We woke up the next morning in Assos, and Claudia’s tooth was no better. She had woken up a number of times during the night in such pain that she was unable to sleep.  We had administered some painkillers, and over breakfast Scott, Diane, and I were discussing what the best next action was. We decided that it was worth getting in touch with insurance and finding a dentist. Just as we were about to leave to go try and find Internet in this one horse town, Claudia appeared, looking none too hot.

She nibbled on some bread, but didn’t eat much. I hung back with her while Scott and Diane went to go find the Internet. As we were discussing her swollen face, a man appeared. He introduced himself, and asked us about ourselves. Claudia did a good job of sucking up the pain and being cordial. Once we had explained AsiaWheeling, and to the owners of the hotel (who showed up half way through the conversation) that indeed there were still cowboys in the USA (though you needed to go outside the cities to find them), we asked our new acquaintance about his own life and profession.

Low and behold, the man was a dentist.  We asked, most humbly, if he might look into Claudia’s mouth. And so he did, spending some time poking around and examining the issue from all angles. In the end, he explained that all she needed was some antibiotics. We asked him what kind. “Azithromycin,” he said. I ran back to our room and sure enough we had them ready to go in the mobile pharmacy.

Claudia took her first one, and we headed out to find Scott and Diane to deliver the good news. All concerned were happy to hear that we had a solution that did not involve us all driving to an unscheduled city and Claudia going under the knife.

From there we drove up to an outcropping overlooking the sea.

The Mediterranean lay beautiful and blue beneath us as we followed the winding road down to the water.

Part way down the hill, we parked the Doblo, and headed out on foot to investigate the water more closely.

We cut through a resort and began exploring the rocky coastline.

Eventually, we decided to just strip down to our Exofficios and jump in.

The water was cool, crystal clear, and beautiful. We climbed out quite refreshed and headed back up to the car.

A little way down the road, we stopped at another beach-side restaurant for a delicious meal of fish, fresh bread and vinegary salad.

These tiny, eat-em-whole, deep fried Turkish fish were really becoming some of my favorite food of the entire trip.

We bought a bunch of giant bottles of water not far from the restaurant, and kept rolling.

I was driving through gorgeous Turkish semi-arid agricultural land; Scott and Claudia were snoozing; and Diane was reading to me aloud from the Wikipedia article about the Armenian genocide.

I could not have asked for more. Giant statues of Ataturk were everywhere, along with huge patriotic Turkish flags.

As the sun was setting, we pulled into the town of Çesme. It turned out we had arrived at some kind of tourist peak time for the city, which boded poorly for our ability to find a hotel. Even the filthy flophouse we found was holding out, trying to sell its last room for US$75. A normal, none too fancy hotel that we wandered into was asking for over US$1,000 for a night. This was maniacal and hilarious.

Luckily we had an ace up the sleeve.  One we had hid in the Gulf and pulled out more than a few times.  We decided it was high time to pilot the Hotel Doblo. But first we needed to eat. Alp directed us via phone to his favorite Pide Place, Dost Pide.

Pide is a kind of Turkish baked flatbread. It can be filled with cheese, or meat, or both.

With bellies full and the sun long down, it was time now to sleep.

We drove outside the city and up to the surrounding hills. When we found an empty clearing of talc soil, we folded down all the seats, locked our bikes and bags to a rim of the car, and crawled into the womb of the Doblo.

It was no Previa, believe you me. But sleep we did.

We woke up bright and early once again, and rushed upstairs for a quick, olive heavy breakfast before heading down to find our new Fiat Doblo waiting for us. We’d had Prevlaunch. Now it was time for Turklaunch 2010. So we loaded our stuff in the back, a tight, but manageable squeeze, and we were off.

I took the first shift driving and piloted us toward the Kazakh Embassy. Part way through the drive, we realized the tank was completely empty and pulled over to fill up. That was our first encounter with Turkish gas prices, which are some of the highest in the world. We paid well over US$120 to fill the 50 liter tank. Admittedly, we were buying some more expensive variant called Euro-Diesel, but that’s really no excuse. We just hoped this tank would hold us for a while. The Doblo reportedly got amazing gas mileage… we’d have to see.

We got to the Kazakh Embassy and dropped our stuff off. This time we were introduced to the Kazakh Consulate General himself, who also coincidentally favored pink shirts, and personally reviewed our papers to see that they were in order. He decided they were and thanked us for our submission. We resisted the urge to give him a huge high five, and left.

Back on the road, we spent some hours battling Istanbul-related traffic before we hit the open road. The Doblo had a CD deck and we were listening to Wu Tang’s Enter the 36 Chambers like the good old days, and just letting the little 1.3 liter engine of the Fiat Doblo eat road.

We stopped for lunch at a little roadside diner, where we were treated to our first affordable Turkish meal of rice pilaf, kebabs and salad.

Claudia’s incoming wisdom teeth were becoming infected. We’d been monitoring it for some time. It had been waxing and waning in its severity, but today it was getting bad. Her face was beginning to puff up, and she was quickly chewing through the AsiaWheeling supply of pain killers. She was, unsurprisingly, no big eater at that meal. When we headed over to a nearby grocery shop to find some more painkillers, we unfortunately found none and were forced to resist the temptation to just fill the entire excess capacity of the Doblo with Vitaminli drink.

So teeth swollen and stomachs full, we pulled back onto the road.

We began driving through sunflower country, just endless fields of sunflowers in every direction for hundreds of kilometers. It was enchanting.

When we reached the city of Gelibolu, we purchased tickets for the Doblo on the ferry to Lapseki and began our crawl across the sparkling blue Marmara Sea, toward Asia Minor.

Once we hit land again, we worked our way across some more sunflower country until we reached the coast. We stopped for dinner that night at an amazing restaurant attached to a small seaside guest house. We feasted on fresh fish, octopus, squid, and salad, and watched the sun set into the sea. The bread was a little moldy, but so good were the sauces on the rest of the dishes that we all happily sopped them up and ate heartily. The lights periodically went on and off as we ate, which also helped us ignore the mold. We considered briefly staying there, but decided to move on into the night.

It was plenty late by the time we crawled into the cobblestoned town of Assos, where we were able to find a room at a small guest house called the Siday Pansiyon.

We had successfully made our way into Turkish wine country.

The next morning Scott and I woke up at the crack of dawn.

We headed upstairs to enjoy another traditional Turkish breakfast, heavy on the olives, and then downstairs to hop the bicycles. Our destination? The Kazakh Embassy. We knew they would be open today, and we were damned well going to be there.

We wheeled straight down to the shores of the Sea of Marmara, where we picked up the same bike path that we’d ridden with Diane the day before. This time we took it in the opposite direction heading west toward the neighborhood of Florya, where the embassy was located.

The wheel was long and very fast. The path was mostly deserted, so early was it in the morning, and we just let the Speed TRs eat road. Meanwhile, as we pedaled along, hundreds, perhaps thousands of boats bobbed just offshore, moored there waiting to gain access to the port, or for their owners to row back out to them.

On we went, wheeling hard, as the sun began to burn the morning fog out of the atmosphere. At one point we took a wrong turn and ended up at a fully fenced off dead end, culminating in this sign, which we invite any Turkish speaking readers to translate in the comments.

Suddenly we realized that we were massively thirsty, likely due in no small part to the network effect of eating mostly salty olives for breakfast and then wheeling like maniacs for the last two hours. So we stopped at a small beach-side café, where a number of motorcycle cops were eating breakfast and purchased a few bottles of water.

A few tiny bottles of water each later, we climbed back on the Speed TRs and hit the road.

We kept on wheeling, finally reaching Florya. Now, we suddenly realized, we needed an ATM. The Kazakhs would certainly be charging us for these visas, and it was highly possible that the amount would be no chump change. We pulled over to a convenience store, but they were only offering to do some kind of expensive credit card forwarding maneuver, so we decided to move on to a real ATM. They were happy to give us directions, and even happier to pose for this portrait.

We decided then it might be most prudent to part ways, with Scott heading out to get in line and begin filling out any additional paperwork, while I headed out in search of money. The directions that the fellows from the convenience store gave us turned out to include taking a giant and terrifying highway, so I forsook that in favor of moving more intuitively. I began wheeling like a true maniac, very fast and sweating profusely, stopping from time to time to frantically ask pedestrians in sign language where I might find an ATM. Eventually, I began to zero in on a banking zone, as evidenced by a convergence in the responses to my sign language.

Next came a long, slow climb uphill and into the center of Florya. Finally, I began to see banks, and darted into the first one I saw with an ATM. I got out way more money that we could ever need, figuring we had plenty of time left in the land of the lira, and jumped back on the cycle, hoping I’d catch Scott before he had been asked to pay them.

When I arrived back at the embassy, positively drenched in perspiration, Scott was just getting to the front of the line. I strode up to the window and began talking with the fellow.

He began asking me all kinds of questions:

“What do you want to do in Kazakhstan?”  “How long will you stay?” “Who do you know in the country?” and many others. Once he was satisfied with my responses, he told me that I needed to write all the responses down on a piece of paper and address it to the consulate general. I explained that we actually already had a letter of intent, printed and signed, ready to go (you see, we had done our research).

This should give you, dear reader, an idea of the kind of back and forth, which continued on for a while between me and the fellow. The whole ordeal culminated in a somewhat reluctant acceptance of our documents. We were thrilled.

Then the documents were handed right back to us and our hearts fell. “That will be US$60.00 for both of you,” the popped pink collar said.  I reached for my wallet, which contained much more than that in lira and tried to hand the documents back to him. This was great, much cheaper than we had expected. “Can I pay you in cash?” I asked, grinning.

No you must go to this bank and deposit the balance in this account. He then wrote “Türkiye İş Bankası” on a piece of paper, and an account number, and then motioned toward the door. Bring the receipt back with you and we’ll consider your application.

Fair Enough. “We’ll ride there now,” I explained, “Will you be open when we return?”

“Maybe,” he replied. We close at noon.

And then we were off again, in a man vs. gravity race to get to the bank. We were raging on the cycles, just tearing back up that hill. We passed the bank I had taken money out of, then continued on past bank after bank. Where was this place?!

Then finally we saw it, at the end of the street, and Scott sprinted inside while I locked the bikes. He was already part way through the transaction by the time I came in to support him with capital.

While we were finishing the transaction, I convinced the security guard to refill my water bottle from their staff bubbler, and just as he returned with the bottle, Scott snatched the receipts and we were out of there.

Back on the road, we didn’t let up. We had only 20 minutes, but we could so this.

We arrived back at the embassy at 11:53 and ran up pouring sweat and panting to find the door closed. They’d knocked off early! In full knowledge that we were on our way back…

With grumbling proving useless, we climbed back on the cycles. They of course opened back up at 3:00, but by then we’d need to be on the other side of the city meeting with Red Bull.

We began to discuss other options as we rode back to the city. As we pedaled, we called Claudia, who was just waking up at Alps House. She spoke to me groggily, and I responded in a lighting fast stream of data, screaming it into the phone as I rode. She seemed overwhelmed. Fair enough. I hung up and we called Diane.

She was doing no better on the overwhelmed front, with the rental car issue still far from solved, and new confirmation just in that any car big enough for all of us and the cycles was actually illegal to rent in the country of Turkey. She had found a black market renter who was willing to rent us his friend’s car, but without insurance. Fair enough.

Part way through the wheel, we realized we were starving, but not wanting to waste time, as our meeting with Red Bull was already entering a zone of proximity in which we would almost certainly be late, we stopped at the quickest looking and nearest joint we could spot.

It was a place by the name of “park büfe.”  We had a meatball sandwich there that took me back to my experiences at Grinnell Middle School’s Cafeteria and then hit the road, riding hard and fast, back toward home. When we got there, Diane was in a state of nervous delirium over the lack of rental car. “You know we’re planning on leaving tomorrow, right? And we don’t have a car, right?” We nodded and I inadvertently looked at my watch. “This is not what I want to be doing! I’m on vacation!” Fair enough.

We tried to explain that it was okay, that we would take on this task, but just as soon as we’d met with Red Bull. Then we rushed out the door, hoping Diane would heed our advice and cease her work on the rental car front and enjoy herself until we’d returned to throw our efforts into the mix.

Then we were wheeling again, hard. And talking to our Red Bull contact, Bilgehan. He was cheerful, and seemed very forgiving of our admission that we would be tardy.

When we reached the ferry, we fumbled with the machine to produce two plastic tokens, and jumped on.

We then had about 15 minutes to relax, as the ferry made its way across the Marmara over to the “Asian” side of town.  The water was beautiful and blue, and we savored the moment of relative still in this frantic day.

We watched the city of Istanbul roll by outside the windows. Man oh man was this city beautiful. Then we reached the landing and it was time to split, and so we rolled the cycles off the ferry and headed over to the large line of cabs.

We told the cabby the neighborhood and then put Bilgehan on the phone with the man. Our cab driver was amazing, drove like a maniac, and listened to fantastic music, like this song about Facebook.

He also fielded a call from his wife while we were driving. When the phone rang, he turned down the stereo using the controls on the steering wheel, and picked up.

As their conversation continued, he began to perform all kinds of ridiculous pantomime, holding the phone away from him like it stunk, or reaching over and putting it to my ear, giving me a brief burst of Turkish, then whipping it back to his own to add something to the conversation. Quite a fellow we’d found.

Then we arrived at Red Bull’s Turkish HQ, and what a building it was! We knew we were at the right place when we saw some of the Red Bull sampling girls across the street getting the Red Bull Mini Coopers ready for a run around the city.

I’ll spare you the commentary our cab driver had concerning them.

After a bout of miscommunication with the security guard, Bilgehan showed up downstairs and helped us to check in. We stored the cycles behind the front desk, and turned over our passport photocopies to the woman running the show in exchange for ID badges.

Upstairs we met with Bilgehan, where we were introduced to the head of Red Bull Sports for Turkey, Cuneyt. Here too, there as a huge focus on motorsports, which they explained to us was what the culture here was interested in.  We toured their offices, and spent quite a while discussing Red Bull’s business in Turkey overlooking the warehouse district of Istanbul’s Asian side.

Speaking of motorsports, we headed, downstairs to grab the Red Bull we would need for the road trip through Turkey.  But before that Bilgehan wanted to take a ride on the Speed TR, and we were more than happy to oblige.

Then we grabbed the rest of our Red Bull, loaded it onto the back of the bikes, and headed back downhill toward the ferry terminal.

When we got to the ferry terminal, we realized we were starving again, and decided to purchase a couple of “toasts,” which is the way the Turkish refer to grilled cheese sandwiches.

It was definitely a middle school day for the AsiaWheeling diet.

We then prepared to wheel our Red-Bull-laden cycles onto the ferry. It was true they were ungainly, but we were able to slug them on board. From the safety of the passenger cabin, we radioed home letting the rest of the crew know we were inbound.

And Diane was on the other end with great news: She had solved the rental car problem, and we would have a Fiat Dobro ready to go the next morning, manifested through black magic. On our way out of the station, hopping onto the cycles, we noticed these fellows cooking up fish sandwiches and made a special note to revisit them for lunch on our way back through Istanbul before our flight to Uzbekistan.

We had been frantic that whole day, but Istanbul continued to be relaxed around us. As we struggled to ride our cycles laden down with 72 cans of energy drink each, businessmen had just gotten off work and were enjoying playing with their dogs.  Vendors by the water fried up delicious fish at bargain prices.

That evening we met up with our Turkey advisor, Mr. Asher Kohn. He took us to one of his favorite restaurants, a place called Abracadabra where we feasted on tiny fried fish, more chewy Turkish bread, a plate of roast lamb with yoghurt sauce, and a large salad.

After that he took us for a stroll around the neighborhood, pointing out bits and pieces of history or folklore. Then we went out for gelatto, a desert of which I am always skeptical.

We woke up the next morning to a truly luxurious breakfast at the Park Inn in Istanbul.

It was the classic Turkish breakfast of crispy baguettes, tomatoes, cheeses, olives, and had boiled eggs. We took it with plenty of cups of milky coffee and with a view of the Blue mosque off to our left, and the great pink Hagia Sophia mosque on our right.

We munched away and made plans for our time in Turkey. Everything was coming together for this part of the trip, except for one vital piece: the car.

After having such a blast traveling through the gulf with Mr. Jackson Fu in the Toyota Previa, we had decided that we should attempt to do Turkey in a similar way. And it was thus that we began investigating rental cars, with Claudia and Diane taking a central role.

In the meantime, Scott and I had another vital mission that needed to be completed before we exited Istanbul, and that was the acquisition of Kazakh visas.

There was much to do and not too much time here in Istanbul, so we were quick to get moving. Claudia headed off with to meet her friend Alp while Diane, Scott, and I headed out towards the Kazakh embassy on the Istanbul city tram.

At the end of the line, we hopped into a cab and began driving around aimlessly asking people for directions to the Kazakh embassy. We must have been in the right neighborhood… either that or the Kazakhs threw really great parties, for everyone we asked seemed know where it was. Yet despite receiving many directions, the building continued to elude us.  But finally, after a fair bit more random taking of turns, and asking of lounging cigarette smoking apartment security teams, we pulled up to the place.

We spoke to the guard outside, who, though it was closed, happily unlocked the door and let us in.

Inside was a kind of manicured garden area, with a nice cobblestone path that led up to a cottage, with a cutesy, residential style door. We had all our paperwork and passports ready, and we knocked on the door with every hope that we might be able to drop them off right there and then. But this was to be our first window into the world of post-soviet insane bureaucracy which we were poised on the edge of. The door was answered, by a tall and rather Korean looking fellow in an American eagle bright pink polo shirt and tight jeans who was sorry to inform us that while it was a weekday, they were unfortunately closed and we had better come back tomorrow. “Could you just take these forms and put them in an inbox?’ We asked. “That would be impossible.” He answered in interestingly accented English.

Fair enough, we thought, walking away from the place. At least we had found the place, and that was step one.

We took a picture of the sign to remind us of exactly where it was, and hit the road on foot.

As we strolled we investigated the cars parked along the street, making a list of models which we thought might accommodate all of us for the upcoming ride across Turkey. We would, of course, prefer a Toyota Previa, but research had suggested such a car was tough to find, perhaps even illegal to rent here…

We continued on, past a deserted school where a single child rode on his training wheels threw an empty playground, and then past the airport, which sported a fantastic logo on their fence.

From there we made our way down to the water, where we strolled along the sea for a while, playing with the community exercise equipment, and generally goofing around.

Soon we found ourselves at a community beach, where I found myself struck, as I had been by the female luggage scanner, by women wandering around in their bathing suits. It’s just not something that one sees in the middle east. And it had been quite some time since we’d been outside the Middle East. I found myself ever so mildly scandalized. It was really quite wild.

Eventually, we walked back up from the beach, stopping at a grocery store for some water, and then climbed back on the commuter rail, bound for town.

Back in town we collected our cycles, and head out for a ride. It was to be Diane’s inaugural wheel with the team, and we were excited to put some Turkish kilometers under our belts. And so we headed out, through this very ancient and interestingly part-European and part-Arab city.

It was not long into the ride that we began to conclude the European part was certainly dominating over the Arab. People dressed like Europeans here. EU flags were proudly placed around the city on flag which called it “European Capital of Culture. ”

We looked a little into this European Capital of Culture proclamation, and as Wikipedia explains it:

The European Capital of Culture is a city designated by the European Union for a period of one calendar year during which it organises a series of cultural events with a strong European dimension.

Good one.

It was not long into the wheel that Scott’s Mother caught one of her front wheels in the ditch through which the trolley rails run and went flying over her handlebars and into the street. We screeched to a halt and headed over to see if she was ok. Thanks be to Jah, she was unharmed, but rather shaken, none the less.

One of the trolley attendants lent us the use of his little officer’s hutch, where we could take stock of ourselves and help Diane to calm down. They gave us a towel to clean some of the road grit off, and after a spell, walked over to a nearby park and sat down. It had been a very intense experience for all involved. The whole trip flashed before my eyes as Daine went sprawling into the street, including when Scott had done the same in Bangkok and I began to realize how lucky we had been to have had so few accidents. Not even a single flat…yet…

AsiaWheeling’s guardian angel aside, we explained to Diane that we would understand completely if she wanted to lay off wheeling for the rest of today. But she refused. After a couple more minutes of collecting herself in the park, we were back on the roads, and wheeling up a storm.

And let me underline, dear reader, that Istanbul is not an easy city to wheel in. Traffic is fast here, and none too used to cyclists. The roads are also full of obstacles like, very old, bent, widely spaced grates, and the tramline that had caught the front tire of Diane’s Speed D7.

We continued, past the blue mosque and down the cobblestone streets towards the shores of the Bosphorus. On the seashore, we were able to get onto a bike path, which was of great relief to all involved, for we now only had to worry about traffic consisting of pedestrians, roller bladers, and the occasional fellow wheeler.

Diane was doing very well, wheeling fast, and with a smile on her face. We made short work of that chunk of coastline, making our way by this very interesting turbaned statue, and eventually being dumped out into a part of town which was just littered with, of all things, bike shops.

We even stumbled upon the Turkish Dahon distributer, who unfortunately spoke none of the languages that we knew, but emitted general supportive body language.

From there, we took a bridge across the Bosphorus, and onto the side of the island where Alp lived.

Once on the new island, we began working our way uphill towards a place called Taksim, which is a giant square surrounded by a shopping and hotel district.

We spent some time wandering around there, poking our heads into car rental agencies but not finding much in the way of vehicles large enough for 4 people and 3 folding bicycles.

We even stopped into good old EuropeCar, a company that had served us so well in Abu Dhabi, but alas, the office here in Istanbul was staffed by grumpy and unhelpful characters. So much brand equity was destroyed in our five minutes of interacting with the Istanbul EuropeCar office, that I left the building feeling sorry for the company and wondering how it could have gone so far down the wrong path.

As we continued to poke around Taksim, we eventually got a call from Claudia and Alp, who were ready to meet up for Dinner. Alp ended up leading us to a fantastic joint, though to call it a joint is perhaps unfair.

It was more like a high class restaurant, built for sophistos, another Meze place, where we feasted on a fantastic assortment of dishes.

It had been quite a wheel and we were thrilled to be eating.

Fresh greens, yogurts, spicy fried shapes, crispy French tasting rolls, pickled mushrooms, sweet raisiny chicken pieces. It was a glorious walk through a world of very small portions of very scrumptious things.

After dinner, Claudia traded with Diane, joining us on the cycle to night-wheel home. As we made our way back down hill and across the bridge, I could not help but find myself startled at how quickly the trip had changed with the addition of Diane. Turkey was certainly an interesting chapter, and a delightful experience, but was it going to be AsiaWheeling?

We arrived at the Adana bus station well after dark, and Scott and Claudia ran off to get some Turkish lira from an ATM, while I sat and watched our stuff. I took out the ukulele and began playing, soon becoming surrounded by a large crowd of people, some of whom were interested in the strange cover of Modest Mouse’s “The Good Times Are Killing Me” that I was playing, the rest of whom were interested in selling me stuff.

In the middle of a song, a man came up to me offering a cup of tea, which he expertly served up using one hand, flipping the saucer, which had been acting as a lid, and dropping two sugar cubes into the brew. In the true Arab style, I refused the drink a few times, explaining that I had no money just yet, and after some more insistence on his part, humbly thanked him and drank the tea down,  which was, of course, mighty sweet.

I was startled when he came back a few songs later and began demanding money from me. I, of course, had none, so I apologized and he grumbled, walking away. Eventually Scott and Claudia arrive back with the lira. We packed our things up and proceeded from there to haggle our way into a cab ride to the airport in one of the many bright yellow station wagon cabs that were scattered around the station.

At the airport, we were not waiting more than five minutes before Claudia and Diane emerged from the terminal. For having just traveled for something like 24 hours, Diane was looking quite put together and was in very high spirits.

We all piled into an even larger cab and proceeded from there to a certain kebab restaurant that had come very highly recommended by some friends of Diane’s back in Northern California. The place was, of course, amazing and we made sure to take a thorough tour of the facilities, as our food was being prepared.

When our food arrived it was truly stunning. Turkish food is delightfully unique compared to the Syrian, Lebanese, and Jordanian fare that we’d been consuming. We hungrily dug into some sizzling cheese dip, a giant parsley salad, a fresh wavy flatbread, much thicker and chewier than we had had in a while, a chopped tomato sauce, a plate of garlicky yoghurt sauce, grilled hot peppers and tomatoes, a giant plate of meat kebabs, and of course a little Effes, the new local brew.

Bellies full, we returned to the bus station, and climbed on a night bus to Istanbul.

We woke up the next morning on the bus, speeding along smooth Turkish highways traversing desert once again. The bus had advertised wifi on board, which was a futuristic treat that we were excited to take advantage of, but it was sadly not operational.

We stopped halfway through the ride at a strange tourist schlock and snack joint, where we all wandered off the bus and gawked at the bizarre assortment of products, not the least of which was giant piles of Turkish delight, a kind of jellied candy that aims to command the lion’s share of the tourist’s souvenir budget.

We finally arrived in Istanbul, and climbed gratefully off the bus. It had been quite a long ride, and it was good to stretch the limbs again.

We grabbed all our things and made our way across the lot to the subway, which took us into the city.

At the end of the line in the city, we parted ways, as Diane took a cab, and Claudia, Scott and I, on our Dahons, headed to the touristy hotel district that had been recommended to us by our special adviser for Turkey, Asher Kohn.

It was a place called Sultanamet, and it was just packed to the gills with white people, hotels, restaurants, and tourist shops. We wheeled along the cobblestone drive, scouting for places, and wandering around sticking our heads into one hotel after another.

Eventually, we settled on the Park Inn, a luxurious little place right next to the Four Seasons.

That night we headed out looking for food, and stumbled into a seaside restaurant, where we dined on many small dishes.

It was a kind of Turkish Tapas-style food called Meze. It was delicious, and we were able to have our first taste of Turkish wine, which we would like to hereby proclaim ourselves in support of, for it is not only delicious, but unlike most things so far in Turkey, also very inexpensive.

We then all headed back to the Park Inn, where we were quite happy to be, for the first time in some while, sleeping on clean white sheets.

For ages, the hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women, has been a symbol of the East, a symbol of modesty and mystery. The practice of veiling has deep seated religious roots, originating when the wives of the Prophet Muhammad veiled themselves from worshipers who came to visit their home (which was converted into the first mosque). However, the hijab is an avenue for political expression as much as a religious garment.

Many think (and have thought) of the Middle East and the West as two opposing spheres of thought and cultural heritage. Despite the gross over-simplicity of this idea, the belief has been and is being used in conjunction with the practice of veiling to support political movements and rally people around nationalistic ideologies in the Middle East.  Kemal Atatürk, in his campaign to westernize Turkey in the late 1920s dissuaded Turkish women from wearing the Hijab.  For the garment was seen as a cultural artifact, alienating to the West. Today, with an awareness of the cultural connotations of the hijab, some women use the garment as a socio-political tool and veil in tacit rejection of the West, be it of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan or of past damage to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and then Palestine during the period of colonization and systems of mandate.

It is certain, though, that many women today still wear the hijab for reasons of perceived chastity and modesty. It seems that veiling can at once empower women and strip them of identity or agency. But there is no doubt that it is an injustice when women are forced to veil or not to veil for social reasons.

One way the veil can empower women is by allowing them to move freely within public spheres and escape sexual harassment on the street, a growing problem in the Middle East. It is thought that women wearing the hijab are harassed less because they are “good Muslim women,” mothers and wives who project an air of modesty. So we can consider the veil as a tool that allows women to be treated with respect in public spheres, rather than as sexual objects open to verbal or physical harassment.

But the question I have is: what came first, the chicken or the egg? Do women veil to escape harassment, or did the trend of veiling prompt widespread harassment of unveiled women?

A strange concept, certainly counter-intuitive, but bear with me. The veil, in religious terms, serves the purpose of covering a woman’s body in order to quell the devious thoughts of men. Perhaps extreme, but there have been campaigns which push women to veil that promote just such an idea. The caption of this add reads: “A veil to protect or the eyes will molest.”

This poster characterizes women’s bodies as sweet and tempting, and men’s eyes on them as spoiling. It seems that the consensus here is that a woman’s body is inherently sexual, something to be desired. The act of veiling springs from this belief, and attempts to counter the issue by obfuscating the temptation of the body.

However, it seems to me that wearing the hijab reinforces, intensifies, and to some extent creates the belief that women’s bodies are sexual objects, cementing this belief as a culturally accepted conviction. This phenomenon fits in with the sociological theorem “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” In this mode of thinking, if veiling is accepted as the norm for women’s dress, a woman who chooses not to veil is automatically deemed immodest, and, however unfairly, can be seen as fair game for harassment. In this vein of thought, the hijab desexualizes individual women, but sexualizes the concept of “woman,” possibly creating issues for women who do not veil.

Others would argue that veiling at times has an effect opposite to that of quelling temptation directed toward the covered woman. Veiling can give women a more subtle power as sexual agents. As Scott and Woody can attest, there is a certain allure and eroticism associated with the garment. Furthermore, when someone sees a veiled woman,  one’s imagination can create the woman as attractive, unbounded by how she may actually appear behind the façade of cloth.

No matter how veiling is perceived — by foreign men as alluring, by foreign women as confounding, or by its wearers as preserving or political, the veil will not be lifted any time soon. As religious conservatism gains momentum in places, more and more women are choosing to cover. With global tides carrying people and Islam across borders and seas, it is becoming all the more necessary to understand the implications of this sartorial phenomenon.

The next morning we packed up our things and checked out of our hotel in Aleppo. We paused outside to strap our things onto our bikes, while we dodged men rolling giant truck tires and wheel barrows full of paint.

We headed right back to the drugged-bunny-themed place that we had eaten at upon first arriving in Aleppo, and ordered a similar feast of pastes and salads.

As we ate, the flatscreen television above our heads blared  the music video of “The Job by Qusai,” a fantastic look into Saudi corporate thug life.

This time, the owner of the place came to sit down with us and chat for a while about his business, the politics of the Middle East, the city of Aleppo, and, of course, AsiaWheeling. He gave us redundant cups of free thick black Middle Eastern coffee, and lined up with some of his staff to wish us off when we were finished eating.

We packed our things onto our cycles, but were compelled to wait around, chatting about marketing techniques and the origins of the drugged bunny mascot of the restaurant, so that Claudia could converse in Arabic with some passing women.

We got to the bus station just in time to catch the last three seats on the next bus leaving for the Turkish border.

The bus left about 10 minutes after we arrived.  This fine luck with buses continued to be a theme of our journey, and this was just another strike against doubters of the AsiaWheeling angel of fortune.

The bus ride, however turned out to be not quite so straightforward. First we arrived at the Turkish border, which we, as American citizens, could cross with only a visa issued upon entry. However, executing the mission turned out to be quite complex. As Scott and Claudia waited with our passports at passport control, I headed off with the bus driver and crossed into Turkey, where he led me into a large administrative building and up to a small window on the second floor.

The man behind the window and our bus driver seemed to be very good friends, and the two of them joked about Israel in Turkish, while he scrutinized my passport photocopy. Normally, he explained, we would need to have all the passports present in order to issue the visas, but for me, he said winking at our bus driver, he’d make an exception, using just my photocopy to register all three visas.

I crossed my fingers that this little bit of smoke and mirrors would not cause us problems down the road, and proceeded to pay him all our remaining Syrian Pounds and a good many USD on top of that, walking away with three Turkish visas that I could have put into any passport I liked. I returned to find the bus had already left, along with my traveling companions. The Turkish passport control officer still had our books, though, and with the snort of a racehorse, wetted and applied the visas that I handed him and stamped each book.

Then the bus driver and I were jogging together, across the no man’s land toward where the bus was idling, baggage compartment door open, while guards with dogs and machine guns shined lights into the cavity. Scott and Claudia saw us coming and gave a cheer.

All the bags had been unloaded and were being scanned one by one. I found myself quite surprised to see that the official scanning our bags was a woman, and unveiled. In fact, not just unveiled but wearing a sleeveless shirt! After traveling in the Muslim world for so long, to me that seemed downright scandalous!

I was startled at my own reaction. In most of the countries where we travel, this would have been a completely un-noteworthy piece of professional garb. Perhaps it just underlines the degree to which women’s roles in Muslim society differ from those in more secular countries.

Once through the border, we began to work our way across an aggressively irrigated landscape, driving by many farms and ponds, all of which were unnaturally fed by large above-ground systems of pipe. Then we arrived in Antakya, where we were quite surprised to find everyone getting off of the bus. So we unloaded our things and piled them in the parking lot. Scott waited with our stuff, while I ran off with Claudia to figure out where we were and what we needed to do.

We managed to find someone who spoke Arabic, but it was not easy. Everyone seemed to only speak Turkish here. Once we did find the fellow, though, hurried investigation yielded word that our tickets were actually connecting on to Adana, as we had hoped, where we were to meet Scott’s mother, Diane. We needed with all haste to go collect Scott, and get him on another bus, which was scheduled to leave in seven minutes.

So we left our bags near the counter, trusting that the ticket sellers would keep an eye on them, and hurried up the stairs to find Scott.

In the meantime, Scott had made a terrible and drastic realization: he had left is Panama hat on the bus! With seven minutes to blast-off, he began hurriedly traipsing around the lot, asking frantically to try and locate our bus. All the buses looked the same, however. And just as he was about to get in a cab that may or may not have been about to take him to a secondary lot where the bus may or may not have been, we decided that we needed to just let it go, and climb on the bus to Adana, lest we miss it and strand Diane alone in a random Turkish city.

So now, dear reader, I’d like you to take whatever you’re drinking and hold it out in front of you. Be sure to pivot your body so that you are not directly over your computer, a loved one, or your favorite bearskin rug. If you really must, stand up and run outside with your drink. Now we’d like you pour just a small splash of the drink out onto the ground in humble respect for a great hat, and for what was to be the end of this fine tradition of the AsiaWheeling Panama hat.

Okay. Let’s all regain control. Moving on.

We began to drive now, into an even greener landscape. Suddenly we were moving through forests, and the ocean spread out to our left.  We rode by fascinating industrial sites and rich farming operations, as the sun sank low and eventually set into the Mediterranean.

We awoke in Aleppo and Woody’s stomach bug had returned with a vengeance.  This was a particularly tenacious one, requiring water, rest, and the occasional Coca Cola for caloric support.  Claudia and I decided to let him rest and explore the old quarter of Aleppo together.

Wheeling toward it, we were drawn to the giant minarets of the great mosque there, and we paused to admire the courtyard.  Entering as infidels in short pants didn’t seem the most halal of activities, so we gazed from outside and moved on to chain our bikes and explore on foot.

The old quarter of Aleppo is a market of gigantic proportions, selling everything from kebab skewers, to safes, to silk scarves, to painted plates.  We were not in search of anything in particular, and took time to gaze into every couple of shops.

Some sold copious amounts of gold chains and pendants.

Others trumpeted trading relationships with China, which was constantly spoken of in a poor light by many of the men we met in this part of the world.  It was good to see a bit of solidarity between these two great nations.

Strolling around the byzantine caverns proved chock full of eye candy.

Dated ads for paint products and over-eager shop owners caught our attention briefly, though continuing to stroll, getting more and more lost seemed to be the key.

We found ourselves in various antechambers and courtyards, where the economy of regional and international tourism collided with daily life in Aleppo.

Taking a peek at the old citadel and asking for directions at a camera shop only distanced us from any sense of direction.

Though we were able to finally stumble upon the bikes after coming across a fantastic decal of the Syrian president.

We had been discussing ideas for a T-Shirt to forever immortalize Syria in the form of AsiaWheeling apparel, and settled on an image of the beloved president with a command to partake in our favorite activity here “Getting Syrious.”  It is with pride that we present to you the latest addition to the AsiaWheeling T-Shirt Store: Get Syrious.

While Claudia wheeled home to rest and drop a Coke off for Woody, I picked up my laptop and headed out to clean up some photos and process my inbox.  On my way out, as I dodged trucks carrying gigantic tires, a shop owner invited me into his showroom.  They sold tires to the local populous here with “Made in Indonesia” emblazoned on the side.  They came in all sizes, and as I marveled at the inventory, I was invited into the back room to see the boss.  As we drank tea, we discussed in plain English the Aleppo tire market and what exactly it was that I was doing in Syria, as part of this “AsiaWheeling” company.  With praises to Barack Obama complete and the tea cup reaching its vacant state, we bid each other farewell and exchanged visiting cards.

On the street, an open wireless network with a weak signal provided hope of connectivity, and luckily it carried the namesake of a large hotel six blocks away.  Strolling over to the park across from the hotel, I synced and corresponded with the world as pedestrians peeked at my screen and came over to peer at the inner workings of gmail.

Wishing for a bit more comfortable surroundings, I stopped in a cafe whose clientele were utterly rapt in the World Cup.  The vibrations here were homey and rustic, the staff charming and stern, but helpful.   Closing my laptop, I headed home for a night of rest before the next big day of transit.

The next morning I was feeling slightly better as we packed up our things and headed out from the hotel in search of more breakfast. We decided to sample one of the competitors to the simple hummus and flatbread restaurant that Samer had taken us to two days ago. And we were able to find one without much trouble. It was the same basic idea. Maybe not quite as jaw-droppingly amazing, but deserving of a very solidly applied seal of approval. I was unfortunately unable to eat much, but even sickened and without much appetite I was able to appreciate the love that went into those pastes.

We left that place and continued wheeling. It felt good to be back out in the sunshine. My energy levels were low, but pedaling felt good, breathing felt good, and Latakia was beautiful. I found myself swallowing curses at my illness for robbing from me a day of wheeling here.

We spent the afternoon exploring the city, poking our way through spice shops. Claudia had gotten the idea into her head that decorating her dorm room with sprigs of Syrian sun-dried objects would be the move.

And so that became our mission for the day. It brought us into a number of very interesting shops, and interactions with some fascinating members of the Syrian spice retail sector.

As Claudia was running into yet another shop, we stopped another bicycle coffee salesman, in order to procure some more lucidity. The fellow was very old, and nearly unable to speak. There was also a little bit of Popeye in the guy… at least in his hat. His coffee was quite good, though, and we felt confident that we paid a price easily four times the norm per cup, so we hopefully parted ways with him in good spirits.

After meeting back up with Claudia, we all began to make our way toward the Hotel Safwan, where we had stored our things. With all our belongings loaded onto the cycles, we headed back the way we’d come and arrived at the train station just in time to catch Samer, who had somehow figured out which train we were on and arrived there to wish us safe journey. We exchanged the warmest regards with him and climbed onto our train.

The Syrian railway was amazing. It was startlingly cheap, very clean, and luxuriously comfortable. The staff were amazing, and gave us a special place in the children’s play-car to store the bikes.

The children’s play-car was something like a McDonalds Playplace on the train, where your kids could let off a little steam, while you relaxed and watched the countryside fly by. And that was exactly what we did.

We arrived in Aleppo just as the sun was setting, and quickly unfolded our cycles right there on the platform.

We then wheeled right into the city. Our Syrian flashlights had now been determined to be total duds, useful only for a single ride, and long ago jettisoned. So we were once again without substantial lights. Luckily Aleppo too was very well lit.

All our Syrian friends to date had explained that all of their country was warm and hospitable (a fact with which we heartily agree)… except for Aleppo. For one reason or another, Aleppo was not popular with the rest of Syria. Hossam had explained to us that we needed to be careful walking at night there, and that the people would not be honest and would not respect women.

So it was with much interest that we took our inaugural wheel in this city. So far it was none too scary or grimy. In fact it had quite an affluent vibe.

When we saw a restaurant with a large picture of a drugged-looking cartoon bunny on the outside, we decided to stop to eat. It was true we had not found a hotel yet, but it had been way too long since we’d had that breakfast of pastes, and the search for a hotel and subsequent bargaining would be much more palatable on a full stomach.

The staff at the place was thrilled to have us around and busied themselves arranging places for our bags and cycles. We ordered a delightful feast of salads, pastes, and falafel sandwiches, and I did my best to put food in my body while Scott and Claudia ate hungrily.

Having eaten, the task of finding a hotel felt much more manageable, and it was not more than 20 minutes of wheeling later that we found ourselves checking into a very small, very clean, and splendidly affordable hotel in what appeared to be the tires and automotive parts district of town.

Suddenly it was morning.  We rose early as the light poured into the oddly shaped room from the balcony, where the remainder of our watermelon recovered from the previous night’s feast.

Woody was feeling a bit under the weather, with one foot off the merry-go-round as we say.  Whatever the diagnosis, coffee would certainly be part of the cure.  Walking outside, we found the lobby to be full of travelers mulling about in preparation for the day.

Woody had opted for a haircut the night before, one of the minimal variety, which brings a certain intensity of persona.  Coupled with sunken eyes and oblique posture resulting from his stomach aliment, the other travelers silently moved back from his and Claudia’s path as they descended the stairs.  They crouched down to inspect an insect on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, I chatted with the travelers who seemed like an odd bunch.  One slight blond man with short cropped hair wore tight black cheap monday jeans and carried a cheap monday tote bag.  “Do you work for cheap monday?” I asked.

“No, I just like the brand.   But I am Swedish.”  In conversation, we shared plans for the day with each other.  A student of Arabic in Damascus,   he was spending the weekend in Latakia.  Today he would take a bus north to the “beautiful and deserted” beaches outside the city.  Somehow Latakia seemed to be filled with a mysterious contingent of Scandinavian hipsters.  I pictured him walking in short James Bond style swim trunks with an orange sunset in the distance as Syrian families gazed on.

Bidding him farewell, Claudia, Woody and I began strolling in search of coffee.  At an odd time during the weekend, the people’s coffee was not an easy find.  We settled on a basement-level cafe that served it up piping hot in paper cups.  At times like this, with a member of the team under the weather, we self prescribe water, rest, and if it can be stomached, food.

Food was the next order of business, and with the known quantity of Samer’s paste restaurant, we ventured up the hill to feast again.

Next door, the hookah establishment and tea house did not yet have customers, and graciously allowed me to photograph a few of their paintings, which had been done on the large mirrors that hung on the wall.

Woody was just on the better side of being able to wheel, and with the perennial pull of the activity we find so magnetic, we headed out on the cycles to explore.  Our first encounter was with the same bicycle mounted coffee vendor, and one of his clientele.   He smoked 100 millimeter  cigarettes which dangled from his triangular head like the hand of a metronome.

Bidding adieu, we mounted the cycles and passed through the impressive port of Latakia in the midday light.

As we continued to ride through the center of town and began to break into the northern sections of the city, Woody called a waypoint.  The stomach problem persisted, and it was time to take a rest.  Conversing about the best course of action, I decided to continue wheeling, heading north and visiting one of the fabled beaches.  At a field of green stalks, we parted ways.

The road north was a gorgeous and wide highway with light traffic and even a few other wheelers.  The breeze, sunlight, and road conditions made it especially enjoyable.  Riding alone was a new feeling, and one that returned my frame of mind to many past lives on my road bike in California, Japan, Long Island, and Cape Cod.  Eventually, the resort district of the north enveloped me, and I had the opportunity to wheel around scoping out the different offerings.

With a penchant for typography, I opted for Le Meridien, with its gutsy use of ornate script paired with ultra-utilitarian Futura.

AsiaWheeling has a penchant for crashing hotels, and so naturally I wheeled through the gate and began to make my way around the the edifice to the beach.  I was past security and the beach was right there.  But something didn’t feel right.  I felt like asking for trouble and seeing what happened, to be at once legitimate and naive.  What was the process of being a strange customer here?  How would I be treated by all levels of the staff?

So beginning my experiment, I wheeled the bike over to the distracted security guard, who then motioned and huffed that I could not have my bike within the confines of the parking lot, so I locked it outside.  Returning, I asked him where the beach was, and he pointed me toward reception.  Inside the grandiose lobby, the young staff plastered on smiles for a busload of demanding guests.  “Where is the beach?”  I asked, and they waved me through without a question.  Outside, something was still not right.  I sauntered down to the beach and found a prime chaise lounge where I rested my camera and Panama hat.

Now I would have to change into my suit.  I walked into the locker room, and thought for a moment to change, but my experiment was not yet complete.  I still had not been asked to become a customer.  Plus, it seemed as a customer, I would  earn a locker key.  Outside, I asked they young man attending to the beach admission kiosk how I could acquire a  locker key, and he showed me the price schedule with ultimate cheer and understanding.  For guests, it was free, and for families and women during off-peak hours, there was a nominal fee to visit the beach.  It increased during the weekend (today was Saturday), and for single men, the fee was double.  Here I was looking at a complexly tiered schedule of prices, and if I indeed wanted to be a customer, I would be subject to poignant price discrimination.  At the very least, I consoled myself, the beach would probably not be full of single men.

Paying the fee, and now a customer, I began to ask for things.  Did they have a newspaper?  No.  Nothing to read?  No Economist or National Geographic?  Nothing.  Just me and the beach.  All in all, the experience was relaxing and zen-like.  Swimming in the water, watching the jet-skiers play, taking a dip in the pool, and spilling a million thoughts down on paper about gourmet ketchup cleared the head quite well.  Soaking up the sun for hours and draining my water bottle, I thanked the team there and mounted back on the cycle to return.

Casually, I had been exchanging text messages with Hiba, the Palestinian Swede we met on the bus to Latakia. We planned to meet up in the evening.  She explained that her brother would be joining her, and that her strict family wouldn’t allow her to come home later than ten.  Stopping by the hotel to freshen up, I found Woody increasingly on the mend though not yet at 100%.  With a bit of faith, I dawned a white shirt and headed out, wondering what this experience chaperoned by a 19-year old B-Boy would be like.

We met on the seaside overlooking the Mediterranean as the sun was setting, and she explained that her brother didn’t speak English.  No worries, as he seemed like a total chiller.  We ventured down to a cafe on the beachside and drank tea and smoked hookah, as her brother puffed Marlboro Lights and played us electronic music on his blinged out mobile phone.  Where on earth was I?  Hiba and her brother were great cafe companions, and we strolled around a bit in the evening.  Finally, it was time for all three of us to go home.

After giving the download to Claudia and Woody back at the hotel, we settled into bed.  The next day we were heading north.