We ate one last glorious breakfast, cooked by the expert hands of Ms Diane Heditsian and then packed up our dear Speed TRs, now newly adorned with brand spanking new Schwalbe Big Apples, a new Rido space age throwback saddle, and, in the case of Scott’s, new matching grips.

We planned to enter Uzbekistan positively blingin’.  Marco Marco appeared back to check the apartment out. He seemed unfazed that we had spent the previous night turning the living room into a bike turning and repair center, and even introduced us to a friend of his who gave us a ride to the airport.

Scott and I arrived quite early at the terminal as to accommodate Diane’s flight, which was a couple hours before ours. We wiled away most of our time at a café in the Istanbul airport, at which, if clandestine enough, one can access the Wifi for free. The name of the place is “greenspace.” And for all you AsiaWheeling readers out there, take note: the password to the network is “istanbul.”

Just as we were getting ready to leave our seats at the café, we were approached by a fellow with the most glorious mustache, bright white, flowing and gigantic, who was headed to Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. When we asked him what he might be doing to there, he explained that he was a professional sheep counter, and that he was headed to Tajikistan to count sheep. More power to him, we thought, and with a few more compliments on his magnificent ‘stache, we headed off to find our gate.

And so, not knowing what to expect, we climbed onto Turkish Airways, and settled in for the three-hour flight to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. We had been in touch with our Uzbek Bureau Chief, Shoney, but had not actually heard back from him as to whether we could stay at his place. So we’d book a room at the Hotel Malika, which was one of the few hotels in Tashkent with a website, and were hoping that we might be able to land in Tashkent at 1:00 am and just figure things out. They would most likely speak at least a little Russian, we had been told, so I was trusting that my rusty Russian skills might get just us by.

We also were crossing our fingers that there would be an ATM at the airport. We had read that Uzbekistan had very few Automatic Teller Machines. But we hoped that in Tashkent, with its growing banking sector, we might just be able to find some.

We were headed into the unknown, once again, and as I struggled to fill out the Uzbek entrance card, I realized we were entering a totally new world of rules. For the first time, we were being asked to declare all our currency. In fact, online we had read horror stories about people not properly doing so and having any currency in excess of what they declared upon entry being confiscated upon exit.  Regardless, we had quite a bit of currency, 2-40 USD worth of currency from each of the countries we’d visited so far.  And I struggled, as we soared somewhere above Iran, to tally all the amounts that we had left over. In the end, there was way too much data to populate the few lines given to us on the entry card, so I put together a little hand written auxiliary table, that for lack of a better name, we might refer to as Table 1, which I hoped would pass snuff.

As I did my best to munch the medium tasty Turkish Airlines food, I thought about my time in Russia. I was headed back to that world now. It was a place of mad bureaucracy, of leather, zippers, and bribes, a lawless world where money is king, the police are your enemy, and the line between normal women and prostitutes blurs. That was Russia, of course, and this was Uzbekistan.

What would be different? What would be the same? Would we make it through with all our belongings? Our sanity? Our innocence? Would the streets be wheelable? The bright sun and smiling people of Indonesia seemed so far away… I was starving, but it was hard to eat, and even harder to finish the beer that I’d ordered with my meal.

And then we landed, and we stood to file off the plane. We followed the crowd down a set of stairs and across the tarmac, where there were three doors, one marked VIP, one marked CIP, and the other with a label long rusted and fallen. Being neither VIP nor CIP, we headed toward the rusting and unlabeled door, along with the rest of our flight. We followed the group through vaguely green, and moderately filthy dry-walled hallways, getting in line at passport control behind a large and rowdy Uzbek soccer team. We slowly filed along, as I gawked at the television ads for siding and energy efficient windows that were playing in Russian on a couple of greasy CRT monitors to entertain the people waiting to be admitted to Uzbekistan.

A fellow cut in front of me. And then another. And then an old woman. This was part of Russian culture that had stuck. I was remembering how fierce I had had to become about cutters in line. I was still too polite to make any fuss, Scott too, so we just waited. Finally we were getting close when the fellow in front of me handed his passport over to the officials who opened it to find a wad of US dollars inside. They held the US dollars out to him and said something sternly, waving them in his face. I am pretty sure the language they were using was Russian, but mine was too rusty to understand any of it. The man in front of me was then escorted by a couple of the many armed guards that stood around the cluster of passport control booths toward a dark hallway. I hoped he was not about to be tortured or beaten up. He looked like a nice guy, cutting aside.

Then it was my turn. I handed my moon passport over, and looked at the man behind what seemed to be slightly green tinted glass. His workspace was very well lit, and I looked up to see a ceiling positively lined with fluorescent tubes, and no less than three security cameras. I thought about the guy on the other end of those cameras and snapped my head back down when I heard the passport control officer say something to me. “Простите, что?” I asked him to repeat. He grumbled, and scrutinized my visa, and then my face, comparing it to the passport photo. Then he stamped the thing in the same way that one might spit out a very sour berry, and threw my документы back at me. I gave him a quick спасибо and headed off into the luggage area, where Scott soon joined me.

“Wild,” he said. And I agreed.

Soon the bikes appeared on the conveyor, looking only slightly worse for the wear and we lugged them over to wait in line at customs. When our turn came, we were informed by the guards that the line we had been waiting in was the line for “sportsmen” (meaning the soccer team). We pointed at the bikes indicating that we were sportsmen, and though it elicited a few chuckles from the staff, we were forced to head over to the end of another line.

We did, and eventually got through. My customs form with the attached compendium of currencies (see Table 1) was scrutinized, stamped, torn off, and handed back to me, and we were in.

On the other side of the gate, a chiseled character with a pencil thin line of beard, wearing a black Babson College tee-shirt called out to us “AsiaWheeling!” It was Shoney! Thank goodness. This airport was significantly rawer than we’d expected and certainly did not have an ATM. Luckily, it looked like we were sleeping at his house after all.

Triumphant arrival music of notes from a Rawap emanated from within our minds:

He introduced himself and we all shook hands. He spoke English with a Boston frat boy accent, and chatted on about life in the States as we headed over to the parking lot. Then began a furious process of bargaining, as we went from cab to cab. Shoney would explode in Uzbek, which sounds somewhat like Turkish, and with many a frown and head shake, move from cabby to cabby playing them off each other to start a bidding war and lower the price of the ride back to his family’s place.

Finally someone hit Shoney’s reserve and we all piled into a cab, which was, of course, as all cabs in the Russosphere, really just a private car. As the cabby dodged drunkards wandering the streets in a stupor, and whipped like a maniac around giant roundabouts, running red lights, all the time chain-smoking and trying to convince Shoney to go in with him to rip us off on the cab fair, I looked out the window. It looked not unlike Russia: blocky, concrete, plenty of statues and giant public fountains. Frankly it felt good. I was beginning to get a certain positive feeling about Uzbekistan.  We had no Uzbek sum (the local currency) yet, so Shoney was kind enough to pay for the ride, bless his heart.

When we arrived at his house, despite the fact that it was 3:00 am, his mother was awake and waiting for us, table set with a feast of fruit and breads. We stayed up for another couple hours, battling sleep, drinking cup after cup of tea (water was not an option) and doing our best to be cordial with Shoney’s family. They were overwhelmingly sweet and generous, and we felt completely undeserving of this sleepless hospitality.

When the sun finally started to peek over the horizon, we had enough of an excuse for us all to head off to bed, stomachs full of impossibly tasty Uzbek fruits and heads just spinning at the speed with which a page can turn here on AsiaWheeling.

Twas the night before Uzbek when all through the stan,

not creature was wheeling, not even a man.

Claudia’d been sent back to the States in a plane,

Meanwhile gifts from Santa and Elf had just came.

We ran to the door to see what could it be,

It was our dear friend Alp with a package for me.

T’was a big cardboard box, wider and fatter,

We shook it around and heard intriguing clatter.

By Santa and Elf we mean Allan and Tan,

The Speed Matrix Depot and My Bike Shop Man.

See, our tires were worm from eons of wheelin’

And our rear ends were chapped up and down right near peelin’

So we tore in with delight in our eyes,

To find joy in our hearts at savage surprise

For what to my wondering eyes did appear?

But new handles, new saddles and tires (front and rear).

Rido seats how they twinkled, Big Apples how merry,

If the trip were an ice cream, twas surely the cherry.

Thanks Speed Matrix and My Bike Shop!

And Merry Christmas, every one!

We woke up a little groggy the next morning. The SIM city 2000 theme was ringing out through the interior of the Fiat Doblo, and it was high time to resurrect ourselves and head over to the Kazakh Embassy. So I leaned my seat forward and started the car, backing out into the hotel parking lot and driving off toward the embassy. It was close, so we arrived before anyone had even fully woken up. We picked up our passports, newly christened with Kazakh visas, and split without a hitch.

Our next destination was to check into a rental apartment that we had found in Istanbul through our favorite online peer-to-peer accommodation booking tool, AirBed & Breakfast. Claudia had not gotten a chance to drive the Doblo yet, so we let her take the wheel as we set out looking for a certain Italian fellow by the name of “Marco Marco.” It was not easy to find the guy, though, and as it slowly crept past the time that we had promised to return the car, we continued searching, driving in circles around the same streets, calling him from time to time, and becoming increasingly lost in the tangled byways of Istanbul.

Find him we did, however, and he climbed into the car with his well mustached friend, directing us to drive into an alley that quickly began to climb uphill at a 40-degree angle. Due to a poor choice of gears, Claudia stalled attempting the climb, and from there things became difficult. In her defense, the 1.3 liter diesel engine in the Doblo had very little low end torque, and we were attempting a very steep uphill start. But with each jerking stall, we fell further and further back downhill. Everyone in the car began screaming and when a car pulled up behind us, Marco Marco had a vision of disaster and asked to take the wheel.

Having honed his skills over many years of practice in underpowered Italian economy cars, he managed quite effortlessly to pilot us to the apartment where we would be staying. And so we unloaded our things and headed up.

The apartment was gorgeous, with a stunning view out over the water, and plenty of room to relax. We were excited to have a kitchen and a full size fridge (for all the Red Bull of course), plus the place was equipped with pretty darn fast wireless. Who could ask for more?

First thing we did was get Alp on the horn. He began to rage for us in Turkish, and managed to arrange for Claudia’s passort to be put on the next bus from Cappadocia to Istanbul. It appeared it would make it in time for her flight the next day.

We headed back out then, to return the car. After that was completed, Scott and I parted ways with Claudia and Diane as they headed off to do some more shopping. Meanwhile the two of us headed back to the apartment to do some blogging and wine drinking and eventually met up with Alp, hero of Claudia’s passport, who we were just thrilled to have in our lives again.

Claudia and Diane were expected back at any moment, but despite the passing of time they did not appear. Just as we were beginning to get worried, one of our phones rang and they were on the other end. It turns out they had gotten hopelessly lost, much like we had earlier that day, trying to find Marco Marco, and had eventually headed over to an Internet café to call home. Scott and Alp headed out together to collect them and bring them back to safety. The four of them finally arrived back, hungry and grumpy as hell just as the takeout pizza and… (drum roll) manti that we had ordered arrived.

All concerned dug into the food and generally attempted to blow off steam.

• The next morning Claudia and I headed out to the inter-city bus station, which was no trivial journey from Marco Marco’s place, and after much bouncing around between Turkish bus drivers and lot attendants, finally were directed to the luggage counter, where we picked up a thin paper packet with Claudia’s name on it and headed triumphantly back toward the rest of the team, passport in hand.

When we arrived back, Diane had made a great breakfast for us.

The entire group, Alp Included, sat down around the large dining room table, and we all dug into eggs, olives, bacon, fried tomatoes and peppers, and bread. Diane is a splendid cook and the entire meal was magnificent.

It was then time to engage in the sad task of packing up Claudia’s Vitesse D7  for the long ride back to the States. And it was with a heavy heart that we headed out to put her on the next bus for the airport. I placed my Panama hat on her head, asking if she might take it back to the States with her. “Your Panama hat!” she exclaimed!

Scott’s had been lost, I replied, and perhaps that was a sign that a new chapter was opening. Going forward into the Stans and Russia, we would be carrying only the Vietnamese motorcycle helmets. Though somewhat aghast, she agreed to ferry the hat back to America.

Outside the bus, we all hugged Claudia goodbye, loaded the folding bicycle into the luggage compartment, and, just as suddenly as she appeared into our lives two months ago earlier in Dubai, she was gone.

The rest of that day was spent strolling though Istanbul with Diane,  chatting with archeologists,  buying Turkish delight, mailing off project K9 Ibriks, finally eating some of those street side fish sandwiches that we’d sworn to revisit, and generally savoring the last bites of Turkey.

Our last morning in Cappadocia, Diane got up well before the rest of us to view the many hot air balloons that took off each morning from launch points all over the surrounding valley of “fairy chimneys” (ooh, ahh!) that surrounded our city. A ride in one of them was not cheap, but they had evidently become quite popular, for looking at the images that she took, I was startled at the number of hot air balloons all departing at sunrise.

I woke up just in time to find Scott and Diane feasting on the olive-based breakfast upstairs. The hotel’s breakfast was fine, what we were really excited about was second breakfast, which would take place in the nearby town of Kayseri, which was very famous for a local dumpling dish called Manti. Diane had been talking about the mystical Kayseri Manti for some time, and we were all excited to try it before we sprinted back across Turkey to Istanbul. So we stuffed a few rolls full of olives to sustain us on the drive and split for Kayseri.

Kayseri turned out to be an absolutely charming little metropolis, snuggled in the shadow of Mount Erciyes. Once we got there, however, the opportunities for eating Manti were not so plentiful. It turned out that we had arrived too early in the day for any of the restaurants to be serving up Manti. So we struck out, in desperation, asking restaurant after restaurant, hoping to locate one that would accommodate us.

Our search for Manti took us into a large bakery, where we decided we might as well load up on baked goods for the drive.

Finally we found a place that agreed to serve us Manti, but after we were seated and had ordered it, one of the higher ups from the back of the restaurant came round to explain that in reality, it would not be available until a few hours later.

And so we sat and pondered for a moment. Was it worth waiting a few more hours, and getting to Istanbul late in the night? Perhaps, but we decided to just give up and order whatever food they did have ready to serve.

Soon, piping hot breads began to arrive, followed by breakfast platters with cheese, olives, fresh clotted cream, and a chunk of waxy honeycomb. We also sampled some delectable lentil soup, served with lemon, and a plate of stuffed grape leaves.

The meal was not Manti, but it was delicious. Bellies full, we struck out into town for a quick stroll in search of an Armenian church. We found many interesting things that might have been Armenian churches. Here are a few; take your pick.

We got a little lost on our way back, which gave us plenty of opportunities to interact with the people of Kayseri.

And to poke our heads in and out of little candy and nut shops.

Back on the road, we found ourselves pounding through Anatolian wheat country, headed northwest back toward Istanbul. The road was wide open, and we just let her eat the miles.

After ten hours of tireless driving, countless episodes of Radiolab, quite a few rounds of PodQuiz, and plenty of Red Bull, we arrived in Istanbul. Knowing that we would need to swing by the Kazakh Embassy, which Jah willing had our newly issued Kazakh visas ready to go.

We began to drive around Florya and the surrounding territory in search of a decent hotel, but found ourselves time and again turned away on technicalities associated with trying to cram too many people into one room.

So we drove on through the night, becoming increasingly desperate. Finally, we returned back to a hotel near the Kazakh Embassy, which we had passed up before, and after much discussion, decided that we should split into two groups, with the ladies heading in to get a room at the hotel, and Scott and I sleeping in the car.  “We find the car more comfortable, anyway” we announced.

It was at that moment that Claudia exclaimed, “Where is my passport!?” We all, of course, didn’t know where it was. So she began frantically searching through her stuff. And in the end we determined that it had been left at the front desk of our last hotel. It had been a team effort, of course, with Claudia forgetting to go and ask them for it back when she left, and the front desk failing to return it to her after registering the room in her and Diane’s names (our passports were, of course, safe and sound with the Kazakh Embassy).

So then and there, at a little after midnight on a Sunday, we called the hotel and began a brutal campaign of confirming the passport was there and then directing them as to how it would need to be shipped with all haste to Istanbul. It was Sunday, you see, and Claudia was scheduled to leave the next Thursday. It was going to be tight. The woman on the other end had probably been just waken from sleep, was in no position to make any decisions, and pleaded with us to call her back in the morning. Eventually we gave in.

Finally, we hung up the cell phone, and stood there in the parking lot, in the cool of the night, tears drying on cheeks, and tempers coming back under control. We were caught by the lights of a taxi cab pulling into the parking lot to turn around after dropping off a carload of people, and it brought us all back into the present. Diane then insisted that we all stay at the hotel, and we all headed inside to catch a bit of shuteye before we had to wake up and rush to the Kazakh Consulate.

We were quite disappointed, however, to find that while we had been dealing with the passport issue in the parking lot, all the remaining rooms had been rented out. So no one would be staying in the hotel. And with that, we trudged back to the car, started the thing up, and though the tank was nearly empty, just trusted in the mercy of the gods, cranked up the air conditioning, and went to sleep in the parking lot of the hotel.

After waking up in the clean and sunny comfort of our rooms at the Dora Motel in Cappadocia, we decided it was high time for the entire team to take a wheel together. So we unfolded our Dahons, and walked them down to the market, where we had seen people renting bicycles.

In the market, we ran into a fellow selling Turkish IDs, press passes, and other printed and laminated images.

We stopped to take a look at his wares, and as I was noticing that his sample ID, taped on his printer, looked startlingly like my father, the proprietor took a picture of me with his DSLR, smiling at me and offering to make me a Turkish driver’s license. I politely declined and we moved on to find a cycle.

The fellows renting bikes were quite interested to see that we’d mostly arrived with our own cycles, and we were more than happy to let them take the Speed TRs out for a spin. Their offerings, on the other hand, were none too impressive. In the end, we ended up selecting a cycle, but the brakes were so poor and the transmission so finicky  that Scott volunteered to ride the thing, leaving Claudia on his Speed TR, and Diane on the Vitesse D7.

And from there we set out, into the blazing sun, the unforgiving desert, and the jaw-dropping geology of this place. We quickly turned off the main road and onto a sandy side path, heading into one of the clusters of “cave” dwellings.

It was not easy to ride through the sand, but we managed for a time, eventually giving up when the path turned into a savage uphill climb toward the cluster of cave houses.

From there, we continued wheeling through the sandy washed out roads to the next archeological site.

There, we proceeded to do the same thing. We wandered through the cave dwellings, climbing around on the rock, and generally having a gay old time.

We wandered through a ancient and deserted city, now re-inhabited by tourists, stumbling upon old churches and cryptic wall carvings, the whole while, just sweating like maniacs in the midday heat.

We returned once again to the main road, heading on toward the pottery town of Cavusin, where Diane purchased a slew of pottery, which we duly divvied up and strapped onto our cycles.

You can see Diane here with the man who made the pots. He would look better with a mustache, don’t you agree?

From there, we wheeled on, heading uphill. Diane’s hat kept falling off, so she re-purposed its purple bow into a fastening system.

The road was wide and empty, spilling out before us, and beckoning us forward. We were happy to oblige, spurred on by the promise of more ruins and bizarre geology.

We then proceeded to, perhaps naively, pay our way into an “open air museum.” The museum ended up being just another archeological site, like those we’d toured previously, though perhaps a little more densely populated with ruins.  Oddly, we encountered this sign posted in English on the ticket booth.  What could they be talking about?  What audience were they targeting, and why here?

Considering all the free sites around us, it might not have made sense to pay our way into this one, but once inside we were determined to get our money’s worth.

We thoroughly explored, bouncing in and out of the “cave dwellings” and generally enjoying ourselves.

That evening we returned thoroughly exhausted and hungry from our wheeling and traipsing, and most grateful to have some clean air-conditioned beds to collapse into.

That next morning in Guzelcami, we pulled ourselves out of bed just in time to catch the large group breakfast at the Ecer Pension.

We spent the first part of the morning wandering through Guzelcami’s market and running little errands. The market had some truly stunning products for sale:

After the market, we headed to a certain healing sulfur spring outside of town, dedicated to the god, Zeus, which proved startlingly crowded. Regardless, we decided to hang there for a while, taking a dip in the spring and having a picnic of all the leftover foods from yesterday’s picnic.

Having eaten and had our sulfur baths, we found ourselves at a crossroads. What to do next? Where should we go?

We had heard many good things about the beaches farther south, but we had also heard great things about the fabled inland city of Cappadocia, where houses are built into the stone faces of the local geology. Call it the Petra, or the Pueblo of Turkey. In the end, we decided that we’d seen enough beaches, and that Cappadocia was the move.

So off we went. We drove for hours, listening to NPR’s Radiolab on compact disc.

Our next stop was to eat again, this time at a very interesting food truck we spotted off the side of the road, in a rather industrial part of the city of Denizli. They were serving up some wicked pressed sandwiches, and were more than happy to give us a knife to cut the melon that we’d bought earlier that day at the market.

It was well after midnight by the time we arrived in our final destination of Konya, where we had booked a room at a hotel recommended by the lonely planet, but we had still another two hours of driving around to do before we actually found the place.

When we did, the owner was standing in the doorway looking sleepy and waiting for us. Claudia and Diane headed in and began to handle logistics, which Scott and I drove off to find a place to park the car amidst the maze-like alleyways.

It seemed like we had only slept for two minutes when it was all of a sudden time to leave in order to adhere to the 11:00 am checkout rule. I scarfed down some bits of sandwich and some coffee in the lobby and then we headed out into the city.

Konya is an amazing place, highly recommended – one of my favorite that we had yet visited in Turkey. It was much poorer and much more Arabic than any Turkish city we’d been to yet, more like Syria. Scott and Diane went off to mail a package to a friend, while Claudia and I headed over to investigate a nearby event raising funds to support Muslim causes; it was broadcasting some entrancing Arabic music.

We wandered around looking at the gallery of posters explaining the fundraiser.

Most of the causes were things our government would describe as terrorism, but were here being presented as God’s work. It was a very interesting perspective to experience.

As Americans we felt totally welcome to visit the stand, and view the materials. When the fellows running the fund raiser found that Claudia could speak Arabic, they even gave us free lighters bearing the name of the Chechen Separatist Movement.

We spent a few more hours wandering around Konya, looking at some of the amazing goods for sale, like these variously shaped heating coils before getting in the car and heading off toward Cappadocia.

We stopped part way to Cappadocia to snack on some pide in the town of Aksaray, where we found an amazing place, featuring this fantastic poster illustrating the journey of man through life.

The place was run by goofy teenage boys and pide was delicious.

We stopped at a  small bakery for some sweets and the owner came outside to let us know that one of the tires on the Doblo was getting flat. So we stopped and filled it up a little more before splitting. We had to wait in line behind a man filling his bicycle tire while we did so. We felt proud.

Our next stop was a monument to all the leaders of Turkey. We wandered around viewing the busts of each leader. It was startling how many of them were Mongols. We took a moment to consider how important a place Mongolia was. We were excited to wheel the place. It was not far off now…

Meanwhile, imminent arrival in Cappadocia was being heralded by some very interesting changes in the surrounding geology, which continued to get stranger and stranger. Soon we were surrounded by giant towering phallic-like structures. This must be the place, we thought, as we pulled into the town of Göreme.

We pulled the Doblo into the center of town and turned into a construction site to investigate the lonely planet pdfs, and collect addresses and phone numbers of potential hotels. Scott raged on his computer while the rest of us lazed and attempted to look useful.

After some brief comparison shopping, we ended up checking into The Dora Motel.

After throwing our stuff down, we parted ways, Claudia and Diane heading off to do some shopping, and Scott and I heading out for a little inaugural wheel of Cappadocia.

The wheel consisted mostly of a savage uphill climb through the striking geology. These bizarre towers were all around us, and now that we could get a closer look, it was obvious that most of them had been carved into homes and businesses, evident from the windows and doors scraped out of the rock.

We wheeled all the way over to the next city, where we found plenty more hotels, both conventional and those which allowed people to rent carved out “cave” rooms. We also noticed this classic car, the brand of which has no Wikipedia page, hidden behind the window of a repair shop.

Anyone who can shed more light on this vehicle is heartily invited to do so in the comments.

We continued to wheel on, past ruins, “cave” houses, and finally through the town and back into the countryside.

With the sun setting, we decided it was time to call it a wheel and head back to reconvene with the rest of the TurkLaunch team.

That next morning we woke up to a beautiful view of the Çesme coastline, and a giant statue of a lady holding out an olive branch.

Our slumber in the Doblo had not been amazing, but not bad either. Regardless, we were excited to get back on the road. Claudia’s tooth was still causing pain but less than the day before. She took another azythromicin and we drove down into the city.

Back in town, we stopped at a restaurant specializing in a dish something in between a crepe and an omelet nearby Dost Pide. It was accompanied by a large green jug of delicious homemade salty yoghurt.

From there we drove outside of town to the beach. The water was choppy, but blue and crystal clear.

As we drove along for kilometers, we saw people swimming in the water or walking along the coastline. It seemed the residents of each neighborhood had their own little piece of beach and were taking advantage of it.

We decided this was the place to go wheeling. So we unfolded the cycles. There were, of course, only three Dahons however, and four of us. Diane volunteered to stay back and read by the beach while we three fools wheeled the coastline.

And wheel we did, making our way along the coast, stopping from time to time to head down to the water and investigate little inlets and coves. The water was very clean and inviting. So clear was it, in fact, that we could see the bottom just littered with spiny urchins. These urchins were the only things keeping us from taking a dip some dozen times during the wheel.

We wheeled on past stunning rocks and sea, past layers sedimentary rock and majestic arcs of coastline. It was almost too beautiful, almost cheesy in its idyllic glory.

Finally, we found a public swimming dock that was so crowded we felt there must be a way to swim without being urchined to death, so we went in. The water was colder than expected, but quite refreshing.

From that beach, we wheeled uphill into a small hilltop development, from which we were able to catch a long downhill back to where Diane was waiting for us. It was a short, but very sweet wheel.

We then climbed back in the Doblo and headed onward toward the next seaside town. We stopped partway there to buy and then eat a giant picnic lunch of olives, bread, oil, cheeses, and tiny fish.

We reached Güzelçamlı just as the sun was setting and checked into the Ecer Pension, a small family run guesthouse, where none of the rooms had locks. A large family style breakfast was included with our rate, and we were given an entire floor to ourselves.

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.