Day 27--Corabia, Romania to Ruse, Bulgaria

HEAT WIENIE WIMPS OUT

Monday, July 21, 2008
Corabia, Romania to Ruse, Bulgaria
Distance: 166 km (103 miles)
Temp: 103F

X+--Our route today takes us to Giurgiu, on the Romanian side of the Romanian-Bulgarian "Friendship Bridge", completed in 1954 and then across the river to Ruse, Bulgaria for a rest day. Approximate distance: 166km (103 miles).

The over 100-degree temps exhausted me today. I rode 150 km (93 miles) of the 166 km (103 miles) for the day. The heat began to get me at 100 km. By 150 km I’d been on the bike 9 hours and was out of gas. It was 103°F with long flat stretches with no shade or cover at all. Just before Giurgiu (say juju) I came upon a man whose car had broken down talking on his cell. I handed him the card which had on it in Romanian “Please call my tour leader” and Alex’s number.

Alex said he would pick me up and asked where I would be. I said, “I’m just near customs on the Romanian side of the river.” That’s where I thought I was, but I found that I was barely on the edge of town and nearly 4 long miles away from customs. I managed to ride to an auto shop that had a bit of shade just before customs, which booths I thought I could see in the sunny distance.

Alex didn’t come and didn’t come. When he and Steffie finally arrived, I found that I was really a few more km away from customs, though the men at the auto garage had assured me that the booths that I could see down the road was customs. Turned out one had to drive a long lane lined with currency exchange and duty free shops before arriving at the actual customs area. Alex and Steffie had been through customs twice looking for me.

After 100 km, I stopped nearly every place there was shade and drank from my water bottles. The water in the ones on the bike was hot enough to brew tea, but I had two in my rack pack that were somewhat cooler. All told I went through 10 bottles of water and one Sprite and one orange drink on the ride.

Today’s route had a hilly middle section where we seemed to climb into each village and then had little rewarding downhill on the other side.

Men and women were in the fields harvesting by hand in many places, scythes and sickles in hand, children and older people lying in the shade of a tree near the road.

There continue to be benches outside the wall or gate to each home, with another across the sidewalk under a tree. People spend a lot of time chatting on these. At one point I stopped to swig water and eat a tomato and heard some murmuring so turned to find that five teenagers had quietly met at the bench and were observing me. One asked, “Do you speak English?” I said I did and asked if he did. He said “a little.” He wanted to know where I was from.

The village pump and a woman doing her wash beside it.

Many of the houses along this route were painted bright colors such as the pink-red-and-white one above or the orange-red-and-white one on the left in the photo above,

Impressive church at roadside.

This was a typical sight--an old factory falling to ruin

 Most people in this area are unaccustomed to tourists. This is a very poor section of the country and certainly not a tourist location. The people are also not accustomed to using a bicycle for anything non-utilitarian, so they come to look at these strangely dressed cyclists and their strange bicycles, always asking, “Where are you from?”

Marion and Fred were at the first little hole-in-the wall I stopped at. They were just leaving, so I sat alone with a huge bottle of cold water and drank and rested until I had cooled a bit. A man brought me two handfuls of pears, obviously just picked from the trees as they had leaves and branches connected. I ate one and stashed the rest in my rackpack, first trying to eat one of the two huge sandwiches I had. The sandwich made me feel nauseous, so I fed it to a little, but wary, dog nearby who was scavenging for food.

Some of the wagons I saw today. The woman being pulled by two donkeys was interesting. Often the wagons look homemade. The white horse above was tethered at roadside while its owner worked in the fields. Please note the leaning telephone pole behind it. I hope you have been noting the wires in other pix, too. Pretty crazy, no? But the best is yet to come.

The second little hole in the wall I stopped at had a big table full of men drinking beer (they begin first thing in the morning here), and no other free table in the shade. One of the men saw me looking for a table in the shade and jumped up. I thought he wanted me to sit at their table so put my bottles of drink on the corner. No. Women don’t sit at the men’s table. He got me a small table and placed it in the shade near the door. He asked where I was from. When I told him, he said in broken English that he would like to work in the USA at IBM but had no money to take his family so they would have to come later. He sent a young boy off who returned later with a large bag of plums. I added these to the weight in my rackpack, and to make room, fed my second sandwich to a little short-legged black and brown dog who was very grateful. It ran off with the whole oversized thing in its mouth.

The men's table in the shade. The man in the black and yellow shirt became my host, seeing to it that I got a table in the shade and telling me in broken English of his desire to come to the U.S. and work for IBM. Note the pulled up shirt of the guy on the left. A very common sight, even in the big cities.They don't seem to self-conscious of their big bellies.

The third place I stopped was a modern gas station at the edge of a field. A young woman was sitting at a plastic table under the sole tree. Since there were two other chairs there, I sat down with her. She was not friendly and spoke not a word nor invited conversation, but I did not care. I spent another 20 minutes or so there cooling off. Eventually I could pedal only a km or so before resting. And my neck, of all things, was tired of holding up my head, and helmet. I was very sleepy.

After my gas station rest, when I found a Lombardy poplar on the opposite side of the road with shade, I decided to wait for Harold and Judy and Carolyn to pass, thinking to ride with them. (It was just as hot in the shade as in the sun today.) I spread my raincoat under a roadside tree, took off my helmet and gloves, and actually fell asleep for a few minutes. I was awakened by an ant bite. I had placed myself on top of an ant nest! It took me several minutes to pull them from my gloves and washcloth, where they must have been feeding on sweat, and to empty them from my helmet and get them off my clothes. What a mess. At the time I was feeling sorry for myself and did not know if I had the strength to continue. But continue I did to Giurgiu, where I made my call.

When the van got to the Hotel Anna Palace in Ruse (pronounced Rue sah), Bulgaria, I staggered to the front desk to get my room key. Rod, our fastest and youngest rider, ran up, nearly hugged me, and said, “Susan, You made it! I’m so proud of you. You are way older than I am and I got leg cramps.” I told him that I had sagged in the last miles. I was too tired to think of a snappy response to his “way older” remark or to even think it funny until much later.

Hotel Anna Palace; we ate dinner under the canopies on the flowered terrace above the main entrance; the next day alex switched rooms with us and Judy's and my room was way up top behind the dormer windows 

I had started the morning wearing two pair of shorts, which cushioned my seat quite well, but they bound my thigh muscles too tightly so I had painful lactic acid build up from the get go. After only 10 km I took them off. I found that they had a large hole in them so threw them away when I got to my room. (I also had a very chaffed inner thigh and rear from the sweat soaked shorts I was wearing.)

I am hoping that after our rest day tomorrow that on the following day’s 102-mile ride to Calarasi, I will be able to cushion myself better, and that the roads are smoother. One hundred miles on a bumpy road ruins one’s rear, hands, and spirit

Dinner this evening was on the terrace overlooking the river and the rococo buildings across the square. In ordinary circumstances I would have enjoyed it but I was still too wrung out. I cannot now even remember what we had.

Our room was enormous with 10-foot ceilings and three rooms. Because of this, the AC just couldn’t hack the 103°F heat. We went to the front desk and told them our AC was broken. The receptionist told us that the AC was working but that the owner set the temps at 85F. The thermostat in our room in Ruse was a ruse. We asked for a fan and the woman at the front desk gave us the fan from the manager’s office. I was still suffering from heat exhaustion and had a very restless night

Observations:

-    There were many flocks of geese and some turkeys along the road and also in the communal creek or pond—always with a gooseherd (generally a child)  to tend them, particularly in the towns

-     Cows and horses continue to be tethered near the road

-     I saw a little boy and girl with two buckets of water that they had toted to their cow. The cow had her head in one bucket like a horse.

-     I also saw more donkeys today than yesterday, when carts were pulled predominantly by horses. Several of the donkeys were tethered in the blazing sun beside the road. I felt sorry for these “beasts of burden.” Also saw a few carts pulled by humans. We seem to be in a very poor area of the country.