"these rocks look as if they were touched by god" the beginning of bulgaria

we are on top of the world. belgradochik, bulgaria, to be precise. yesterdays ride consisted of one 2 never ending, granny gear, bugs-swarming-your-face uphill crawls sandwiched between one unforgettable endorphin erupting downhill, and brought us to this amazing town nestled in the mountains, real mountains, of bulgaria.
crossing the border from as we rode from gogosu to calafat, romania and then into vidin, bulgaria was done in style with a police escort through the city and a special forces police night watch team surrounded our danube river parkside campsite with white caution tape as we slept. do we look that vulnerable, really? because im pretty sure my thighs are like two giant tree trunks at this point... ya.
this trip is fabulous, and i can't say it enough. even when im down, its good. even when youve eaten chocolate jam sandwiches for lunch every day, its good. when it rains, when you havent showered in 6 days, when your accomodation ends up being in the front yard of the local pub, its all good.
i dont know when it happened, but suddenly whipping out 100k per day is no news at all, and even when we still have 30kms to go, and its 5pm, and the sun is going down, and you're hungry and the food still needs to be cooked, we know that we have the ability to stop for a 1 hour stop with a local should they perhaps invite us to their backyard garden for a cup of coffee as we stand outside her house looking lost. did that run on sentance make sense?
explanation. while riding a most epic day through romanian countryside the other day, myself, mark, sabrina and shawn found ourselves at the gate of a house on the side of the road after making a left turn and not knowing exactly whether or not it was the right turn to make. shawn doubles back to ask someone for directions, just as the most lovely young woman steps up to the gate and asks if she can help us.
"you speak english!" we exclaim with mild shock, as her pronounciation is perfect. "yes" she smiles humbly. "can i help you? would you like an apple from the tree?"
we can't help but say yes to the apple. regardless of the fact that its been a long day and we still have k's to go. an apple turns into coffee in the backyard, as elena has just been sitting there reading a book being somewhat bored back at home for the summer from university. she finds 5 chairs and fills a bowl with cookies and another with chips. her mother lays out four tiny tea cups each of them floral and blue and with their own matching saucer. "these are the size of the cups we have, i hope its ok."
it's ok. more than ok.
Elena talks to us about her experience growing up in Romania. about her education and her country. she is extremely intelligent and realistic, and beautiful. she needs to come on next year's bike tour. can you imagine how the dynamic of the trip would change completely?
"what is your favourite part of Romania?"
"my home, right here."
she loves her dogs, and her family. her yard has a small grape vine which they use to make wine from, an apple tree, a lovely little home, and a barn with plywood falling every which way. her family doesn't live there in the winter. no one does, not even the dogs, who move in with the neighbors.
we don't want to leave. but we must, because, similarly to the night previous, we have no pre-arranged accomodation, and someone has to figure out where we are staying. so far, this hasn't caused any real problem.
an abandoned half built house on top of a mountain that crosses the narrowest point of the danube in borova. this accomodation came with about 10 stray puppy friends :)
and to our delite, as i have mentioned, we rode into gogosu and ended up camping on the lawn of the local pub. (p.s. gogosu's population is about 100, so we were definately at the town hot spot for our 3rd to last saturday night of the trip)

its hard to imagine this trip being over soon. its just getting going. we are finding a groove in the team and things are getting interesting terrain wise. sabrina and i were talking the other day about how neat it would be to have a 6 month twenty person bike tour. roving community. insane dynamics. im growing attached to all these people, and i think september is going to come as a bit of a shock. (not to mention i'll be in mo-frickin TurKeY!!!)

i could go on. i should go on, because i havent been writing down many of the thoughts ive had on the tour, and i havent really documented anything at all. especially now that my 8gb camera card is full and im actually too lazy to upload them. oops.

its crazy to see us getting so strong.
its crazy how much you can experience in one day.
i think everyone should do a long distance tour once in their life.
we met a french man on the road the other day who is cycling from les rochelles, france, to india. solo. over 2 years... he expects to be in egypt for the winter.
thats at least 2 people so far who are on long distance trips in order to "take a break from life". people who have never toured before and are just doing it.

and then theres kids like the two 20 year old boys from england who are taking 3 weeks this summer to ride the entire danube to the black sea. reaching sometimes 200kms per day. just for fun.
people are nuts.

i must go. because, i can't stand this internet business sometimes. there are pastries and yogurt to be eaten. there is rain to be dodged, there are streets to walk.

look up belgradochik on a google map. it was in the nomination to be one of the next wonders of the world. and we are sleeping in the park in question.

xx and o