The 12 mile picnic and bazaar

Watching the Tour de France, we see the lines of campers, cars, people  lining the roads, having cookouts, drinking and we think ........Wow!  Turns out that scene may be, on a smaller scale, a regular weekend thing.  The last 20 km of today's climb - up to the tunnel that cuts under the last bit of the Transfaragasan Pass - was just like that:  cars parked all over - including in the driving lanes, folks obviously camped for the weekend, campfires, grills, picnics, traffic.  The last 500 meters up to the tunnel was like riding the Tour - traffic at a standstill, wall-to-wall crowds, people selling stuff, all kinds of food.  Quite a scene.  A little atmosphere added by the herd of sheep just above the market.

Quite a spectacular road - first 10 km in the valley bottom was 3-4% climbing, then started switchbacking up and for the next 25 km averaged 5.7%.  Above treeline, it was very reminiscent of pictures of the Stelvio - short, steep switchbacks held up by big retaining walls.   Quite spectacular - and, from the top one looked down a 2000 meter (6600 feet) vista to the plateau where we started - quite unlike anything that I'm aware of in the US, short of something like the look down from the summits of the Teton Range into Jackson Hole, but no highway there.

Had a few folks to ride with on the early part, but they faded and it was a solo effort most of the way - a bit hard to get motivated when nobody is pushing you.  Best time on Strava is for a BMC pro during the 2012 Tour of Romania - 25.5 km in 1:09.  I hoped to at least double his time and did better than I hoped for at 2:02.  I forgot to load enough energy bars so was starved at the top and was quite glad for all the food available - a large blueberry layer cake, a quick espresso, then back down the last 8 km to ride up with Jean.

Finally a cool day of riding, with clouds and a little rain.

Then spent the afternoon wandering around the bazaar, checking out the foods, drinks, sheepskin boots, paintings, bread, cake, chintzy tourist stuff, etc.  Popular is a thing where they take bread dough rolled pretty thin, then cut into strips and rolled around a wooden roller - rather like tape on a handlebar, then doused with sugar and rolled rotisserie style over a fire to "bake" it.  A final layer of cinnamon sugar to finish it off, slide the tube of bread off the roller, and you have  a sweet treat of enormous calories and absolutely no non-carbohydrate nutritional value.  Seems to be equivalent in popularity to Romanian version of Krispy-Kreme donuts.

The road itself was built in the 70's - apparently a military paranoid dream of Ceausescu.  apparently has been repaved once about 5 years ago, minimal other maintenance - push the biggest rocks off the sides of the road and such.  Riding along you can look at the underside of bridges on the next switchback and see where much of the concrete has flaked away leaving rebar flapping in the breeze.  Helps to motivate fast pedaling over the bridges.

Talked to some guys from Italy who had driven up just to cycle over  the pass because it's "the most beautiful in Europe."  

Tomorrow, a 900 meter long tunnel, then down the other side.