Turkey and entering Georgia

December 31. New Years Eve. Istanbul

Tolga and I had signed up for the "couchsurfing.org Istanbul NYE party". He warned me that most of the people there would be Turkish guys. We took our chances and the party turned out to be pretty good. There were about 1000 people from all around the world. Only about %25 were Turkish guys. We met a brother and sister from Atlanta, Claibourne and Prentiss. They were great fun and we celebrated the new year until very late. I'm glad I Tolga was Turkish when we were trying to get taxi cab because we talked to about 5 or 6 taxis before we found one that wasn't trying to screw us. The first few wanted $50 for a $10 taxi ride. Make sure you agree on the price before they start driving. 

Dressed to kill on NYE!

January 1. 2013. Exploring Istanbul.

We slept in and rode motos around the city. Tolga showed me some of the sights. The Mosques. The old city. The people fishing on the bridges. The most interesting thing is probably the traffic. You don't know till you experience it. While we were parked near one of the Mosques, a bearded guy in his 20s came up to us and asked me if I was Muslim. I replied no. "Well, No one is perfect". Great stuff. Later we met up with Prentiss and her brother for some dinner. I had a traditional Turkish dish that was dumplings filled with meat and covered in a sauce made from yogurt with red peppers. I really enjoyed it.

Fishing. Turkish style. 

Um... bait or keepers? 

Keepers I guess. :)

Time to leave I think. Getting stared down. 

Tolga and my 690. 

Maybe we weren't supposed to park here either. 

Tolga and Claibourne  

My amazing dinner. Could have been a bit more spicy. 

Chi. All tea is called Chai. 

January 2.

Tolgo had to go back to work so I worked on the bike. I borrowed Tolga's sweet Honda scooter and found tools I needed. I needed a extendable magnet for the valve shims, a digital mutimeter, and a digital caliper. I found my valves were out of specifications so I was going to have to re-shim. After spending some time on ADVrider, We decided it would be better to replace the rocker arms. I was worried I would not be able to find any. I have heard horror stories of people in the US waiting for months to get rocker arms when the bearings go bad. The next day we would find out.

The parking garage turned workshop. 

KTM  "fog" 

While cleaning I found a broken pin which needed to be soldered. The reason some of my numbers were kaput. 

January 3.

On the way back from work Tolga stopped at the KTM dealer in Istanbul. It turns out they had the Exhaust and Intake rockers I needed. They also let me borrow a shim kit so I could get the bike shimmed correctly. I finished the bike in the evening and Tolga and I ate some sandwiches with kofte. Kofte is like meatballs. It also can be raw meat so be careful when ordering. Again we met up with our American friends that we met on NYE. It turned out to be a late night somehow.

Old Exhaust rocker out. 

New Exhaust and Intake Rockers in. 

Sick side-ponytail. 

January 4.

My plan was to leave to start across Turkey toward Georgia. But when Tolga and I woke up, we both had a bad stomach bug. We blame the Kofte from the night before. We did not do much that day. I was either in bed or on the toilet.

January 5. Istanbul to Zonguldak 385 km

I finally left Istanbul and started across turkey. When I started it was cloudy and cold but not raining. By the evening I had rain and snow. I screwed up and made a 90km loop acidently. I thought I was on one road and I went back on my own track. After this I was frustrated and cold so I stopped for the night.

January 6. Zonguldak to Osmancik 393 km

When I woke up in the morning there was sun shining on the bay down below. I felt a wave of relief run over my whole body. By the time I finished breakfast, it had started raining again. Gotta keep moving. The first mountain pass gave me snow with some slush on the ground. By the time I got inland, it was dryer snow and less dense. For much of the afternoon it was cold and cloudy but not wet. At dark I stopped in Osmancik for the night.

These guys gave me Chai. 

The hill slid and did this. Crazy. 

January 7. Osmancik to Fatsa 304 km

Dry cold roads to start the day. Snow on the side of the road but the lanes were clear. It was cold enough where any water would turn to ice on the road. Gotta keep your guard up. In the town of Fatsa the snow was falling hard. Big wet heavy flakes. Fatsa is next to the Black Sea and going west, the road climbs over a small pass. I went about 3 km before I could not see any lines on the road. There was so much snow falling I felt like I needed windshield wipers. After I saw one car in the ditch I decided to turn around. Luckily there was an underpass to get on the other side of the divided highway. A short ride later and I was back in Fatso. Withing 15 minutes I was out of my cold wet cloths and eating some nice hot Turkish bean soup. Warm and salty. Just what I needed.

A cold Noah

Snow and the Black Sea. 

January 8. Fatsa to Arsin. 235 km

Got a late start because I had to wait for the snow on the roads to thaw. Wet pavement and rain all day. You really have to watch out for the truck drivers in Turkey. On wet pavement I slow down on the moto tires. Especially when there is traffic around. The last thing I need to do is slide into a guard rail or under a truck. A delivery type van came up on me fast and was about 5 feet off my rear tire. I motioned with my hand for him to go around. The left lane was clear. He went around the swerved back into my lane fast almost like he was purposely trying to run me off the road. I had to use breaks and go into the shoulder to avoid getting hit. I'm not sure what it was about, but this acually happened 2 times to me in Turkey. Tolga said its because not many people ride motorcycles in Turkey and the truck drivers are just "country hicks". I told Tolga in most places the truck drivers at least have a little respect for the people on moto. If not respect, at least they don't try to run them off the road. My recommendations for Turkey would be stay on the small roads/ offroad. In summer time that's where I would have been. Leaving a stoplight I couldn't find my shifter. The spring in the peddle part had broken. I pulled over and spotted what would work nicely... a discarded teaspoon. I pushed it into the peddle and it worked nicely. I found a hotel at the next exit and got a room. It was a "nice" hotel compared to the previous nights and about 2x more expensive. Dinner was pan fried chicken fillets and salad.

Skies look promising. 

Should have known better. 

These guys also gave me Chai. And also thought I was crazy. 

Quick fix and back on the road. 

An avalanche probe works very well for drying your boots when the hotel has a heater mounted up by the ceiling. 

January 9. Arsin Turkey to Batumi Georgia. 181 km

It was raining in the morning so I took my time with coffee and internet. At about 11 I bit the bullet and started riding. It rained pretty much the whole day. In the afternoon I hit the Georgian border. About 15 minutes with customs explaining that KTM is the brand name of the moto and I was on my way. The first major town that I hit was Batumi. In the summer I am told this is quite the nice beach town. When I was there it was raining. The hotel I stayed in had a storage room where my moto could sleep the night. It also had a club that was blasting euro-club-techno-boom-boom music until about 2 in the morning. The ear plugs came in handy.

In Georgia!

Getting money and food. 

Looking south toward Turkey

January 10. Batumi to Surami. 242 km

In the morning there was snow on the ground but the roads were clear. I rode north along the coast and in the afternoon I even had some sunlight. Later I was traveling east on the main road toward Tbilsi. It starts to wind through some small mountains and of course that's when the snow started. Looking in my mirror I spotted a car coming up on me fast so I pulled over and waved them by. As they pulled along side me they honked and waved with thumbs up. In the rear window was a KTM sticker. They pulled over a bit further and we talked. Then the snow started to get bad. My new friends help me get a hotel. The room was great. 1 room, 1 bed, 1 table, 2 chairs and a wood stove. Just what I was looking for after riding in the snow for a while. That night the snow kept falling. I got my first taste of Georgian Cha Cha with the owner of the hotel.

Looks safe. 

Love me a wood stove. 

Still dumping. 

January 11. Surami to Rustavi. 163 km

Coffee and breakfast with the hotel owners. The daughter was learning English in school and was asking me simple questions.. "what is your age".. "where are you from".. she would then talk to her dad and brother in Georgian. I got on the road once the snow cleared. This was the first actual sunny days I had been lucky enough to have in about a week. It was very cold but dry. I rode through Tbilisi and on to Rustavi where KTM Georgia has a garage. This is where I parted ways with the 690. It will be in storage till spring.

Finally some sun!

Teaching dad some English. 

January 12. Rustavi to Gudauri. By pickup truck

Up early in the morning. We loaded a snowbike in the back of a diesel Ford Ranger and headed up toward Gudauri. Its about a 2 hour drive and after the first hour we started to get into snow. The Caucasus mountains are quite spectacular. I would snowboard that day and almost every day since then.

Pass on a curve? Why not.  

Seems like a reasonable way to sand the roads. 

The view from up top. 

Season Pass!

Watching the sun set on the first day at Gudauri

Greece

Dec. 25 Merry Christmas in Larissa!

On Christmas Eve I was taken out by Val. She wanted to show me Larissa and show me traditional Greek drinks. We drank rakomelo. Which is a liqure made from grapes that the put honey in and serve it to you warm in a small jar. You keep pouring “shots” to sip. Yamas! After a few rounds of these.. it was beginning to be a great Christmas.

Rakomelo. Goes on my list of favorites. 

In the morning we hung out and about 1 the whole family got together for a feast. I am not joking about feast. There was rosted pork, chicken stuffed with peppers, turkey, stuffing, soup, bread, home-made wine, beats, and of course tziki sauce! We chatted for a while. A few of the dozen or so that were there spoke English. Its always interesting to have people ask questions through a translator then wait watch them light up when he/she explains to them. Then 5 more questions come back. I'm getting a very good feel for the order of questions people ask. Where are you from? Where have you been? How long have you been traveling?.... If I can explain those.. its usually followed by How rich are you? I explain that I am a bank robber and I go from city to city until the money runs out. This usually gets a laugh and they don't ask that question again. But in this family, they didn't care about that. They wanted to hear about where I have been and where I am going. What Morocco, Italy, Scotland, Canada and the US is like. Later in the day I noticed the little ones playing Legos. I am a firm believer that Legos are the best toys on the planet and they teach so many basic skills about spacial knowledge. The little kid was 6 or so? But we made this huge tower together. After a few rows he understood to overlap bricks to make the structure stronger and could finish any row that I started. We built the tower as tall as we could then made it into a wind turbine. The next day his mother said he wouldn't stop talking about what we had built. That night Val and I met her sister out for a few more drinks. We walked around the city and took some picture. I even caught my family back in Minnesota at my grandparents house just before their feast. If I couldn't be with my own family, this was certainly the best alternative ever. I now feel like Greece is another spot I will need to go back and visit.

Part of my xmas family. 

Ms. Greece and family

This guy is from Russia apparently. I think I will have to pick one up when I am there. 

Legos!

Sisters!

Yamas!

She likes the way these flowers smell. 

Dec. 26 Larissa to Thessaloniki Greece. 167 km

We said our good byes and Val signed Greece on the moto. I was on the road by about noon and got into Thessaloniki about an hour before dark. I tried to stay off the toll road but its actually quite hard to do. I found “The Little Big House” hostel in the internet the night before and put it in my GPS. Finding it in real life proved to be much more difficult. Thessaloniki is full of one-way streets and all sorts of craziness. The more you get into the hills the less reason or rhyme they have. They get very small also. The hostel didn't have private parking but it was a dead end street so I locked her to a pole out front. I met a kid from Australia at the hostel the plan was to get dinner. He was supposed to catch a bus at 6 or 7 in the morning. I was not the instigator but 1 turned into many and we didn't get back to the hostel until 3 in the morning.

I really like this beer. 

Dec. 27 Thessaloniki

I slept in then walked around the town some. Got a hair cut and some things I needed. That night I went out with another guy from the hostel. Prithu is from India but was living in Germany. Again it turned into a late night. Later then anticipated. I think Thessaloniki is a time warp. If you go have dinner at 7 or 8.. before you know it.. it's 4 in the morning. No regrets. This was a fun town.

The trash collectors were on strike. There is a dumpster in there somewhere. 

New friend Prithu

Our friendly bartender.

Old school KTM 640 ADV. 

Had quite the interesting convo with these guys. 

Dec. 28 Thessaloniki to Asprovalta Greece. 193 km

Around mid morning I checked out of the hostel and started to ride. I wanted to get some spare tubes because after the flat in Albania, I had no spares. I found a motorcycle tire shop called “OK Tire” and I ended up buying new tires and tubes. The price was right. T-63 in the rear and a Karroo 2 up front. I felt a bit bad taking the 908 off the rear because it still had a couple thousand kms left in it but I was told by a friend that Turkey is very expensive for tires. The guys at the shop were great. They fed me and gave me coffee before I left. Thanks!

I wanted to do motorway toward Turkey but I took a wrong turn leaving Thessaloniki and didn't realize I was driving south instead of west for about 80 km. This took me onto a peninsula that actually had some very nice mountains. When the sun was out, it was warm but closer to evening it started to get very cold and foggy. So I ended up only going about 80 km from Thessaloniki after riding 190. I stayed the night in a side-of-the road cafe/hotel.

OK Tire Crew. 

They even fed me. 

If I ever start drinking espresso.. I will have this cup.

New Karroo 2 up front 

T63 in the rear. 

The TKC 80 had 14,000km on it and the Dunlop 908 had about 8,000km. I felt bad about changing it but tires get expensive in Turkey.

Fog creeping through the trees.

Dec. 29 Asprovalta to Feres Greece 294 km

Up early to rain. When the rain stopped the wind started. There were times when my bike was at 45 degrees. I left the motorway and went on small roads for most of the day to try and stay in shelter. I found a hotel in Feres Greece. The hotel had a court yard with a locking gate so the moto was safe. Dinner was brick oven pizza made from a fat-bald German man who chain smoked like crazy. He would light one cig then start talking and it would burn down to the butt and he would light another. Quite funny. It was very windy and cold that night.

Kavala Greece. Stopping for coffee. 

Dec. 30. Feres Greece to Istanbul Turkey 286 km

It was about 15 km to the border when I started. I made sure I got fuel in Greece. As expensive as the fuel is in Greece, I knew that Turkey has the highest fuel prices in the world right now. It was not as windy as the day before but still very cold. In the evening I made it into Istanbul and found my friend Tolga's (Mudfrog) house. Istanbul is a crazy place to ride. Very steep hills and very small streets. Not many people ride motos so the cars don't really respect the space. One would think with fuel prices the way they are, more people would ride motos and scoots. But its mostly just the delivery people on scoots.

This guy is on his 2nd year peddling. He rode from south Africa up through the continent and is now headed toward Asia. Keep going man!