Timisoara to Resita

July 2nd
100km (978m vertical)

Wonderful day on the road – exactly why I love cycling. After a string of long, hot, flat, boring days we finally had some interesting terrain.

Started with a good breakfast in the hotel and then a group ride out of town. I got to wear a bright safety vest and stop traffic at intersections while the 39 other riders rode past, before sprinting back up to the front of the pack and doing it again. It made the slow ride out of the city much more fun.

Out of the city we had a series of rolling hills that climbed gradually and then plunged back down to little creeks. Great stuff. I hit a top speed of 72.9km/h on one of the downhills, which is my fastest of the trip so far. Interesting roads make the distance fly by, and using different muscles and positions on the bike to climb and descend is much easier on my butt than sitting in the same place on the saddle on a flat road.

Romania is noticeably poorer than the other European countries that we have traveled through. The roads have a lot of potholes and random patches of gravel, and the towns have dirt side streets and no sidewalks. Even in Timisoara, a prominent city, there were lovely squares that looked very European but you didn't need to walk far to find less glamorous, more run down areas.

Lunch today was great. Some people had complained about the quantity of food at lunch, and today there was lots. They even had ice tea and four kinds of fruit for us. Yum.

We're staying in a hotel again tonight, even though it is not a rest day. Apparently there are not very many places to camp between Hungary and Istanbul, so we'll have a lot more hotel stays. No air conditioning in the hotel and I got eaten by mosquitoes while sleeping with the windows open.

Photos from today:

Following the river through the rolling hills. Lovely cycling.
From the hotel balcony. The mountain in the background gives clue to tomorrow's climbing.



Got this photo from Carl and Rita. It wasn't taken today, but I do eat icecream everyday, so it might as well have been.