Wrath of the Bikers God
After the rude awakening by my four-legged friends in the middle of the night, I slept in till 8 am, by the time the sun was pounding on my tent...time to wake up. It was a nice downhill ride, to the next painted church at Moldavita, again, an amazing site.
Not sure why, but I planned another detour towards a rural rode, probably as someone had said it was nicely paved. It was - for a while. I visited the painted egg museum of Moldavita, where one of the masters of this "scene", a kind lady, showed me the literally hundreds of eggs she herself has painted. She showed me also a collection of painted eggs from all over the world, Japan, China, Hungary and many other places. I was really impressed by her skills.
It was then that I noticed that yet another one of my spokes is broken and I decided, after doing some 20 km's, to turn around and not risk another rural road, or else my bike completely falls apart. I quickly managed to hitch-hike a local bus, which drove me back to the monestary. I knew it was going to be an uphill ride, so I got some fruits and stuff to drink.
As I was about to hit the next pass was when I noticed I had a flat. Darn thing, as much as I love biking, fixing flats is not one of my strengths and I do not do a very good job with these. It was really hot, so I pulled under a tree and started unloading all my stuff, finding the parts needed and set forth. I was actually pretty proud of myself, having fixed the flat in about 30 minutes (just as a side note, professional bikers need about two). Still, I packed up everything and was about to leave, when I noticed the same tire being completely flat, with some needle sticking out of it. To make matter worse, it wasn't a needle, but the head of the spoke that broke earlier, I had removed it and apparently managed to stab it into my tire. Repeat the process: unload the bike, find the spare part, and yet another 30 minutes later, I was ready to head for the summit.
It wasn't all too hard, expect it started raining, but it was a nice summer thunderstorm, rather pleasant actually. So it was that I reached the town of Campulung Moldovenesc, where I stopped a man on his bike to find a bike shop, to repair my broken spoke. He went out of his way to help me: first, he rode about 5 km's (the opposite direction he was heading to) to a bike shop, which was closed, then we went to his home, where he found a number, then he accompanied me to a place I'd have never found. Here an elderly master of his profession took but 30 minutes to put everything together - he needed a lot of convincing to accept 20 Lei for his work...
Again and again, I am meeting some of the nicest, friendliest, most helpful people in Romania...
Anyhow, at around 7:30, I started heading on a major road westwards, Cluj is around 200 km's from here. I then saw a sign to a campground, which I followed; it is run by Dutch people and it could easily be in the Netherlands, everything perfectly clean; letting me do my laundry and givng me a laptop, for the whopping price of Eur 10. I feel really good and am looking forward to a nice shower and a good night´s sleep. Am hopeful that the God of the Bikers won´t have a grudge against me for the rest of my trip...Good night!