The Tempest – mid-April 2004

We left our perfect spot in the woods on the Monday morning after Easter, not without a shade of misgiving on my part because it looked like it might rain, and we could have stayed in our current spot for a week to wait out a storm, if need be, and not have caused a problem. But I had thought it looked like it might rain for the past five days, and nothing had materilized, so it seemed foolish to wait for a storm that might or might not come. Plus, it was Spring, and we had to expect to get a little bit wet.

So we pushed on in the muggy weather, passing strangely empty fields. The peasants must still be on holiday. We travelled through marshland, through small, woodsy areas, and up and down hills. We were offered more cake and red eggs. The sky covered and the wind picked up. Stephane advanced ahead of me. I struggled against the wind.

Then the night came and we found no more trees, no more woods to pitch our tent. We were in the middle of the Macin Massif, heading towards Tulcea, the port at the entrance to the Danube Delta. We were heading upwards, but any towns were still a long way off. We decided to put the tent in the middle of a huge, rolling field. Just chose a dirt path at random and took it as far as it would allow us, or until it seemed sufficiently far from the road that no cars would notice us. Then pitched the tent next to the path, by the field.

The wind blew so fiercely that night that I wondered if the tent might blow away. I didn’t sleep very well. We had an incredibly difficult time the next morning folding up the tent – it whipped around us and refused to cooperate. Still we didn’t see any peasant in the fields. How many days did they have off to celebrate Easter?

I ached from the sunburn I had gotten on the cloudy days, and here we were – in the space of 24 hours, the temperature had dropped over 40 F! Now we were wearing winter jackets, gloves, and hats. The wind blew as it had never blown before. It whipped around us, it deafened us, it blew us sideways across the road. The rain poured down in buckets – big drops, never-ending. Then the fog settled in, and we could see no more than a few yards in front of us. And the road was still climbing upwards, slowly but steadily. And the angry wind was still pushing us backwards, at a distressing rate. Sometimes, I resigned myself to pushing, something I hadn’t done since our first weeks in France. It was hard to decide which was worse: the ache in my legs from pedalling or the ache in my back from pushing. It was about the same speed. At least pushing provided a change.

On one such occasion, as I was trudging agonizingly uphill, blinking raindrops from my eyes and cursing the fact that Stephane wasn’t in front of me to block some of the wind, he had been at work ahead of me. When I reached him, I felt utterly defeated, completely exhausted, and more than ready to give up. Then I saw, on the road in front of me, the message written in soft stone: “Sheri, je t’aime.” I smiled for the first time that day. And 20 yards farther along: “Go, baby, go!” Another smile. I looked over at him and felt a sense of solidarity. He always knows just when I need encouragement the most.

The wind blew and the rain fell for several days. On two of the worst days, we managed to advance a measly 20 km. per day against the wind, an impressive figure, considering that we had lately done between 80-100 km./day without batting an eyelash. We were miserable. We were like two beaten and weary soldiers who hold out the white flag, only to find that the other party doesn’t accept the terms of defeat and declares that the War WILL go on.

And the War DID go on. We struggled valiantly. We pushed and pedalled and told ourselves that the current storm would be sure to leave us good weather in Tulcea, when we arrived at the delta of the Danube. I even had trouble pedalling downhill. At one point, the wind blew so fiercely that I descended down a rather steep hill at the Olympic rate of 5kph (3 mph) – pedalling! On a normal day, I can walk uphill faster than that! Our average speed for the day was 4.5 mph.

You know you’re going really slow when you have time to avoid the bugs which are crossing the road in front of you!!

These couple of days were definitely the hardest days we had ever done. Worse than the snow, worse than the steep mountains, worse than a mere rainstorm. The wind can be a biker’s best friend or worst enemy. In this case, it was the most desperate enemy we had thus far encountered. We struggled in vain to keep our bikes in a straight line. It was like swimming across a river and hoping to arrive at a point directly across from that which you’ve left by swimming in a straight line. It’s impossible – the current carries you downstream whether you will or not. It was the same with us. We struggled just as much to stay on the right-hand side of the road as we did to continue forward.

These days could be summarized like this: uphill, wind, rain, cold…uphill, wind, rain, cold…uphill, wind, rain, cold….

One evening, we searched in vain for a good, or even a feasible, camping spot. Then my legs gave out and I decided that I could go no farther. So we took another dirt path – by this time, a mud path – as far as we could – 20 yards – and pitched our tent right there: on a dirt path by a field by the side of the road. We couldn’t see the cars through the fog; we figured they couldn’t see us, either.

We awoke to mud knee-deep in the morning. The wind still howled, but the fog had started to clear a little. We figured that everyone in the five surrounding counties knew by now that there were some lunatic people stuck up to their ears in sticky mud not even half a football field’s length from the road. Stephane said maybe they thought it was Ukranian refugees. Haha. Fat chance. Even refugees are not that stupid or desperate. Police cars passed by without stopping to check our papers. As if they cared. Certainly not enough to get wet and muddy themselves.

The mud was like quick-sand. You sank in it. When you tried to raise your feet, you were stuck. At least we could laugh about it. Imagine what the people who saw us must have thought! It WAS laughable – in a not-so-funny way! It was by far the worst place we had ever camped. It must have been the muddiest spot in Romania!

Thankfully the rain finally stopped and the fog lifted enough to see the surrounding countryside. It was very pretty: green mountains and rolling hillsides, sparsely inhabited. It was a shame that we had missed the scenery during the first few days.

The wind still blew strong, but the clearing sky gave us hope that the War would soon be over….