Sept. 11: The. Gravel. Hill.

[EK]:
Today we had a quick first 25 miles through lovely little towns and past fields and haystacks and forests. We were feeling good and stopped at a church for a snack (where two curious people came over to query where we were going and where we had been (all with gestures). At that point, Emily and I realized we had passed the road on our offline maps, so we biked back a mile or so to a rough gravel road. We always take these kind of roads to avoid busy roads down the way, but both of us were wary as we started on this one after so much smooth asphalt. We ascended a hill, up and up the gravel, stopping only to talk with a man on a horse cart who (again through gestures and common words like “asphalt”) conveyed to us that we were not on the right road for our bikes. But we persisted up the damn hill and then road down the other side, running into shepherds and shepherds’ dogs who came out to greet us with barks and then friendliness.

The hill: loose gravel, steep.

Smiles of exhaustion.

Friendly dogs!

We rode to Bistrita, a very nice little city with an old church (15th c.) that is being restored and a pedestrian street lined with outdoor cafes and muted but once-lovely buildings. We rode around a bit to get to a bike shop so Emily could buy a new water bottle, then road on to Nasaud, where we are staying for the night. The road between Bistrita and Nasaud was unfortunately full of fast cars; Emily attributed it to “typical selfish commuters” who were intent only on getting home, regardless of the bicyclists in their way. We climbed several hills, each one harder on me, but we made it to the little town of Nasaud and our communist block Airbnb accommodations.

The Bistrita church was like a little piece of Mexico in Romania.

Tired.

Communist block apartments, like every communist block apartment.

Outside our place, kids are playing with grandparents and kittens are hunting insects in the courtyards. A woman by the side of the road sold us a beautiful tomato and some garlic and we bought the rest of a salad (and an excellent bottle of Romanian rose wine) at a supermarket around the corner. It feels more like a typical Romanian residence than the medieval places we have been staying; this is middle-class Romanian life in a small city.

Our total mileage for the day was 55 miles, our total for the trip has been 505 miles; we estimate that 1/3 of those miles have been on non-paved surfaces (gravel, dirt, or grassy field). We will post our Strava record to the blog as soon as we figure that out.