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I push the door closed and look at my hand on the knob. The skin is still wrinkled from the rain. I'm tired. I just entered my cozy apartment. My fingers are still shaking...I guess it's the cold and the wet gloves to blame. Oh, and the tiredness, too. I feel the blood pulsating through them.
I don't know what I feel. I pushed my self to the limit today and now I'm blaming myself for being so foolish. But I'm home. Both, me and the Redhead, are fine and that's all that matters.
I left today from Bacau, early in the morning. I knew there were high chances of rain on the road, but I hoped that if I wished hard enough, the clouds would somehow disappear. Well, take my word, it doesn't work like that. :) I did, however, check the weather on a new app I found, that can give you the forecast for your journey, letting you know where you'll encounter weather changes. I'm a talking about Morecast. At first I found it truly genius, but in order to work, you would have to start it exactly before leaving, so it could give you information on the current weather status. [later edit: you can set a later hour for the journey and it will calculate and forecast the weather accordingly]
So I started off to Sighisoara. I know. You'll probably say that the road from Bacau to Bucharest doesn't go through Sighisoara. But it can. :)
I've done this almost exact trip a few weeks ago and I loved it, so I decided to try it again with the new bike. The road to Mircurea Ciuc is so nice, passing gently over the hills, some times through quiet villages, other times through bright yellow rape fields. And if the clouds are grayish and heavy of rain and the sky is blue-black in the background, then the contrast is at it's peak point, just as it was today. So I couldn't ride fast. I wanted to enjoy it...Plus, the last time, I got a speeding ticket on this part of the road :P, so maybe unconsciously that was the reason.
I rode slowly, taking my time, stopping from time to time to take some pictures of my redhead companion. I realized when I got to Sighisoara, that it was a bit late. My careless wondering over the hills has made me forget about the time. I knew now, the night was going to catch me on the road, like a big black, cold nightmare. And I hate nightmares. Like I hate riding in the dark. Well...at least now I have better lights on the bike. But it's still night and dangerous. Anyway, I checked Morecast again, to see where're the heavy clouds and what their plans are. Hmmm...heavy clouds were everywhere. So I decided to take the shortest road back: through Rasnov.
You know how curiosity killed the cat? I think that's how I'll go as well. :) I was on the road to Rasnov, but at one point, I saw a sign towards Zarnesti and thought: "this must be a shortcut". No second thoughts. Made a right and on the road towards Zarnesti I was.
I must say, in other circumstances, this piece road would've been a nice ride...for an adventure/ enduro bike. It has lean curves and a lot of trees / small forests. The bad parts are 2. The 1st one: it has quite a few villages, and if you end up riding on it at 6-7 PM, just when the cattle arrive home, then you're in for a surprise :) you'll need to be the cowboy on the bike. 2nd: it really bumpy :).
This stretch of road is about 50 km long and almost no cars. My GPS got lost in space, so I had no idea where I was and how long to get there. My gas was low and it had begun to rain at one point. I remember the joy when I saw a gas station. I pulled in and filled up the tank. I was still wondering how long till Zarnesti. I kinda' knew the road from there. So I asked a guy where we were and to my surprise I was already in Zarnesti (now, that was quick :) ) I asked the directions towards Paraul Rece, but at one point stopped listening to what the guy was saying. I can't understand why I did that. I just hoped on the bike and rode off. Got to a traffic light where I needed to turn left (this was the point up to which I listened to the instructions). But the sky towards my left was as black as my tires. I looked enviously towards the blue sky on the right, and turned left into the drapes of rain ahead.
I was lucky though, cause the road made a right turn in a couple of kilometers and I was soon out of the rain.
I started climbing the mountain, concentrated on my technique to take on the tight curves. Meanwhile the night was closing in, and on the other part of the mountain, another heavy rain was waiting for me. Again.
It was already dark and the rain was poring so hard that I could not see anything. Trying to swipe my visor with my glove didn't help at all, so I opened it, but that was a big mistake. As I was wearing my glasses, they got wet on the both sides of the glass and now every time a car came from the opposite way, all the droplets of water that were stuck to my glasses lighted up and shinned like tiny stars. Well...stars are nice, but not on my glasses, in the dark, while riding.
I stopped the bike on the side of the road at one point, because I couldn't tell where the road was going anymore. I though about stopping until the rain would pass, but I had nowhere to know when it would and I was on a piece of road with no cities, so the only option was to wait in the rain for the rain to pass. And that didn't make any sense to me. So I kept going.
To my surprise, after a while, I got used to the feeling of panic that I had, to the cold (the temperature dropped to 6 degrees), to the stings the droplets of rain gave me whilst hitting my cheeks, to the constant water on my glasses, and started leaning a bit more fearless into the curves, till I got to a point where I wanted to overpass the car in front because it was going too slow.
Near Campina, the rain stopped, and I found a gas station where I pulled over to rest for a bit and get a bite to eat, cause I realized I haven't eaten all day. I called my mom to tell her that I was OK (my parents are always worried when I'm on the bike).
From here on, it was a straight way towards home. No more rain, no more cold, no more curves. Met a couple of idiots, but nothing unusual about that.
Got home in one piece, after 640 km, 12 hours on the road, one nail in the rear tire and a lot of quality time with the Redhead.
P.S.
...and that's how you get a butt rash :)