Day 17: Transfagarasan

This morning I started cycling towards the mountains. A bit nervous, since I did not know if I was up to the challenge. I have never climbed a pass like this with a velomobile and only once with a normal bike.

When the ascend began it became clear: Yes, I can cycle this, but no, not in a sustainable way. I could only make a maximum of about 100m in altitude before I had to pause. To cool down again and to get the heart rate back into a normal range. Because the street runs in a forest, there was shadow most of the time. As I climbed higher the temperature fell.
With time the pauses got more frequent. I first set myself the goal of reaching 1300m of altitude since this is half of the ascend from 600m to 2000m. And once you are half way there, the rest is easy, isn't it?
Actually this worked quite well in motivating me until I reached the tree line. When I suddenly could see what still lay before me I was a bit devastated, since everything looked so far up. Looking down at what I had already cycled calmed me down a bit.
Other cyclists where quite a bit faster than me. Two I had met at the start of the ascend where already on their way down again, when I still had a long way to go. Velomobiles are not made for climbing and carrying complete camping gear does not help either (and maybe they are a bit fitter than me as well ;)

But the views back down the valley got better and better. A few hundred meters from the top, there was suddenly a traffic jam. All cars wanted to get to the top to take fotos. So things slowed to a crawl and sometime to a complete standstill. When I finally reached the top, there was a large parking space and market huts for tourists. Someone in Sibiu had told me, that it was nice at the top and that I should stay there, but for me this was an anti-climax. So I just took a short look around and continued into Romanias second longest tunnel. With no ventilation and a traffic jam of the cars coming up from the other side. Nice. But fortunately the tunnel was already going downhill and my lane was empty. I considered briefly at what point breathing the air in the tunnel was more healthy than not breathing at all, but it took far less than 3 minutes to pass the tunnel ;)

On the other side the road went downhill all the time. For at least the first 700m in altitude I had to almost constantly break to prevent getting to fast. Since I had no idea what the breaks could take without overheating I paused a few times to give them the chance to cool down.

When I had to pedal for the first time I noticed that my legs were quite tired. So I decided to stop at the next campsite, pension or whatever. But there was none. Complete wilderness. I considered wild camping, but I'd really like a good meal and I hadn't left much to eat.
Then a car stopped on the opposite lane and the guy told me "There is one bear/beer". I was a bit confused what he wanted to tell me, but after cycling for a few hundred meters there was a bear with two cubs on the left side of the road. Two cars had already stopped beside it.
When the bear saw the velomobile it got into a defensive position and watched me. As I stopped at the side of the road she went into the bushes at the side of the road.
For some reason many animals are afraid of velomobiles. Horses sometimes panic, dogs get aggressive or defensive. Unfortunatly I cannot tell them, that it's all ok and they don't have to worry. But the wild camping option vanished in that moment for good.
So I cycled on and on and finally found a sign for a pension 900m from the road. Those where 900m of a rough path and I considered returning to the road two times since I couldn't cycle anymore and had to push my bike. But after getting there I'm now quite happy to have a place to stay for the night. The caveat: No Wifi, no mobile. So you will only read this text once I have the possibility to post it :)