Day 40 – Somewhere in Hungary

Day 40

Somewhere in Romania – Somewhere in Hungary

Romania is awesome! Who knew?

Apparently somebody knew because the first three hotels I tried to check into as I rolled into the Romanian foothills were completely booked. The fourth was the charm though and after a hearty breakfast I headed out into the beautiful Carpathian Mountains.

The majority of the day was spent on excellent to awesome twisty mountain roads. The traffic was mostly light and what there was of it was dispatched with ruthless efficiency. I let all 59 of my mighty Italian horses out of the stables early in the day and didn’t send them back until I approached the Hungarian border where the terrain again flattened out to farmland.

Since I was having so much fun strafing apexes I didn’t stop to take a lot of pictures. It’s been a while since I got to ride a motorcycle in its natural element. Now don’t get me wrong dodging huge potholes in the middle of the night is fun in an “oh shit I’m going to crash and die in the Ukrainian hinterlands (or worse bend a wheel)” sort of way but dragging hard parts around curves is really where it’s at. Wait, did I say hard parts?

I learned within the first day of riding my Guzzi that the first thing to touch down while going left in a spirited manner was the center-stand tang. Today I learned that the first thing to touch down while going right was the exhaust clamp. But the the clamp only touched down a few seconds of arc before the foot-peg. That’s what I think anyway. It’s hard to judge when your tire starts being leveraged off the ground and skipping sideways.  I had already planned on removing the center-stand before hitting the Alps it looks like I’ll be repositioning the exhaust clamp as well. The good news is that every time a hard part touches down you gain an infinitesimal amount of cornering clearance.

I swear I’m going to get rid of those chicken stripes if it’s the last thing I ever….. Wait, let me rethink that for a moment.

I’ll be in Brno in a few days and I expect I’ll be busy enjoying the races so if you don’t hear from me till I get to Munich it isn’t because I’ve ridden off a cliff it’s just that I’m having more fun then you are.

 

 

 

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