Time to go road biking in Romania. A bit of an extreme sport considering the lack of body armour in combination with poor pavement, a lot of dogs and crazy traffic. I got the car filled up with some carbon fiber and drove to Dealu Mare. 1,5 hour north of Bucharest, or one hour Romanian style… Constantly 40-50 over the speed limit, sort of

Romania is number 11 or sometimes number 10 or even 9 in the world in terms of wine production. Unfortunately we miss out on all the Romanian wines in Sweden. Wines that are winning international awards. There’s a Romanian wine at the „Systembolaget”, but forget it.

Anyhow, my idea was to bike in what is considered to be one of the main wine districts in Romania: Dealu Mare.

I started off like a missile ,-)

OK, since I mentioned the wine… Here’s a picture of some vines and then we forget it

Yes indeed, chocolate from Sweden

Some regular traffic situation

I took a break after 65km thinking about whether to go on a detour up to the Ciolanu monastery. I bought an ice cream and a Coke and started talking to a nice couple that it turned out I would meet later on

Picnic a la Romania to the right in the picture. Some important things to know:

• You have to go by car
• The car has to be a Dacia Logan
• Put the grill no more than three meters away from the car
• Always stay within three meters from the car
• Run the stereo on max – NB, only Romanian folk music
• Drink a lot of beer
• Smoke a lot of cigarettes
• Make sure your big belly is visible between your t-shirt and your shorts

Got it?

Decision made: detour to the monastery

I was there 2 years ago, during a two day Enduro trip – real Enduro that is. My friend Nic 2 years ago

There’s an exhibition of stone sculptures close by

And there, after a very steep climb, the couple from my break has parked for a break. I can’t call it picnic as nothing matches all the rules, but they are having some good food and wine and are asking me to join in

I’m catching speed downhill and get super nervous at high speed with these narrow tires. Extreme sport… It’s early evening and the cows are about to be picked up to go home for the night. Amazing how each one knows where to go and just turns left/right to the right house.

Another flash back. Here we had a technical problem with the Husaberg back on the Enduro trip

 

Early evening… the hay needs to be brought home

Such a nice road

For a while…

Finally, after a totally insane steep climb I get to the top and get to enjoy the views of the low land

Some vines

I’m not too fond of sun set pictures, but the profile of the Carpathians was pretty nice to watch while going home in the car

In total I did 110km and some 1000 meters of climb. Totally exhausted. A possible reason could be that it was only some days ago that I dropped the crutches after the open leg fracture I suffered from skiing in February… Coming home I was in pain. Check out the Fibula (smaller bone), how it’s healing with an off-set. You can imagine the pain when the calf muscle is moving around the fracture… But I just had to go for this ride before heading back for vacation in Sweden some weeks

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