Mar 2008

Photo by courtesy Mark van Essen

Happy Easter again! The organizers surprised us this morning with a personal hand-painted Easter Egg!
On the modern almost continuous coastal highway (some tunnels still under construction) we passed the city of Giresun with all-day police escort. Besides the normal Trafik Polis clearing the way ahead of us now also the more heavily armed Jandarma is with us, even if there are no more than four of us deciding to stay in a group. Easy and fast cycling, anyway.
Near the town of Görel the snow covered 3000+m Pontic Mountain tops provide a spectacular background for the occasional lemon and olive trees on the coastal roadside.
Transport was surely more difficult in Xenophon's times, when he walked across the mountains towards the sea with his 10,000 Persians somewhere here in the area making the famous exclamation 'Thalatta, Thalatta' (The Sea, the Sea!).
We are mentally preparing for leaving the Black Sea Coast after more than three weeks before the end of this month.

Track of the day: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=16011

Friday was a ride through the large, very fertile and densely populated Yesılırmak delta, a day to make many kilometres in a short time with no interesting sights inviting to stay during a grey overcast day. The rain came at night (luckily, organizerskeep telling us) on a beach campsite near the town of Ünye. By Saturday the word about our trip had spread also to Turkish police which now seems to keep a rather close eye on us, not without dividing opinions among BC members. As we're never moving in the big group but rather in small groups of two to four cyclists it's up to the police to choose the largest bunch for escorting - and they really do with great patience: Today they waited a full two hours in front of a seaside restaurant in Azizye, guarding our bicycles for free! How much would an hour of police escort for a touristical business cost in Finland? Here they just clear the road (or at least the right lane on the motorways) for us allowing fast and safe progress in places where bicycles are rarely seen.

Sightseeing in Ordu cancelled because of rather thick mist in the afternoon, but we really enjoyed a few hours of sunshine after several overcast days cycling to and from Cape Yason (see photo below).

For an overview of the Yesılırmak delta, Cape Yason and the near Pontic Mountains, see my track site: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=15940

After getting my bike equipped with the new wheels on Wednesday (thanks to Peter who helped me with the job on the very day he departed home for Germany) I joined the group again after a bus ride to Yakakent on a wild beach campsite near that town. Rainy awakening the following morning in our tents! But at cool weather and with a moderate tailwind on an almost flat road we made the 90 km to Samsun fairly quickly. People are so friendly that they literally pull off the road and offer us tea (at least) and even food! Motorists are also friendly to us and display this by a lot of honking but seem to be helpless in dealing with cyclists on the road otherwise, especially near the busy crossroads. And there are a lot of them here in Samsun, biggest city on the Turkish Black Sea coast! So ıt requıred the help of the local police and a good connections of one group member to a local acquaintance to safely get us to 19th May Sport Stadium (the date refers to Atatürks landing and the beginning liberation from the occupying forces in 1919) and it's annexed hotel for a fully sponsored stay.

No spectacular view on a rainy day: the Kizilirmak river near Bafra, known in antiquity as the river Halys

Cycling through the suburbs of Samsun

GPS-track and more photos of the last two days: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=25712

I had long planned to write an entry on dogs since these creatures are really our daily companions on the road, sometimes lazy-phlegmatic, often running and barking after us but never dangerous (at least up until now).
Being in Sinop, the birth town of Diogenes (the one with the tub, not D. Laertius, who was his biographer) gives me the excuse to draw a few comparisons between cycling and cynic ways of looking at things.
According to Diogenes, this is what dogs do:
Besides performing natural bodily functions in public without unease, a dog will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe.
(from Wikipedia)
No doubt, long-distance cyclists have learnt the lesson: we are cynics!
(To be sure, not all dogs know to distinguish between friend and foe. I'm glad I took my three Rabies vaccination shots, the last one in Athens at a ridiculous price compared to what I had payed for the other two injections back in Finland.)

Event of today's rest day in Sinop: I received two brand-new wheels by Express delivery after serious safety concerns (see entry Challenges, part I) and I would like to thank the people of Winnora/Schweinfurt and Zweirad-Shop/Wiesmoor in Germany for friendly and quick assistance.

Stay healthy! This is one of the many good wishes I received from the truly unbelievable 9C kids in Kulosaari.
So, here I am again. An overview over the last four days:
On Friday start in rain, which didn't stop the whole day. Just riding 300 metres up and down perhaps six or seven times to get from one headland to the next on our slow progression on the Black Sea coast.

Just take a look at the GPS track: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=25438

Flat roads close to zero, wearing muscles, joints and brake pads - in combination with road dirt brakes behave like sandpaper. Nightstay in an empty ship-building hall that was cold, but at least dry.
Landforms and weather little better on Saturday, but now I realize I caught a cold as a result of the two rain days! In return for the sufferings an even longer day (close to 100 km) on Sunday, this time at leat in sunshine (even though rather chilly) with an almost constant view of the sea from high up for the whole day. With aching knees, sore throat and running nose plus itchy eyes - from the hazelnut pollen that cause the same symptoms as do the birch pollen in Finland - I decided to take a day off from cycling today and instead take a seat in the van together with our two drivers Adam and Marcin.

Well then, honored readers of my blog (there are about fifty of you every day - ten times more than I had expected), it is time to share with you some of my second thoughts about BalticCycle 2008 Olympia-Beijing. Ever since Istanbul the ride has been an incredible rush from sleeping place to sleeping place with practically no information provided by the organizers about road conditions and height profile. No museum or other sight entered and even lunch taken only in a hurry - to be sure to get to the destination before sunset (or the fourth of the five daily Muezzin prayer calls). So I have recently become a little unsure whether a want to subject myself to such a harsh rythm for the next four and a half months or whether I should settle with a more modest personal goal (Kashgar or Baku), which would still make it the longest bike tour of my life.
For the time being I try to be optimistic, waiting for better spring weather, longer days, the beautiful vinyards of Georgia and mentally divide the remaining more than 10.000 km into more easily digestible portions. Goes like this: in six days from now I have done one third of what I would need in order to get by bicycle to China...