An adventure in adventure

It was great laying down in my tent, I believe it took but seconds for me to fall asleep. At around 2:30 am, I was woken up to the sound of rain - uh-oh! My clothes were "drying" plus I had not placed the rain cover above me. So I got up, covered my tent and collected the clothes.

When I woke up close to 8 am, it was still pretty grey, so I asked the camping tenant to dry my clothes (it cost Eur 3 extra, so altogether I ended up paying 60 Lei - I had slept in B&B's for the same or even less...however, as it is just Eur 15, I am not complaining). Now I just had to kill time till my clothes were drying plus waiting for the short spells or rain to stop.

It was yet again rather late, more like 11 am, that I finally left and had planned a little adventure: yet again, I wanted to try the back road of a back road, fully expecting the worst road conditions. The first challenge was finding the beginning of the small road, after some trial and error, I managed to locate it. It was of course unpaved, due to the rain earlier pretty muddy, rocky and very steep. Oh boy, was I suffering. For a bit, I had to shove the bike, as the wheels were just spinning on the way up.

Luckily, the incline did not last too long and it became managable. On the top, I found yet another wooden monestary, I thought the dog would kill me, but when the care-taker appeared, it became outright friendly and let me visit the church.

After three shepherd's dog gave me an exhaustive chase, I continued on this unpaved road, going by pastures and little wooden huts, it could have been also on some place in the Austrian Alps. I finally reached the main paved (paved???) road just short of a town called Carlibaba - and I was really wondering if it was really the main road. Here even the stronger jeeps were struggling to get through and so was I...I think this was the road in the worst condition through my trip (so far), going up a nice Carpathian pass called Prislop. I met two fully loaded Polish bikers cruising down from the summit, somewhat contrary to the biker's etiquiette, they did not stop to chat, just shouted over that they were Polish and were gone. The peak was at 1416 meters and as the road ascended, its quality improved as well - I did not find it all too hard, except...

...well, except that my brake decided to give up its soul, yet again. It was while I was still climbing and I stopped to take a photo of the panorama, suddenly, this unpleasant scratching sound was to be heard, signaling that something was wrong. I tried repairing it in vain, and I decided to take out the brake pad from the rear brake and just to be slow and careful on the way down.

On the summit, I met a cool dog, which I fed with some bread, it managed to catch pieces of bread in the air, it had quite some acrobatic talent. A huge monestary was being built close to the summit, but none of the construction workers volunteered to try to fix my bike.

It must have been around 7 pm by the time I set for the downhill ride with just one functioning brake, this one being in the front, so I was super careful going down - it wasn't all too bad. It was then that I met Mihai, a sportsy mountainbiker, who was pushing to go to the summit and back in two hours, which for me would have lasted a lot longer than that. He offered to help me after his biking trip, I told I was going to a campground in Borsa and he told me he would find me there (he was from the town).

Honestly, I did not expect him to show up, he could easily not have done so. I found the campground run by a Belgian couple, they were very nice and let me use the laptop. I was just starting to write the blog, when Mihai actually showed up, he conquered the mountain in two hours, went home, fetched his car and drove over. It was 10 pm when he came and he did his best till midnight to get my brake fixed, but there were some parts missing. He did move the working front brake to the back, still, with just one brake, I did not feel safe enough on the road, let alone the somewhat uneven Romainan roads.

Once again, what Mihai did was something quite out of the ordinary and it demonstrates the friendliness of the people I've met in Romania and their willingness to help