I'm back home. Thanks for reading my blog entries about the trip. It was probably the most exciting bike tour I've been on, though Portugal and parts of Spain and Greece have been very nice to me, as well - and in the former two nations, espresso, a particular joy of my life, is easily found. Not so east of Italy. But Turkey was still a dreamland - absolutely fantastic and unspoiled inland of the beaches. Georgia was bizarre, but volunteers with the Peace Corps and two botanists from the government's institute of agriculture showed me a good time and walked me through the strangeness.
As some of you have known in the last week, the possibility arose after I entered Cyprus that customs officials weren't going to let me out in a kindly, timely way. That's because I entered the country illegally, which I learned after entering. By coming from Turkey by boat to the north half of Cyprus, then crossing via land into the south, I entered through a port of entry unrecognized by the South Cyprus government - and my passport showed it with a stamp from the Turkish Cyprus side. Even if I hadn't received that stamp there was the chance the customs agents at the airport were going to see that I had no stamps at all indicating my entry point. "How did you get here?" they might have asked me - in that little dark room where they take trouble makers. All of which means that, for my last five days on the island, I was a nervous wreck. I met some fun folks at the Luxor Guesthouse (sounds high-end but it's "just" a cool hostel) my last night, and the folks at Micromania Bike Shop helped me with a box, and various kindly villagers and police officers in the Troodos Mountains consoled me with assurances that their government would let me leave.
I woke up today in a strange dark room. It took me a second to realize it was home.
Some rough stats:
15 pounds lost. Eaten: 2000 figs and 60 melons. 4 flats - each in my rear tire. Zero broken spokes, 1 broken shifting cable, 1 shredded tire replaced. Zero attempted robberies. 2 wild pigs found dead at the roadside. 100s of hedgehogs. 1 live badger encountered. 1 herd of ibex. 1 set of bear tracks. 1 possible instance of howling wolves. 2 bus rides, 5 nights in hotels (apart from a stint at a hotel in Tbilisi), 1 night on a ferry. Highest elevation: ~2200 meters. Highest night's sleep: 1850 meters. 1 night in the rain. Miles pedaled: ~2900.
Lost on Lemnos
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1 comments:
that's just nuts. i mean ALL of it.
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