On A Steel Horse I Ride

After close to a week of overcast, cold, wintry days, the sun finally came out for a one-day encore earlier this week.  We grabbed the King and headed out for an afternoon on the town.  We walked all over, there was delicious shwarma, everyone had fun.

On the way home, we saw a wagon-driver stopped at one of the blocs, so we went over to say hello.  The guy was super-nice and Gabe got to meet his first horse.  Wagoneers are pretty common outside of the city, but in Bucharest itself you only see one every few days or so.

That evening we dropped his Majesty off at the royal babysitter, and Io and I headed into downtown Bucharest to buy a couple things.  Our shopping wrapped up pretty fast, so we spontaneously stopped in at the Beer Wagon, my favorite restaurant in Bucharest, for a little dinner for two sans roi.  I got a Romanian specialty called "sarmale," which are like leaves stuffed with minced meat, plus my first mamaliga (polenta) of this trip.  SO GOOD.  There is not a ton of variety in Romanian cuisine, but what there is is very tasty and you really don't get it anywhere else.  It's good to be back.

I was hoping to get papanas donuts for dessert,  but we ran out of babysitter time.  I did, however, manage to grab some furious donut on the way home.

The Beer Wagon remains a great place to eat.  Great food, great atmosphere, and dinner for two was like $25.  I'm really glad we managed to fit it in this trip.

Unfortunately that was the only day of sun.  Yesterday it turned cold again and started raining.  It was a fun day for me, though.  Godfather Ovi has* a motorbike, which I call the Deathcycle, that he has been promising to let me ride for almost a year.  Loyal blog-readers will remember that we tried to get a ride together when I was living here at the beginning of the year, but couldn't because the bike had mechanical problems.  When I arrived in Bucharest this time, Ovi told me they were fixed and we set a date for a ride.  Then the bike broke down again so we had to call it off.  But he told me he now had it re-fixed and we could do the ride today, so he came over.

I'll be honest, here: I thought there was a reasonable chance that this motorcycle was going to kill me.  But one thing I've resolved to do as a dad is to show Gabe that life is not to be lived in fear.  It's to be lived.

Ovi showed up and I was like, "Woo, bike!"  He sort of lurched and skidded it to a stop and said "Front brakes is not work.  You have a wrench?"

Uh, sure, dude.  I have a wrench.




I'm thinking to myself, Well, the streets are wet and covered with slippery wet leaves, people here drive like maniacs, I don't even have so much as a pair of gloves, and the front brakes -- which, for the uninitiated, supply 2/3 of a motorcycle's stopping power -- are apparently not working.

FUCK.  YES.  Let's do it!

"It's 106 miles to Chicago.  We've got a full tank of gas, half a 

pack of cigarettes, it's dark out, and we're wearing sunglasses."

"Hit it."

The bike is a "Ural," basically a Russian copy of the BMW boxer engine (same kind as my bike at home) put into a bare-bones motorcycle frame.  It has cables, wires and hoses that just sort of hang out there and hit you in the knees when you're riding.  The gas tank had a hole punched in it at some point and now has an oval of metal welded over the breach.  I think Ovi said it was manufactured in 1962.

It was an interesting ride.  The bike actually rides okay and the engine is great.  It doesn't stop very well and the transmission is sort of "grabby," but I went for a ride around the blocs and had so much fun that I ended up getting totally lost.  Sometimes I felt like I was wrestling the bike around corners, but I managed to keep it rubber-side-down the whole way.  I eventually found Ovi walking around one of the streets.  "I thought you -- boom," he said, making a motion for falling.  "No, no, I was just lost."

It's by far the oldest and most interesting bike I've ever been on.  I felt like Steve McQueen or something.  It was like going back into some old spy movie, riding this rattletrap Soviet-made bike around the grim and chilly Communist blocs.  

I got back, thinking "Well I'm glad I didn't die," and then Io said she absolutely had to have a ride.  So we put her on the back and took another quick spin around the bloc.  She and I haven't ridden together since she left Los Angeles about a year and a half ago.  It was nice.

I managed to not kill myself or my wife, and then we all went upstairs for tea and hot chocolate, which I definitely needed after riding the cold Bucharest streets.  We walked Ovi back down to see him off, and he said "Now, you have a last ride!"  I could hear the Grim Reaper rattling the dice in his bony fingers, but I figured, What the hell.  It's to be lived, right?  So off I went again.  It actually gets easier each time because you get more used to the bike, so the last ride was the best one of all.

Moment of Zen:

* I say he "has" a motorcycle, but ownership in Romania is sort of...fluid.  It was his, it was his god-child's, now somehow it's his again, I dunno.