Turkey

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...

Today was an interesting one because of height profile. So perhaps you would like to watch the track of the last four days here (three days travelling, Safranbolu was rest day) first and look at the height profile over the last almost 300 kilometres:

- The peak towards the end is the Ahmetusta Pass taking us up to 1030 m asl with snow patches and a rather alpine environment: steep, though non-glaciated valleys with subalpine coniferous vegetation and villages like 'birds' nests' glued to the steep slopes of the wide valleys reminding me of what I have seen in the Trentino in Northern Italy. In two of our printed maps the altitude is stated erroneously as 1580m, so we were actually prepared for a much longer and higher climb. Also notice the short but steep ascent before reaching the coastal beach resort (and of course historical town with a Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Genoese and Seldjuk past) of Amasra. So it seems once more that we are crossing geological structures perpendicularly rather than parallel.

Somewhat unexpected ascent before reaching the coast at Amasra

- A few more words about track and profile: every now and then I forget to switch on my device, especially after I switched off for a good Pide or Köfte lunch and then I try to fix the track manually afterwards which adds of course to the imprecisions.
- Duration: This is an approximation of the time that the device has been receiving signals whether moving or not, so consequently the
- Average speed is not the same as speedometer would count (counting only when wheel is moving)
- The length measurement is based on straight lines connecting position points plotted in 15 second intervals. So the GPS distance is more realistic and precise the slower the movement is, i.e. during slow climbs. During fast rides the GPS recorded distance is less than speedometer distance.
- The most reliable data recorded by the GPS is the height profile (vertical up and down), because it effectively processes the elevation data from digital globes like Google Earth rather than the weather dependent barometric altimeter of my MC 1.0.

So 6623 height metres over three cycling days makes an average of more than 2000 metres of climb during one day (which gives you an idea what we're going through - or rather over...