Stress by the Bosporus

It was a beautiful end of fall day today, and everyone had the same idea: take a drive up the Bosporus.

We went with Gilles and his wife Ayse on our bmw 650's through 10 miles of bumper to bumper traffic alongside the narrow passage of sea between the Med and the Black Sea. There were the usual throng of fisherman on the shore and boats cruising up and down. When we got to Sariyer the traffic eased up and we zoomed through some pine hills to the point where the Bosporus opens to the Black Sea. We ate a delicious late lunch of salad, fish and dessert while the boats moved calmly below us, from our restaurant bluff vantage point.

The sun was setting as we went up the coast a ways before returning to an abandoned fort that used to govern the straight. We took what maybe the last of the pictures of Clara's bike as we hope to ship it home tomorrow. We rode home in the dark, again chock full of traffic, the full moon rising in the northeast, red at first (perhaps due to the pollution) before a big white disc hung over the Asian side as we got back to Gilles.

After some pleasantries we headed back to our home in Kadakoy, again zooming around the toll booth gate a bit more leery this time, as we received a harrowing story of our friends Marko and Clara getting beaten up by the Turkish military and held for 12 hours through an escalating series of calamities starting with a toll not being paid.

A friend of Gilles had a motorcycle accident today and broke some part of his leg. The drivers here are super aggresive and constantly ignore us and/or try and run us off the road.

Clara and I are eager to get going, somewhere, preferably warm although that isn't likely anytime soon. We are definitely stressed a bit and taking it out on each other.

Nothing that some fun in the sun of Iran probably can't cure!
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party at alex and adrienne's Monday night!

We got our passports today!!!

So we are sponsoring a party in Kadakoy, Istanbul on Monday night a sort of going away party. It is at # 13, up the road from the ferry terminal, take the left turn at the street signs for the other neighborhoods after the road turns one way and it is at number 13 in the garden unit. You will see the motorcycle parked outside!

Everyone is invited.

If you have a date in Constantinople, remember that she will be waiting for you in Istanbul!

Thanksgiving in Turkey!

A lot of people think it is funny that we are in Turkey for Thanksgiving.

Needless to say, but not a lot of people celebrating here. But, we are very excited because our passports are finally on their way back to us by UPS and we can start traveling again. Hopefully hit the road next week, East or West we are not sure, but "I can't wait to be on the Road Again!"

It is a beautiful day here, and I hope everyone in America has a great day, eats well, and decides not to buy into too much consumerism tomorrow. Invite a lonely neighbor, or do what I did last year and volunteer at a homeless shelter or deliver meals. It was very much appreciated, and definitely made me feel better than just sitting on a couch and watching football.

peace,
kevin

Hanging in Turkey

Last Saturday at 9:05 a.m. the alarm sirens went off around Turkey, everyone stopped in place for about 3 minutes of silence to commemorate the passing of Ataturk the father of the country who died in 1937. (if you look closely at the picture you will see that no one is moving)








So, what is it like to spend a month in 98 percent Muslim country?

Let's just say I wouldn't want Clara and I to have to pass a drug test due to the possible contact highs from some of the parties we've gone to. Of course, neither one of us does drugs, let alone try it and 'not inhale' like our great President Clinton did when he was in Europe!

I went out with the boys on Saturday night after a 6 hour game of Risk ended with 3 players being eliminated and Clara and I controlling the whole world except Thailand and Australia. What was funny was how each of the players gravitated towards their home base. The Frenchman tried to control Europe, Clara took South America, I took North America, the Turk took the Middle East. The two fastest losers were the Turkish woman spreading herself thin in Asia and Africa and the British guy losing from his power base in South Africa. Colonialism will never work!

We went out to the first club about 2 a.m. where our friends knew the owner, who had just renovated an historic church into a multi-functional techno dance club, extremely cool and hip. After hanging for a couple hours there we went to one of the coolest clubs in Istanbul, called Ghetto, where there was a private going away party for a local DJ who was leaving shortly to do his military service in the Turkish Army. Unfortuneately for Clara, when this party broke up about 5 a.m. our host Gilles invited everyone back to his place to continue the party until Dawn.

So yes, all the stereotypes about the Islamic world being full of smokers and drinkers, going out, dancing and partying to all hours of the night, being incredibly friendly, open to people of diverse countries and backgrounds, with no preconceived attitude are true.

Let's make sure we keep those types out of America!!

I'm sure we are just hanging by a string, ready to be murdered by some Islamo-fascists any second now.

The truth is that we will probably die driving in Istanbul traffic. Nearly every motorcyclist I know here has been in an accident of one sort or another. Our host Gilles got hit by a car 3 days ago while driving his friend Hakkan, our German friend riding around the world got into his first accident in 7 years on the streets here, Clara got hit by a Taxi. It is totally crazy. Imagine Boston streets, winding around all over the place, add 7 major hills, no drivers training, and 66 times more people and you start to get the idea.

No wonder everyone has "evil eye" protectors on their motorcycles to ward off the bad spirits.

Museum day in Istanbul

Today we trecked out in the rain to visit some museums with our friends Alex and Adrienne...shown here guiddy from excitement at the Tiled Pavillion Museum. (By the way, under no circumstances should anyone assume or believe that Alex is in any shape or form a nice guy! In fact, he is nothing but a scruffy, germ carrying, former dreadlock wearing, surly dude!) Me, oh and some amazing tiles too. Kevin wants to know why blue is such a favorite color of tile makers??? Big among the sarcophagi, getting ideas for his own and complaining that the marble work on these is nicer than his fireplace at the Big house. BIG guy at the entrance of the Archaeology Museum. Amazing view from our temporary residence at Gille's place. Party at Gille's with Jerome, Serap (with baby), Hakan, Ravza, Kevin and I, and no Gilles because he is away in Ankara and you know the deal about what the mice do when the cat is away... Video of beautiful Sarcophagi to give you all some culture for the day!

Thoughts on the past, and friends we have yet to meet!

This is Shyam, the son of man who lives with friends in New Orleans I met on a plane, who is waiting to meet us in Nepal!



We are hoping to write a book about this at some point, which I want to call "The world is full of good people" but Clara thinks this name is long and lame. She is probably right, but it really is the point of this trip. I think it vitally important in this Global age, for people to really make friends Globally. If I ever become Mayor of Boston I want each public school in the City to have a sister school in a different country to foster dialogue and friendship, sharing and learning.

Imagine if 300 schoolchildren in Boston had 300 friends in Baghdad. Or Tehran. We enlightened adults might have to explain to our children why our country finds it so important to bomb them into submission or death. Of course, this same concept needs to be implemented at the local level to get kids from Roxbury to make friends with kids in West Roxbury. The concept of busing was supposed to do that, but the reality has been much different.

We have many, many stories we haven't told yet about the trip including some of the best. The world's greatest marketer selling cornhusks to children in Mexico, my ongoing Yankee-Red Sox feud with wearers of NY caps around the world, our day in Transdniestr, my night sleeping in subzero temperatures in my sleeping bag on the ground in Bolivia, we slowly are trying to get to them as already our minds fade.

But we look to the future, to meet Shyam who is eager to show us his village in the Himalyas as we are eager to meet him and share smiles and friendship.

Lattice of Coincidence

The Lattice of Coincidence? No, the cieling in the bathroom of a Sultan's Harem


As anyone who had the pleasure and misfortune of knowing me during my sophomore year at Wabash College would know, Repo Man is my favorite movie. I watched it on cable as often as possible and quoted it excessively. While training for the boxing Caveman Bouts and preparing to be the toughest guy on campus during the annual Sphinx Club tryouts I let everyone know that they could hit me as hard as they could in either one of my shoulders whenever they wanted. Funny, but I had a lot of takers. It was all to live up to maybe the most famous line of the movie: "the Life of the Repo Man is always Intense!" In sunny times, or in times of being held in interrogation rooms of countries that don't exist, I like to imagine I'm still leading an intense life.

Another famous line of the movie is the "lattice of coincidence". The lattice of coincidence is when one seemingly random thought or thing happens which leads to another, and perhaps another. Our trip has been a long string of proofs of the lattice of coincidence.

Turkey has not been an exception to the rule. While putting new tires on our bikes at ATA motos I briefly met a french guy who has the same motorcycle as Clara. A few days later when we were leaving Istanbul to cruise around the coast this same guy was stuck next to us in traffic in Taksim Square, one of hundreds of busy intersections in Istanbul. He noticed my license plate "VOTE4" and asked what it was about. I told him I had run for office in America and that it was a promotional thing. While we were navigating bumper to bumper, we figured out that we were both political junkies and that the world needed fixing. He noted the www.electkevin.us bumper sticker on my pannier and said he would send an email and we would hook up when we returned to Istanbul before zooming off through traffic.

When we returned to Istanbul a few weeks later I was again at ATA motos when a German guy with a Transalp came in. He had just had his first accident in 7 years on the road and needed some straightening and some bits like a chain and fake license plate to get back into Germany. As we got to talking at the full time conversation and smoking place and part time motorcycle dealership we found Marko and I had a connection.
Kevin: Where are you from?
Marko: Germany, but I've been gone for 7 years.
Kevin: We had a good time in Germany.
Marko: Where did you go?
Kevin: Cologne, Bonn, Munich...
Marko: I'm from Munich
Kevin: I wonder if you know a guy we stayed with, he spent 4 years on the road?
Marko: What was his name?
Kevin: (blanking) Can't remember, he was from East Germany, incredibly nice...
Marko: Was it Jan?
Kevin: That's him!
Marko: Yes, we spent a few years on the road together.
Kevin: Are you the guy who got a job teaching English in Taiwan who couldn't speak
English.
Marko: That's me!
Kevin: You're legend, I know all about you!

Needless to say we had a fantastic dinner that night, as previously mentioned with natives of 6 different countries, including our new French friend Gilles who happens to be a reporter. Dick Cheney would not approve of this type of interaction with people who are not part of the coalition of the willing! All at the table were willing to get rid of Dick Cheney however.

A few nights later, Gilles invited us to his house for dinner where we discovered mutual interest in Bill Hicks, Toots and the Maytals, Banksy and mutual distaste for George Bush. So much so that we moved into his penthouse yesterday. Which leads us back to ATA motos where I went yesterday thinking I was going to get into a basketball game with the young kids at the shop but ended up drinking beers and watching a made for TV movie on the local Fox TV Turkish channel. There were about 15 of us, including the producer of the movie, an architect, a woman who sold containers to Afganistan and other friendly motorcycling guests. The movie was terrible, even in Turkish, but there was a scene shot at ATA motos and the owner, ever friendly Ahmet, did a stunt motorcycle crash for the final scene on his KTM which elicited great cheers from the partisan crowd.

What do Gilles and a made for TV Fox movie bring the Lattice of Coincidence into play? After the movie was over I spoke to the producer about the state of cinema today and he agreed with me that it is going downhill and that it is mostly crap, including what we just watched. So much of it he does just for the money and you have to spend years paying your dues. He sounded weary of his profession which is never fun. I asked him if he liked any movies recently, and he said he really liked "The Thin Red Line", a real producers movie that was art which I have never seen. Meanwhile, I have come down with a cold and so am staying home today and was hoping Gilles had some movies to watch. He has about 15 DVD's. I'm about to watch a movie. If you don't know which one I'm going to watch, I haven't explained the Lattice of Coincidence very well.

REPO MAN:
Miller: A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.

...finally, a bit of good news in Istanbul (at least for the moment)

Thanks to the generosity and open hospitality of our friend Gilles, we traded our smoky and noisy hostel for a park-side penthouse in with great views of the entire city! For the next 10 days, until Gilles and his wife return from separate business trips, we have the run of their place. And this bit of luxury could not have come at a better time since Kevin is fighting a cold and the lack of sleep and surplus of smoke of the past 10 days have done neither of us any good. So, this morning we eagery packed up our things and loaded up our bikes and...nothing, my bike wouldn't start! It seems the red lion got stiff from being parked outside in the cold and rain without any activity for more than a week. Kevin diagnosed the problem as a low battery, and he went to ATA Moto, where he has become a fixture, and procured some jumper cables and a spare battery. But low and behold, by the time he came back and tried the ignition once again, it started up without a problem. Go figure. No worries though, we were just so happy to zoom off and away from what has often felt like a college frat-house dorm room and into a proper "home".

Wasting away at the Mall

It has been an uncomfortable time for us, basically sitting around waiting for Visas. We are cooped up in our hostel, full of smokers and smoke, with the nightclub next door pounding dance beats through the wall until 5 am, 6 on Saturdays.

We've headed off to the mall today a couple of stops along the fast, clean, easy subway line. Clara is shopping for appropriate Muslim wear, I am along for the ride. I'm not a lot of fun at malls, seeing as how I don't like to buy anything and I hate consumerism. But, I enjoy people watching and an occasional movie.

This mall is the largest I have ever been to. It has 6 or 7 floors with all the requisite marble, stone and chrome of a modern shopping emporium. No Grand Bazaar here!

You pass through metal detectors to enter and then you may as well be in any mall anywhere: LEE Jeans, Adidas, designer dresses. The only things to identify it as Turkish are the occasional head scarf, the rare burka, the lack of natural blond hair and the presence of prodigidous probiscuses.

Yes, the Turks have a lot of big noses, often of the beak variety and the women are well aware of it. Every day I see women, usually in their 20's, who have bandages on their faces as a result of a recent surgery to get straightened out.

Another Turkish trait is their closeness. Women and Men meet with a kiss-kiss on either cheek, regardless of gender and age. Women predominately walk hand in hand with each other, but it is not uncommon to see men walking arm and arm as well.
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Thoughts on a browning planet

THE POLLUTION FROM ISTANBUL





My wife and I are taking a year to ride around the world by motorcycle for our honeymoon (motomoments.blogspot.com). One of the most disturbing and obvious
facts of the trip is how far behind much of the rest of the world the USA is when it comes to green living and energy independence. I would like to share some of our observations, and some suggestions as to how we might proceed to move forward.

Forget the empty promises of politicians to “be a leader” in Green Technologies. First we must play catch up. Virtually all of Central and South America use only fluorescent
light bulbs. Wind turbines are everywhere, from Costa Rica to Turkey, from the fertile fields of Luxembourg to the sacred green hills of Ireland. Go to a gas station in Rio de Janeiro and you can fill up with 5 types of fuel: diesel, bio-diesel, propane, natural gas and minimum 95 octane.

The SUV is virtually an ‘America only’ vehicle, which is seen only intermittently elsewhere, and even then the vast majority are of the BMW X-3 size, not the mammoth
Chevy Suburbans or Ford Excursions. We could count the number of Hummers we’ve seen on the toes of a foot of a two-toed sloth. Even on the German Autobahn, the BMWs and Mercedes are typically of the lower engine size classes. The vast majority of cars in the world are tinier 4 door Toyota Corola sized vehicles. The majority of motorcycles are 125cc types from Japan and China which approach triple digit miles per gallon.

Recycling is huge and mainstream in Europe. Kitchen cabinets come with drawers separated into 4 different compartments for green, brown, and clear glass and plastic.
Large recycling stations are on main streets in the cities and in parking lots of the Wal-Marts and other shopping centers. The mentality to conserve and recycle has clearly become standard, and people do it as naturally as we go to get a coffee in the morning. In fact, grocery stores actually charge a fee for bags and most people carry their shopping home in fold-out crates and re-usable sturdy sacks.

Public transportation is more prevalent, cheap, and easy to use in almost every corner of the world. Almost everyone knows about the trains and subways in Europe. But we also used the buses and subways in Mexico City, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and Caracas. They were all at least as clean, timely, and easy to navigate as the MBTA, and usually much better than that standard; and they were of course fully taken advantage of.

Toilets in Europe now come with two flush options. One option is for solid waste which uses the standard amount of water, and one for liquid waste which uses a reduced amount of water to do its job. Another way that resources are being saved around the world is with the prevalence of motion detectors in residential and commercial buildings which turn on and off not just lights, but also escalators and other electric appliances.

Hot water, which can account for up to 25% of a person’s energy use in the United States, is handled quite differently outside the USA. The typical solution, especially in poor regions and warm tropical climates, is, of course, cold water only. Obviously that won’t cut it in the developed world, but there are other options. In Turkey, there are hot water solar panels on virtually every roof, and this is common in many parts of the world. The most common solution is “on demand” systems which only heat water at the shower electrically, or by natural gas or propane for larger systems which provide hot water for a whole house.

The big box hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot in Ireland and the UK carry wind powered electricity generators for a few hundred dollars for homeowners to install themselves. There are places as diverse as floating reed villages on Peru’s Lake Titicaca to Internet Cafés in Nicaragua which power their electrical usage using only solar panels; and many highway signs and roadside warnings are solar powered throughout the world.

Bicycle paths are common in most European cities which are older than Boston, and often have just as jumbled of a road system. In Amsterdam, which is world bicycle central, there is a parking garage next to the main bus and railway terminal with room for 80,000 bicycles. The folks we met said they use them year around, even in the snow.

On the positive side, thanks to the Clean Air and Water acts and other measures, the United States clearly has some of the best quality air and water in the world. It has been shocking to see some of the permanent smog over places such as Vienna, Lima, Budapest, and Sao Paulo to name just a few. Just the sight of these brown hazes hanging over any city is enough for me to question what, if any, real progress mankind is making. Don’t even get me started about all the polluted water ways we’ve found in our
travels.

What can be done? As the saying goes: Think Globally, Act Locally. I’ve mentioned things we’ve seen to pique people’s imagination as to how they might be more energy efficient, and to encourage them to see different solutions to energy needs, as we have done as a result of our trip. Thomas Friedman recently wrote in the New York Times that one of the best things we can do for the environment is to elect environmentally conscious leaders. In Boston and Massachusetts we need leaders who might do the following things:

1) Mandate that all taxi cabs be hybrid vehicles within 5 years (as done by Mayor Bloomberg in NYC).
2) Mandate that all non-essential city or state vehicles also be hybrid.
3) Mandate dual use toilets in new housing developments; and, make a deadline of perhaps 10 or 15 years for subsidized housing and public buildings to be retrofitted to do the same.
4) All replacement lights in public buildings and subsidized housing to use fluorescent lighting. Within 5 years all lighting to be fluorescent or other high efficiency equivalents.
5) Increase gas taxes. with the money raised to go directly into public transportation projects, such as extending the Green Line and other rail projects in the State and the Region. Gas is $8 a gallon in Europe, $5 a gallon in Brazil, and almost $10 a gallon in Turkey. The cost has not stopped driving or traffic jams, we need to make public transportation a viable alternative to cars. Perhaps a group from New England and New York could get together to impose a similar tax across the region to invest into a real regional rail system. This will help in many ways to make the region a more competitive place economically.
6) Mandate that new hot waters systems, especially in public buildings and subsidized housing be more efficient.
7) Mandate that shopping centers and parking lots of a certain size provide recycling stations for the public use. Provide similar recycling stations on public property.
8) Make bicycling part of the solution, not just a way for bike messengers to earn a dangerous living.
9) Eliminate school busing in Boston for environmental reason and move to neighborhood schools. (I realize this is a much bigger issue, but the City of Boston spends around 90 million dollars a year on transportation. That is a lot of fossil fuel. We also need better and diverse schools but that is another subject). At the least, convert buses to bio-fuel as is being done in many municipalities.
10) Insist that the MBTA provide professional service. If Mexico City and Istanbul, let alone Europe, can provide fast, clean, reliable, and timely trains and buses then we can do it in Massachusetts as well.
11) Get Wind Power moving! We’ve seen wind turbines in the Oceans near the Netherlands, in farmer’s fields through the flatlands of Europe, on mountains in Scotland and South America. There is a lot of wind in New England, and our energy costs are high. We need to do this and do it Big!

I believe that by taking steps such as these we will foster a sense of being environmentally conscious, that will hopefully move us from just taking advantage of these tried and true methods to using our innate Yankee Ingenuity to refine these existing technologies, and coming up with new ones so that we can become world wide environmental leaders.

Afternoon at the Sultan's Palace

We spent the afternoon at the last Sultan's Palace, touring the grounds and going inside to see the Harem. They had the most amazing chandeliers I've seen in my life, huge, stunning pieces which accompanied similar rooms, with multidimensional frescoes painted on everything. Very impressive. So is having 8 wives at your disposal at any one time!

Doing the Limbo in Istanbul

We are stuck in Limbo in Istanbul, maybe the worst thing that can psychologically happen to a traveler. We are trying to find a shipping company to send Clara's bike to the US. We are waiting to get our passports back from the Indian Embassy. We are finding it nearly impossible to send money to Iran to get our Visa from there thanks to all the US banking and other embargoes against the Iranians, who spend 1 percent of what we do on military spending every year.

Meanwhile, it gets colder and wetter ever day. There was talk of snow in the Turkish mountains today. The prospects are bleak. Can't really go anywhere without passports, and we don't know where to go, and all of our plans could be thrown in the air if any part of the plan doesn't work out.

We have been making some friends. We had a great dinner with a Canadian and British couple who have been teaching English in Iraq for the last 6 months. Yes, Iraq. They were in the northern Kurdish area, the only teachers there living in a quiet town where not much happened and everyone was very nice to them, very appreciative, and they didn't feel threatened at all. However, with the Turkish putting 100,000 troops on the border they decided it was sensible to retrench to Istanbul and work here for a time.

We met a couple of motorcycle adventure travelers who just came through Iran and Pakistan and had a wonderful time, never felt threatened. They had an interesting comment: In Iran the people are liberal and the government is conservative. In Pakistan the people are conservative and the government is liberal. We need to see for ourselves, we hope.

There is much anger here against George Bush, his policies and America in general. I have definitely felt antagonism from other nationalities especially before people get to know us. Another Canadian said disdainfully, after I told her that Americans and Canadians needed an escort in Iran, "how did we get thrown in with your lot". People are not afraid to be impolite as soon as they find out you are from America with comments about how much they dislike America right now.

Amazing how we see more Canadians traveling than Americans, of course they make up about 10 percent of our population but they seem to be more well traveled. Turkish people usually ask us if we are German or Canadian or Dutch or British before they come around to wondering if we could possibly be Americans. There is a long tradition of German/Turkish relations ever since they were allies in the First World War.

Election day today in Boston, sounds like very low turnout and the candidate who promised us absentee ballots didn't produce so two less votes for him.

I got a shave while I was carpet shopping the other day, when was the last time you had a sharp razor at your throat while you were doing business in America? Too often, perhaps, in some of our inner cities.

Istanbul by night

So, we are back in Istanbul and have settled once again in our hostel in the Taksim area of town. Yesterday began rainy and dreary again, just as it had been when we left the city a couple of weeks ago so we thought we might be in for another two weeks of wet weather and were non too happy to think of this. We spent the day trying to get quotes for shipping my bike back home: on the phone, online and even in person. So far, the prices we have gotten are much higher than expected, so we were a bit unnerved by the end of the day.

However, as fate would have it, we found out once again just how small this world is when Kevin ran into a friend of Jan, our host in Munich! Marco is a fellow RTW motorcyclist who has been traveling for the past seven (yes, seven) years. Kevin made plans to have dinner with him and his girlfriend and we soon invited a Frenchman named Gilles whom we had briefly met before we left. It was our first proper night out in Istanbul and we were very happy that the rain had stopped by the time we were ready to step out. Gilles met us at our hostel on his bike (he has an F650GS just like mine, but black) and he went ahead of us to meet Marco at our predetermined spot in front of the Blue Mosque. Kevin and I took a taxi because I had "dressed up" meaning I had somewhat done my hair, applied some eye makeup, and put on some earrings, so I did not want to wear a helmet and ruin my girly feeling. Traffic was horrendous and it took us about 1 hour to travel about three miles. We were late, but Gilles had found Marco, his girlfriend Carla, and their roommate Casper, and they were happily chatting away when we finally caught up with them.

We found a restaurant near by with some outside seating and settled in for an evening of great conversation, good food and lots of laughs. We talked travel, motorcycles, movies, pop culture and of course, politics. We were a multicultural group comprised of a Colombian, an American, a Frenchman, a South African, a German and a Dutchman, and so we found lots of things to disagree about, but also enough things in common to make the evening really enjoyable. By the time we headed home around midnight, Kevin and I were tired but happy, and looking forward to a good night's sleep.

Since we arrived in Istanbul a day earlier than we had predicted we had to share a dorm room with a loud snorer the first night, but last night we were in our own room and got some delicious sleep.

Time

Time is such a constant part of a journey like this. What is time? When is the sun going to set? Where can we get to in that amount of time? How are we going to remember these times? Why don’t we spend more time somewhere?

But time as history is our companion and tour guide. We are in This time, the dawn of a new century, the beginning of the information age, the age of globalization, and one takes a trip like this as a bookmark, a reminder, an annotator of how it is now. In our eyes. But we are also taking this trip through That time; to see, feel, learn about history as all travelers throughout the ages have. Indeed, it is the part of the definition of traveling to observe history because it is impossible for everything to be all new, all the time. Even if one only chose only Shanghai, Las Vegas and Dubai to circuitously travel to, the recent past but the past nonetheless would be present.

We think of Alexander the Great as part of history, but he was a traveler, a tourist, a student of history. When he came to Troy he sacrificed 1000 oxen as a tribute to the memory of the glorious fighters of a previous time. This is different only in scale to my raising a glass in salute to my ancestors at McCrea castle on our travels.

Without spending time observing history, this journey would not be so interesting or even worthwhile. The major experiences of trips such as this is to see new scenery, observe and meet new people and cultures, try new food, and observe history. There is also shopping, but Clara could speak better than I to that. Other than that, it is just asphalt,
beds, gas and maintenance.

Time and scale are interesting concepts. The first years of my life were spent in New England where history is very important, and goes back about 400 years, with some really important things happening 200 years ago. On this journey, we first went south and visited Mayans who were doing things an astounding 1500 years ago, but recent history was shaped 400 years ago by the Spaniards. We are now in the neck of the world which reached a peak an amazing 2000 years ago. Recent history was shaped 1700 years ago, or 500 years ago, or 83 years ago today with the beginning of the Turkish Cumhuriyet by Ataturk. Or maybe it was shaped last Sunday by the PKK raids against the Turk army?

The entire recorded history of mankind is perhaps 5,000 years. What is that? What do we have to show? I see many examples of the hypocrisy and hubris of man. Sacred burial chambers in their time were disturbed by grave robbers throughout the ages. But isn’t grave robber just a less fancy, but maybe more accurate name for archeologist? At what point in time is it acceptable for someone to dig up someone else who it must be assumed was buried, for eternity, in accordance with his wishes? The reality is that who ever is in power at the time may give permission for “modern” people in the name of science to dig up these graves. But no matter how you slice it, it is for the enrichment of the person or persons digging up the grave that this sacrilegious act is carried out. It often makes it that much easier that the dead believed in disproved Gods such as themselves, Zeus, Isis or Mother Earth. I feel so much better now that our modern theologians have figured out the proper God to honor. Which one is it again? Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Shiva, Mother Earth?

Proper perspective was given a couple nights ago in the deserted resort town of Patara, where you walk past dozens of ancient robbed Sarcophagi (or whiz past in an aircon bus)
on your way to the beautiful beach. We were sharing a pension with a young Turkish PhD candidate in geology. When asked what his specialty was, he responded that it was plate tectonics, but only for the last 5 million years. Only 5 million years? Only 1000 times all recorded human history? We talked about what a short time that was, in comparison to the Jurassic, and other truly ancient events. Think about that the next time, or maybe only time, you spend a ton of money on a Mausoleum!

8 months and counting...

Yesterday marked the completion of our eighth month on the road. As we drove into the town of Iznik, we drove through fields of small trees that were loosing their leaves to the fall weather and making tiny piles of bright orange leaves underneath them which made them look as if they were each setting small fires to keep themselves warm. It was quite a beautiful scene to mark this milestone with.

It was also Halloween in America so it was rather fitting that we spent part of our afternoon in the small city of Iznik looking for a proper "disguise" for me to wear while we travel through Iran. I have gotten conflicting information about just how covered up I need to be and what is and is not appropriate, so we held off on buying anything until we do a bit more research. However, no matter what we end up getting, I think one thing will be for certain: it will not be flattering! (But I guess that is part of the point.)

So, today began our ninth month of travels and in this month there will be a number of changes. Most significantly for me is that once we leave Istanbul for good, I will no longer be traveling on my own bike. The prospect of riding pillion with Kevin for the rest of the trip is very, very, bittersweet for me because while I really feel that I will be losing a part of my freedom and morphing into just another "back-of-the-bike-wife," I also know that I will probably be safer and we will be saving quite a bit of money on gas. I have ridden my bike now for over 24,000 miles across half of the world and though it may have felt in the beginning as if the 650cc red lion was my adversary, it has been my partner and accomplice, and a true pussy-cat for quite some time now and I will miss the purring as we zoom into the unknown.

Day and Night in OLYMPOS

We had a beautiful 100 mile ride along the Mediterranean sea yesterday ending up in "tree house" pension at the gates of the ancient city of Olympos. We took a refreshing afternoon swim in the beautiful, clear turquoise water before seeing some of the ruins on our way back to dinner.

In the nighttime we rode about 15 miles up and then down the switchback mountain road of Mt. Olympos, sacred mount of the God Vulcan and others. We walked up about a mile in the dark, a rock and dirt path to see the Chimeara.

The Chimeara are an unexplained phenomenon, flames coming from the rocks which have been burning as long as mankind has been recording history.

The locals say the methane gas doesn't burn as high as it used to, but they are still pretty amazing. We were both impressed and amazed at this natural wonder, which ships at sea can observe on the mountain. It was easy to understand how this could become a sacred site for the ancients

The Virgin Mary's House

We visited the alleged last home of the Virgin Mary. While Jesus was on the Cross, he is supposed to have told John to take care of 'his mother'. He moved to Turkey, where the St. John church was built. It is thought that Mary came with him. In the 1800's a stigmatic nun in Germany, who had never left the country had visions of the hills in the area of Turkey where she saw Mary living her last days and drinking from the local well. Two digs went to the area which were described accurately and the base of a stone house were found in the area described. It has now become a pilgrimage site for many people and the water is supposed to have brought miracles. We drank some just in case! It is a beautiful, tranquil spot, not very large which is now just a tiny chapel. Many popes have visited it and left their blessings as well. The picture of me with the wall of notes, are requests left by people for Mary. She is mentioned in the Koran, which considers Jesus a prophet, as the blessed mother of the prophet. So, many muslims visit the site and consider it holy as well.

Don't play with the Dead things!

See the 3000 year old Nike Swoosh displayed by the Goddess!



The main expensive street in Ephesus, lined with statues, mosaic tiles, shops and a public bath.



I keep telling Clara not to play with the Sarcophagi!




A turk, A canadian and A Kevin: there is hope for World Peace

brief update

We've decided to wait an extra day in Boldrum, to enjoy the sun, cheap pension, and let Clara look at jewelry!

We received our Visas to Pakistan yesterday, so now we need to figure out Iran and India and we will be on our way East. It doesn't help that Cheney and company seem to want to start bombing Iran before they are swept out the door.

We made friends with an Iraqi Kurd on the boat from the Ukraine to Istanbul. He invited us to his town in Iraq and he told us that it was plenty safe enough in Kurdistan. We've been in email contact with him, and he has since told us with the Turkish and PKK problem in the area that it is no longer safe there. That is how tenuous this area of the world is. One thing that seems to be clear here, which one doesn't get from reading the American press is that Kurdistan is a defacto country now. They have their own leaders, their own army, their own borders. Although the United States may want to try and keep this "one Iraq" policy, it seems as if this part of the world is working well towards accepting this as a reality.

How about those Sox!

Boldrum: England East

We had a wonderful dinner with Eric and Carol last night, right after we visited the Virgin Mary's final home, and drank from the sacred well she used to drink from. It is now a tiny church and pilgrimage sight, visited by many Popes and others.

Clara found a beautiful white leather jacket she bought with her birthday money which we picked up (after she had it altered) on the way out of town. The final words from the salesman were the typical battle cry of the Turkish Businessman: "the stuff at the other guys store really is terrible."

It has become a running joke for us how our 'friends' who is whomever we are talking to are quick to disparage wherever we might be going in order to steer us to someone they know (and will get a kickback from). Usually this also results in someone trying to get you to buy a carpet. None yet!

We drove about another hundred miles today, again mostly in the rain. We stopped to see the Temple of Endymion. Not much to it, but I was drawn by the fact that Endymion is one of the largest New Orleans parades and thus felt a minuscule connection with it.

Later in the afternoon we arrived in Bodrum which is an English tourist haven. Prices are in pounds, Euros and sometimes in Turkish Lira. It is a pretty place with an amazing assortment of wooden yachts in the harbor, white concrete villas overlooking the double harbors, split in two by a peninsula with St. Peters fort at the point.


There are tons of shops, restaurants and activities and we may stay a couple days to beat out the rain. We saw the remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world this morning and there is another one of the ruined wonders here as well. Who knew Turkey was such an historic hotspot.

The Turks are pretty ticked about this Kurdish thing, and we have seen marches and even more Turkish and Ataturk flags than normal. War and rain seem to follow us, guard your borders and open your dams, we're coming through!