Tass > Kiskunmajsa > Szeged > Timisoara, Romania (110km, 48km, 120km)

September 02, 2014

Tass > Kiskunmajsa > Szeged > Timisoara, Romania (110km, 48km, 120km)

[Originally posted Sept 2, 2014]

Phew.

It's 12:30am, but it should only be 11:30pm. We are in Romania, which means that we have entered a new time zone (entering new countries is cool - and Romania is country #11 - but entering new time zones is really cool). But this excitement will be short lived as tomorrow we will enter Serbia and return to the "normal" European time zone.

Katy is fast asleep next to me. She's been a bit sick lately (runny nose, cough, emergent trips to the side of the road) so I'm letting her get some needed rest because tomorrow we have some hefty - 160 - kilometers planned.

Today Katy and I argued a bit. Which happens occasionally/often, even though I write about it somewhat infrequently. To be perfectly honest it seems to come in waves - we're either up or down. Now I'm not saying we argue all the time, but what couple do you know doesn't argue? And when we are stuck to this tandem all day we don't exactly have too many other people to vent to.

And so I'd like to talk about this for a moment (mostly because after two months of riding I feel as though I've written about all the interesting topics). One of the things that I hate about social media is that it paints people's lives in such a glamorous light. Blogs, Facebook, Instagram - they are filled with the miraculous. But then you meet these people and they are boring as can be. I can think of a handful of people who, if you were to read their blogs or look at their Instagram accounts they would appear to have the most fantastic lives - but then if you were to actually meet these people you'd be thanking the good Lord that you aren't as boring as them (trust me, I've done it). And so this post is to do just that. Katy and my life isn't that glamorous, I promise. I've written so much about the highs and the lows of our trip, this post will be about the average, the mundane, the routine.

Today was pretty much the same as any other day. Wake up at 7am. Head off to breakfast - yogurt and muesli. It's been the same for the past couple weeks now cause it is cheap, filling and although I get to choose a new yogurt flavor every day I have a big ol' bag of muesli that I've been working at since Slovenia. Katy won't eat the muesli. She thinks it's "weird". This is one of the things we constantly argue about - I think she's too picky of an eater. If it's food, eat it. And about the yogurt, I get to choose a new flavor every day because we can only carry one day's worth of yogurt cause Katy thinks it tastes "weird" if we carry yogurt in the hot sun for multiple days in a row. I choose to pick my battles with her and so I let this slide (although occasionally I will respond to her with the great line from Dr. Leo Marvin: talk about weird). And what this means is that we have to go to the grocery store EVERY DAMN day. It sucks. Actually, we usually go twice a day. I've been to Carrefour, Spar, Migros, Coop, Aldi (which is called Hofer in Austria and Slovenia), LiDl, Tesco, Intermarche and the list goes on. I'm not excited to come home, but I do look forward to having a fridge.

After breakfast was the "where to sleep tonight?" dilemna. Having entered Eastern Europe accomodation prices have dropped significantly - we can now get a private room for about €20 - and so we've been on quite a streak of staying in hostels or cheap hotels. I guess we've "really wimped out" on the wild camping. Katy also has a fear that the gypsies will come and get us while we are sleeping. So, everyday we are having to get online and find a new place to stay. Every single day. I guess this is why when middle-aged wealthier folks go on trips they are preplanned all inclusive thing-a-majigs that are entirely arranged and planned by someone else - the planning gets a little laborious.

Then we are about to leave but Katy hasn't loaded the map on her smartphone. So I tell her "what the hell have you been doing for the last half hour" and she responds with "I didn't know where you wanted to stay" and so I say "why don't you just choose a damn place - why don't you just make a decision" and she says "cause if the place sucks you will just say it is my fault" and so I say "well it will be your fault if you choose a sucky place". This sort of reasoning can be applied to where to stay, how to get there. You know things like that. I guess I'm not an easy person to get along with.

So then we are out on the road. Some days are absolutely beautiful, but southern Hungary doesn't have much to offer. Slightly bleak. Old folks on bikes. Bike paths with one to many cracks. If I've been wearing the same spandex for the last couple days my butt lets me know and things start to get uncomfortable. Lately my wrist has also been hurting - I developed a ganglion cyst on the dorsal surface of my right wrist a couple weeks before we left and it has felt fine until about 5 days ago. I attribute the pain to riding in the flats - when you are constantly climbing and descending your body can shift around a little more. So today was 6 hours of constant body rearrangements to keep blood flowing and prevent my fingers from tingling most of the day (maybe we should have gotten a recumbent tandem).

Then we got to Romania. That was the highlight of the day. The mood instantly changed, friendly smiles and waves from everyone. Back in Nevers, France our WS hosts said their favorite country to tour in was Romania, and so we kind of went out of our way to spend a day or two here. It's great to see people waving and smiling at us. We feel a bit like a novelty. We've probably had more smiles and waves today than from our two weeks in France. Quite the friendly group of people over here in Romania.

Then we reach the place we are staying. And the routine is the same - check in, find your room, shower, get dressed (this is simpler than usual because I only have about 2 outfits - and today Katy reminded me that so far on our trip I have lost a pair of shoes, a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and my swimsuit and that eventually I won't have anything to wear at all) where will we have dinner, do we have the energy to walk around town, probably go back to the grocery store, Katy falls asleep a good hour or so before me.

I guess in the end, most of life is routine. We do the same things day in and day out. Even cycling across country - the same things day in and day out. A couple months ago as I was speaking with my bishop (who also happens to be a professor at the medical school) I was given some good advice. It went something like this: We were talking about what specialty I would choose and all of the glamorous aspects of different specialties were mentioned - new surgical procedures, burn and trauma patients in the ER, psych patients with schizophrenia etc. But then he said, don't choose a specialty because it might be very exciting some of the time. Choose a specialty that you'll be able to enjoy all of the time - cause the majority of the work you do will be very routine - the same thing over and over again.

And that's something I need to work on. The routine scares me. It's even tougher when Katy and I don't see eye to eye on things. As we've ridden these past 4,196 kilometers (I just added them up - it's about equal to riding from SLC > AA > Lake Village, AR) a recurring thought has come to me: all of the people we meet who are truly happy don't lead glamorous lives - instead they have learned to be content with the routine and (what I often call) the mundane. And the one thing that is able to make the routine become glamorous are good relationships.

Often I am asked by people: what do you want to get from this trip. And I guess I should say, I don't think I really get to choose what I learn from this adventure. The things I learn just kind of happen. And so "thing I've learned #1" - life is routine - we do the same things over and over and over again - and the best way to learn to make the routine become glamorous is work hard to develop and maintain great relationships. (I guess for me this means I should follow the advice of my mother and "be nice to your wife".)