It's good. It's good, good!
- Profu'
- 7 days ago
- 11 min read
"Stop Time" 12th edition, approximately 2,200 km, seven days and a thank you that I don't want to postpone any longer.
On the last day of the "Stop Time" ride, for the first time the name didn't just seem inspired to me.
I wish I could stop time.
Not metaphorically. Not like in a text about how quickly life passes. I wish I could reach out and grab it, pull it back just a few minutes, and change just one thing.
That's it.
On the last day, Om Bun had a motorcycle accident.
He's with us, recovering and has the same determination we know him to have. But he didn't just get away with a few good scrapes to tell over a beer. There are broken bones, months of recovery and a forced break from riding.
So I want to say one important thing from the beginning:
This is not a goodbye text.
Fortunately, there's no reason to be.
It's a timely thank you.
Every year, in May, we, the guys from HOG, Hai Huienii, set off on the road.
It's already a tradition. A kind of mobile celebration, held on Harleys, with too much luggage, even more jokes, and a route that we usually find out late enough that we don't have time to seriously protest.
Behind these outings is Om Bun.
He started them.
He prepares them.
He searches for roads, unusual places, accommodations, museums that no one knew about, sanatoriums we end up in willingly, and wineries we leave wondering how we never heard of them before.
On paper, Om Bun organizes a ride.
In reality, it brings people together.
There are enough people who can put a few dots on a map. Fewer are those who manage to transform a few different bikers into a gang that awaits the month of May like a holiday.
A good man is a man who thanks you even when you curse him.
He's the first to jump in to help and the last to think about it. And when things get tough, confusing, or almost impossible, he puts on that calm expression and says from the bottom of his heart:
- It's good. It's good, good!
Sometimes he says it so convincingly that you start to believe him.
Other times you know very well that it's not really good, but you just feel like taking a deep breath and trying again.
There is a quote circulating, with an uncertain author, that says that good people give you happiness, bad people give you experience, the worst people teach you lessons, and the best people give you memories.
In English, the ending sounds simple: "Best people give you memories."
Good Man belongs to the latter category.
And there aren't many people I can say that about.
Like every year, this ride was going to be atypical.
We left early in the morning, with evacuations disturbing the quiet of a Monday, for our first destination: the Clock Museum in Ploiești.
Yes, the Clock Museum.
Not a terrace.
Not a mountain pass.
Not a motorcycle accessories store.
A museum.
And it was exactly what was needed.
The "Nicolae Simache" Museum is the only museum in Romania dedicated exclusively to the measurement of time. It was founded in 1963, and among its oldest pieces are two astronomical table clocks from 1544 and 1562. The collection also includes clocks related to personalities such as Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Mihail Kogălniceanu, and King Carol I.
It's the kind of place that few people know about and that you can walk past dozens of times without suspecting what's inside.
We live in a time when AI gives us answers before we finish the question or corrects articles ;), the phone tells us where to turn, and any pause longer than a few seconds seems like a waste of time.
We always feel like we have to get somewhere.
Faster.
More efficient.
More.
And, in this rush for the next thing, we sometimes forget to enjoy the one we're already in.
Maybe that's why it was fitting that the "Stop Time" ride began in a museum full of mechanisms designed to measure exactly the thing we were trying, at least for a week, to slow down.
But there is one more detail.
It was Monday.
And the museum was closed.
At least in theory.
In practice, Om Bun had worked magic, and the museum opened especially for us.
How? Well, if it's magic, how would I know?
We can only suspect that the Good Man sometimes finds doors where the rest of us only see the program pasted on them.
We walked among pendulums, mechanisms, dials, and clocks that had measured the lives of missing people long before we started our first Harley.
For a few hours, I even stopped time.
Or, at least, we stopped rushing.
From fine mechanisms to abundant sludge
After marveling at the Clock Museum, we left for Techirghiol.
Yes, you read that right.
To the sanatorium.
We joked on the way that this was just a rehearsal for the time when we would be old and would actually need treatments.
A kind of technical visit to the future.
Once there, we were taken over by nurses and slammed into various forms of mud.
Literally.
Mud bath, mud treatments, mud massage, pool, salt water, and enough therapy that we didn't know if we had come on a ride or been admitted to a group.
Beyond our jokes, Techirghiol has a serious spa tradition, built around salt water and sapropelic mud. The sanatorium uses these resources in recovery procedures and can treat a very large number of patients daily.
We treated the moment with the dignity typical of mature men who are almost up to their necks in mud.
I mean, I was joking.
Many.
After an evening at the sanatorium, I slept soundly.
Maybe the mud works.
Maybe we were just tired.
Maybe, after a certain age, a day of treatment starts to sound better than we want to admit.
The next day we got on our motorcycles and headed towards the second medical objective of the trip: Averești Domains.
Here the treatment is administered in glasses.
The road there was spectacular, exactly the kind of road that Harleys don't rush on, they flow on. Long curves, villages, hills, and that rhythm where the column starts to breathe like one big, noisy animal.
And when I arrived in Averești, I admit that it took my breath away a little.
I didn't think we had something like this in Romania.
The modern story of the estate begins in 1874, when Ștefan Negruzzi and French oenologist René Faure began developing the vineyard. Today, Domeniile Averești cultivates approximately 650 hectares of vines and owns the largest area cultivated with Busuioacă de Bohotin in the country.
Six hundred and fifty hectares.
This is no longer a vineyard next to the house.
It is a territory.
Sometimes, Romania has a habit of hiding extraordinary things in places we rarely talk about. We look for them in France, Italy or Spain, then discover that they were close by and we just didn't take the time to see them.
The motorcycles were parked for the night before the glasses appeared.
I want to specify this, because we love the cat, but we also care about the idea of returning home intact.
We spent a wonderful evening at the winery.
It is a place worth visiting, not just for the wine, but also for its size, atmosphere, and story.
On the third day we set off on the route:
The domains of Averești – Baia – Ciprian Porumbescu – Cacica – Marginea – Sucevița – Câmpulung Moldovenesc.
An extraordinary journey.
Just what you need for Harley and Hai Huieni: long enough to feel the day, varied enough to keep your mind from going on autopilot, and sprinkled with stops you wouldn't have put on the map yourself.
Baia is considered the first capital of medieval Moldavia and one of the oldest urban centers of the region. Here are preserved the ruins of a large Catholic cathedral built at the beginning of the 15th century and it was here that the famous battle was fought in 1467 in which Stephen the Great faced the army of King Matthias Corvinus.
Today you pass through Baia without the place crying out for attention.
But beneath its silence lie stories of rulers, armies, fire, and the beginnings of a country.
Then we reached Ciprian Porumbescu.
The memorial museum was opened in 1971 in an 18th-century boyar building. Inside, original objects that belonged to the composer are preserved: the piano, the cello, the violin case, photographs, and even the album given to Berta Gorgon, one of the important presences in his life.
They are simple objects.
But when you know who touched them, their silence begins to tell a story.
In Marginea, the black of traditional ceramics comes not from paint, but from a firing process with very little oxygen, which changes the color of the clay. This technique, preserved by local craftsmen, transforms simple objects into some of Bucovina's most recognizable artisanal products.
Sucevita changed the register again.
The monastery is part of the ensemble of painted churches in Moldova inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its interior and exterior paintings date back to the late 16th century, and the representation of the "Staircase of Saint John of Sinai" is one of the images that make it special within the ensemble.
And in Câmpulung Moldovenesc we arrived at the Museum of Wood Art, founded in 1936 and considered the only ethnographic museum in Romania dedicated exclusively to wooden objects. Furniture, tools, religious objects and things used in everyday life show how much man could build when he had wood, skill and patience at hand.
In a single day we had gone through history, music, salt, clay, fresco and wood.
In between, the Harleys were going about their business.
Towards Borgo Pass and the town Eva asked about
The next day, the route was:
Câmpulung Moldovenesc – Tihuța Pass – Spermezeu – Lăpuș.
Tihuța Pass rises to over 1,200 meters and connects Bukovina to Transylvania. In literature, the place became famous as Borgo Pass, the imaginary gateway to Count Dracula's castle in Bram Stoker's novel - all the more interesting since the writer most likely never arrived here.
On a motorcycle, however, literature remains in the background.
You have curves in front.
The air cools, the forest closes in on the road, and the column stretches and tightens after each turn. The Harley isn't built to run through a mountain pass. It's built to savor it.
Then came Sperm.
The first town Eva asked about.
We are not developing.
And the blog has limits.
However, the name has a much more respectable history than our jokes. The locality has been documented since 1456, under the form "Ispanmezew", a name translated as "Count's Field".
See?
Culture saves any conversation.
In the evening we arrived in Lăpuș, after another day in which the road had been an objective in itself, not just the distance between two accommodations.
The next stage was one of the most busy:
Lăpuș – Cavnic – Baia Sprie – Sighetu Marmației – Săpânța – Teceu Mic – Negrești-Oaș – Livada – Apa.
In Cavnic, a seven-meter-high monument known as the Tatar Pillar commemorates the year 1717, when locals stopped a Tatar incursion. Its inscription says, in essence, “This is how far the Tatars have come.”
Short.
Clear.
No PowerPoint presentations.
At Baia Sprie, the Blue Lake was formed by the collapse of old mining works. The water can change its hue depending on the light, season and the concentration of minerals from the rocks of the former mine.
Sighetu Marmației had just marked, in May 2026, 700 years since the first documentary attestation, dated in 1326. The city began its anniversary series on May 14, just a few days before our route passed through there.
Seven hundred years.
And we were passing through them with our engines running, hurrying just enough not to miss the next story.
In Săpânța, time is told differently.
Stan Ioan Pătraș created the first painted cross with a verse epitaph in 1935, laying the foundation for what would become the Merry Cemetery. Today, there are hundreds of colorful crosses that tell the stories of people's lives with sincerity, humor, and sometimes an irony very close to the way we remember each other.
It is not a place that mocks death.
It is a place that refuses to let a man's entire life be reduced to his last day.
It was one of those days when Romania changed according to every indicator.
A mine.
A 700-year-old city.
A cemetery that tells stories of lives.
An old house.
It's a door.
A cross.
And, in between, kilometers of road on which the gang found their rhythm.
The next day we went on the route:
Water – Huedin – Horea – Campeni – Turda.
Turda doesn't just mean salt mine.
Here is also the Roman camp of Potaissa, built for the 5th Macedonian Legion and considered one of the most important Roman military monuments on Romanian territory.
I spent the night in an outlaw place.
I don't know how to describe it without spoiling its charm. I can only say that we had a fairytale evening, exactly as the last evening before the road to Bucharest should have been.
Gas.
Friends.
Tell.
Caterinca.
All the boxes on the shirt were checked.
Some evenings don't need much explanation.
Those who were there know.
And those who haven't been will think we're exaggerating anyway.
Then the last day came.
"Stop time."
That's what the ride was called.
And I would have given anything to be able to do exactly that.
To stop time.
Let me give it back for a few minutes.
To move a motorcycle, a second, a decision, or whatever should have been moved so that the accident wouldn't happen.
But time has no clutch lever.
You can't keep it at the skating point until you decide where you're going.
Good Man had an accident.
He is recoverable, has an iron will, and, as we know him, he is probably already calculating in his mind how long it will be until he can get on his motorcycle again.
Don't rush.
The bones have their own calendar, and this time, not even Good Man can negotiate the schedule.
And when he goes through the next security check and the scanner starts beeping, we'll know the truth:
The device detected his iron will.
The rest are medical details.
The Hai Huiens are a motley bunch.
Different people, with different jobs, different characters and talents that don't always appear on the official record.
One knows how to repair.
Another knows how to organize.
One makes you laugh just when you didn't think you'd feel like it.
Another is silent and stays next to you.
We are not related because we are the same.
We are connected precisely because each one brings something different.
They are people you know you can rely on when the going gets tough.
I'm kidding.
Especially when it's bad.
A real group is not just seen when the motorcycles are lined up nicely in front of the hotel and everyone raises their glasses for a photo.
You can see when the plan breaks down.
When the problem arises.
When the cat stops for a few minutes and everyone understands that they have to be there.
The accident didn't create the gang.
He just showed it.
Good man, thank you.
For museums open on Mondays.
For the mud you willingly dragged us into.
For the wineries I didn't know existed.
For the roads that don't seem logical on the map, but make sense as soon as we get on them.
For Baia, Cacica, Sucevița, Tihuța, Spermezeu, Săpânța and all the other places we might have passed by without stopping.
For phone calls, reservations, changes, calculations, and all the unseen things that we only discover when something goes wrong.
It works for you, most of the time.
That's why it seems simple to us.
Thank you for taking care of others first and then yourself.
Now it's our turn to take care of you.
The motorcycle can wait.
The roads don't go anywhere.
And your place in the column remains there.
We cannot stop time.
But we can fill it with people, roads, and days that it fails to erase.
You did this for us, year after year.
Recover.
No rush.
We keep the place.
It's good.
It's okay, okay!
And to you, those who read, I leave you with a question:
Who is the man to whom you owe some of your most beautiful memories?
Tell him now.
Gratitude shouldn't be saved for the day we wish we could turn back time.
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