27.000km, 3 months, 1 bike, 1 elbow, 1 foot, 1 carpus, 1 hip, 2 palms, 4 fingers, 25 borders, 19 languages, 9 oil filters, 4 motor-openings, many people, no support car, no sponsor, no unlimited budget, an unbelivable plan accoplished
I will tell the story of my road:
- wednesday, 27 August 2008, 14.00 in Brasov, Kronart Gallery
- thursday, 28 August 2008, 17.00 in Bucharest, Carturesti bookshop, Verona street
… we hit the highway and burn the roll-bag on the exhaust.
We reach Vama Veche, recall some memories (it was already 18.00), eat
at Mitocanu and (as we like the rain) decide to hit it.
I put the GPS on the bike (for the first time, and all the cables and power adaptor
fit… well, they were supposed to), take a point on Varna, it shows
me 81km on straight line, and we hit it for the border line with
Bulgaria. We enter the border check point as in the gasoline pumps in
Brasov (fast, breaking late and crossing the line a bit… I guess I’m
not used with all the weight and well.. it was also a bit wet). All
goes fast and painless, our ID’s and bike’s registration. No questions
asked, no fees to pay, just hit it. After 5 kms in Bulgaria, the Gnu
decides to stop. I didn’t realy know how much it eats and I’ve been
driving full speed on the highway so we have to put it on reserve and
hope it has the 2.5l that the manual says it does. I love this start,
I simply love it. It’s perfectly safe for trial and error in Bulgaria
and Turkey. Should it have been done before the start? Realy? When
exactly? I guess we should have been “preparing” now and taking the
trip “some other time”. The lady at the gas station in the next
village doesn’t take cards or euros but I have 8 Leva from some years
ago and we get 3 liters for it. She looks at our number and says she
would gladly take Romanian currency. She tells me 6 lei/liter and
thats expensive couse home it’s 4.5lei/liter so maybe the rate is
wrong or Bulgarian gasoline is expensive but we are safe enough till
Balcik or even Balcik so I don’t have to care to much. We take a nice
detour on a wavy empty road before Balcik, draw money in Balcik and
the skies start to close in. We continue to Varna and there is a
thunderstorm around us. We love the clouds and the dark sky. I take it
as a sign of good will and ride on rain through Varna. It’s late by
now so we stop, check and stay at the first motel on the way to
Bourgas. It’s perfect. Good room, clean, we eat some schembe ciorba
and get a bit cought by Kamenitzas (bulgarian beer; I could drive 2 in
this time and don’t feel dizzy at all; so it works…. we are living
and getting a rest.)
We left Brasov. At 20.00 we had a chat with Paula from
RTT and I guess that was the real departure. We left Brasov behind at
21.30. It was the first time that we were riding with all the lugage
and all the 2 persons all together on the Gnu. We started by leaning
slow in the curves and by testing the wet asphalt. {I write now from
Yerevan, after more than 4000km from departure and we now ride 90km/h
in dirty-wet curves at 30deg to the asphalt; it’s been a tremendous
learning experience. A reporter asked in the press conference if we
had some proper motocross experience before departure. I just smiled
and told him “We shall see if enough was enough”. What should I have
said? That nothing or 1 month of training would have been the same?
Because where do you draw the line? Do you train (how many kms, how
many hours?) with the real lugage and the real Cri behind? Why not
just do the real ride in this time? You take it step by step? How big
is the smallest acceptable step? Well, I know we took it slow, but we
took it by doing it, we trained and prepared living it. I’ll close the
pharantesis now.}. That night we slept at Ralu’s, in Grozavesti and
got wasted with 1 beer/each. Yes, we were a bit tired; we joked: we
were born tired and we are living to get some rest. So let’s get it
right.
Today we had a short pressconference in Brasov. This our hometown and the place where our trip starts. They asked some questions about the route, expensese, where we work 
… Here are some articles:
