in an SOS to our support driver and continued on with David having swaped seats and now riding on the spinning gravel standing up. Soon after as we were riding through a small village and starting up a long, steep hill, a nice old woman stoped us as we rode by and handed out bunches of grapes, a very welcome treat!

As we were concerned about accomodation that night, our support vehicle left us after we grabbed another seat from them to check out the situation in the next town - 85km away. We were now 60 odd kms into the day with no food or water resupply - a slight oversight on our part.

Several villages later, we came across something that looked like a cafe. We were able to communicate that we needed food and water and they provided us with bread, salami and pickles and a giant bottle of pop and water. It seemed that upon closer inspection, it was really just a small mom-and-pop store, but we were welcomed to eat what they had in their fridge!

Resupplied and caffinated, we flew threw the next 70 km with hardly any effort as we now had the blustery winds behind us, acting as a push. At times we were clocking 40km/hr on the flats. We made it into Calafat that night shortly after 6pm after staring at 8, and over 6 hours of ride time!

But that wasn't the end of our long days. The next day, the guide book showed no signs of accomodation for 145km as well. Lacking the adrenaline rush of the day before, we started out again an hour ealier than usual. Luckily, we had no wind that day and gorgeous blue skies again. The first 100km was noneventful and we did them all before lunch at 1pm. After a hearty feed of meat, cheese and bread, we set off to tick off the remaining 44kms to Corabia. About 10km down the road, we saw an unusual site - our support vehicle was pulled over with the hood up. Troy let us in on the catastrophy - gas in a diesel engine...Turns out WE were now the support team.

When he and Lucas had pulled into a gas station specifying diesel, the attendant pointed them to the pump that said diesel. With no reason to think otherwise, the tank was filled - all 80 litres and about 65 euro later. Two kms later, the car just stopped.

As luck would have it, we were within about 100 meters of another gas station. There was some discussion whether or not to push the car all the way back to the original station, but why? Try to get back our 65 euro or get the job done now and get out of here? We chose the later and after a lengthy discussion with the attendant involving a lot of hand gesturing and drawing on a note pad, we were finaly able to get him to understand that we needed to siphon the gas out and replace it with diesel. Easy, right?

Somehow we managed to be there for over three hours as several back and forth trips were made to find the right size and length of hose to stick in the tank. Then when the right hose was found, it still didn't work - anti-siphoning device? The only thing to do then was to methodicaly turn the key on and off to prime the fuel after the hose was removed. This leaked the fuel out at an agonizing pace while we all stood around and watched and tried to take filmage for the documenatry. The gas attendant seemed to be quite upset at seeing the camera and asked for us to stop. We became concerned about the rather large crowd beginning to surround us (for more details here, you'll need to check out our uncensored blog for which, if you don't already have the address, you can email us).

But as you can see, we are all alive to update you on our progress. Aside from donating a few litres of oil and prolonging our longest day yet (144km), we had success. All the fuel was hosed out and the new diesel replaced. The crowd was very willing to help and incredibly friendly - we were even invited for beers, but even that didn't tempt us as much as visions of or hotel and food did.

Our last 35 km was an impromptu race just to test our merit and we made it in a little over an hour and just in time for a gorgeous sunset from the views of our hotel, situated on the Danou River.

Needless to say, we are resting today! The sights we are seeing lately are very entertaining as we ride through village after village. It seems like we've stepped back decades into years where the horse drawn cart was predominant and people still spent all their times in the fields. We see the oldest, whithered faces and women bent 90 degrees at the waist still walking down the street. Children yell and stand on the streets with their hands out so we can high-five them as we ride by. Everywhere, we get waves and Bravos! We are really feeling that what we are doing is more and more of a novelty the farther east we go - it is true travel now!