We woke up the next morning in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.

After feasting monstrously on the lavish breakfast at the Hotel Malika, we headed out into the street to find a black Lexus SUV with Chinese plates parked outside. It seemed these Chinese chaps were on their own adventure through Central Asia, and from what we could see, they were doing it in style.

We continued to wheel away from the old city, positively thrilled at how unique the buildings were here in Uzbekistan. So many of them managed to simultaneously channel the Soviet brutal vibe and the ornate central Asian vibe. It was stupendous.

Our first goal for that day would be to head to the post office and send off the plate we had purchased the day before for Project K9. Considering the standard Uzbek levels of bureaucracy, we were more than prepared for this to take most of the day. We were, however, pleasantly surprised to find that only a minimal amount of waiting in line and being cut by strangers, was required, and that (probably) because of the bizarre black market exchange rate we’d been using, despite the rather remote nature of the place, sending a giant fragile plate off via airmail cost less than sending a similar package from Saigon. Nice one, Uzbekistan.

Not only was there price performance and convenience to be found in this blocky Soviet building, but the workers at the Bukhara post office were wonderful people, more than ready to bend over backward accommodating our terrible Russian, and helping us to properly package the plate for its long overseas journey.

Feeling splendid about the completion of that mission, we piled back onto the bikes and headed out in search of a little more wheeling, followed by a little more food.

The wheeling was just too easy in this city. Any direction we chose to travel offered a fantastic assortment of treasures. The food, however, was tough, and we wheeled for quite some time before we spotted what you might call a “chicken from the machine” type restaurant. Not wanting to squander what could be the only restaurant we saw for the next  four kilometers, we headed in.

The owner of the place ran up from the basement kitchen to meet us. She spoke Russian that was accented much more like the Russian I’d learned in Petrograd, and I found her very easy to understand. She also seemed to really enjoy my filthy, broken Russian, complimenting me again and again.

With all those pleasantries out of the way, we decided to focus on chicken. Low and behold, it turned out to be chicken in the same Soviet style as the place Shoney’s grandfather had taken us to across from the Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent. It was accompanied by the same thick Bloody Mary mix sauce, though here the Soviet bread was replaced with Uzbek Lapyoshka.  So we drank Kvas and feasted on chicken, feeling things could not get much better.

Beside our table, a large fish tank displayed a nearby sign requesting patrons to “please not smoke near the fish.”

So with stomachs once again stuffed, we headed back out on the bikes, wheeling off in a new direction. This move ended up taking us out past some very remotely positioned government buildings, and into areas where giant swaths of farmland were being turned into huge public projects. Take this giant orb on a pedestal, for instance. There were probably a few square kilometers of walkways placed around here, with forests of tiny trees, just waiting to grow into a grand shady forest.

We rode in toward the orb on the pedestal, and as we grew closer, the sound of construction befell our ears. All around this orb were Uzbek workmen building both the orb itself and other structures, like a large theater-opera-house type building, and like this arena – for blood sports perhaps?

We wheeled the complex thoroughly,  before turning back to return to town, looping around the old city and by the giant fortress that we’d seen the day before. Soon we ended near a huge and ancient mosque, overlooking one of Bukhara’s last in-city ponds. Most of the ponds, once common in town, had been paved over by the Soviets, but as a man walking by with a rake explained to me, this one was kept around because it was the most beautiful, and played an important role in the architecture of the nearby mosques and schools buildings.

The nearby buildings certainly were impressive, with many of those large wooden hand-carved pillars, holding up plenty of complicated Uzbek tile work.

Then, true to our word, we returned to the giant stadium, where we began to give it a much more thorough exploration.

It was not abandoned, per say, but in the way that many things are in the post-Soviet world, it had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

It was still used by the populace though,  for children’s sports, physical education, and the like (we saw a few signs for youth boxing classes), but it also felt very much like a post apocalyptic wasteland at the same time. All bathed in that delicious Uzbek sunlight.

We took our Speed TRs for a quick lap around the track, there and then headed back outside, glancing down at our watches. It was high time to head back to the Hotel Malika to pick up our bags. The wheel to the train station was quite flat, but it was still 20 km.

On our way out, we were stopped by one of the groundskeepers at the stadium. He wanted to learn more about us, and we decided we could spare a little time to chat with him. When he found out we were from America, he became very excited and began asking about American Indians, which he referred to as Indianski people.

Are there Indians that still flight cowboys in America? Where do the Indians live? Are they rich or poor? Can they work any job they want? What about a hotel? A hotel for foreigners? So you’re telling me I might check into a hotel in the US and an Indianski might just take my bag or be working at the front desk!? Get out of here!

I’m sure he was imagining Chief Sitting Bull unloading his bags from a New York taxicab.

We had already been talking for probably 20 minutes, so I just said, “yep that’s right,” and then bid him farewell. And with that, off we went, swinging by the Malika to grab our bags, and then hitting the road. We were a little behind schedule, but if we rode hard, we should still have been able to make it to the train station in Kagan in time to buy a few snacks and get on the train.

Then my rear tire went flat. First flat of the trip, right there and then in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. We looked down at our watches… should we take a cab? Or should we try to fix this thing and keep moving. Finally, we decided that we’d give ourselves 15 minutes to fix the flat, and if we were having trouble getting the big apple tire off the rim, or it was just taking too long, we’d take a cab.

We immediately switched into AsiaWheeling crisis management mode, flipping the bike over and working as fast and precisely as we could. As we were frantically working on the cycle, a child approached, pushing another legless child in a wheelchair. The two of them wheeled the chair up next to where I was furiously tearing the big apple off the rim and pulling out the inner tube.

Ah! It was a pinch! I had let my tire pressure get too low in my rear wheel! Good news was that the spotless reputation of our Schwalbe Big Apples (Thank you SpeedMatrix) was still unmarred. Bad news was that time was ticking and the kids had begun to beg from us in a most heart wrenching way, crying out as though we were their mothers, and asking in Russian for money, telling me he was cold (it was probably 90 degrees Fahrenheit out) and hungry (this was plausible).

In a stunning demonstration of inhumanity, I looked up from the wheel, and shouted in English “Times are tough for all of us, kid! Now get out of here!” I underlined the statement with a few choice phrases in Russian, and the kids shut up, but still hung around to watch the drama unfold.

A few minutes later, the tire was done and we were back on the road. The burst of adrenaline from the flat was still coursing through my veins and we road very hard, making the 20 km, fully loaded, back to Kagan in less than an hour.

Once at the train station, we purchased a a few snacks, and then headed for our train.

When we got on, we found our section of the train to be just packed with foreigners. There were five  or six Chinese stoneworkers from Beijing here to inspect a quarry, a family of somewhat disoriented French holidaymakers, and us.

I felt sorry for the poor automobile factory workers with whom we shared a bunk. For the air conditioning did not run all night long, the Chinese played Chinese pop music at ridiculous volumes from their mobile phones, and the French people were constantly occupying the bathroom having all been struck by dysentery.

We woke up plenty early the next day and wandered into the dining room area of the Hotel Malika in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. We had thought that the breakfast at the Caravan Sarai was luxurious… well this one took it to a whole new level, with multiple kinds of pastry, two eggs each, black (Russian) and white (Uzbek) breads, 4 different jams, all kinds of sausages, blini with sour cream, a fruit plate, a selection of deep fried shapes,  and a personal waiter! It was in all honesty just too much. It made me slightly uncomfortable, resulting in me rushing a bit through my meal.

Regardless, it was with bellies plenty full that we struck out into the bright sunshine to do some more in depth explorations of this most fascinating city called Bukhara, where the post boxes look like this.

We took a right turn, delving straight from our hotel into the twisted alleyways that make up Bukhara’s old city. The best we could hope for was that we would get hopelessly lost therein.

This we achieved with little effort. As we rode, we were continually stumbling upon giant compounds of Uzbek structures, the purpose of which we had no idea, but who’s facades told of long forgotten grandeur and years of neglect.

We rode along until we noticed this interestingly ornate plaque, which we would be more than grateful is someone more fluent in Russian than I could shed some light on in the comments.

We continued to ride on, getting deeper and more lost in the city. We noticed a bakery selling butter cookies, and stopped to but a few, riding on from there, munching as we wheeled.

We continued on, through mostly deserted streets, past giant structures which these days served lord knows what purpose.

This city felt ancient, frozen in time, remote in a way that no other place we’ve been to has felt.

Suddenly, we came upon a giant fortress, which we wheeled up to investigate more closely. It was huge, with very high walls, and bulbous turrets. When we arrived at the central gate to the monster, it seemed to have been turned into some sort of a giant tourist shopping mall…. So, rather than destroy the mystery with some mundane tourist garbage, we just wheeled on, leaving the wonder intact.

We continued to skirt around the great fortress, riding along the base of its walls and moving towards the back of the beast. Many places along the wall, the structure seemed to be dependent on long wooden poles which were plunged directly into the mortar, making them an integral part of the wall. I guess, this being the desert and all, wood does not decompose so quickly as it might in, say, Cambodia.

From the base of the fortress, we proceeded to loop through a system of back alleys which spilled us out into a central courtyard, over which towered the Kalyan Minaret.

The Kalyan Minaret, or “tower of death”.   It was built in 1127 and, according to the legend its builder killed a prominent Imam. The Imam appeared to the great Khan (the Mongolian ruler a the time) in a dream and asked that he lay the imam’s head on a spot where nobody can tread upon it. Thus the tower was built over the murdered Imam’s grave. It gets the name “Tower of Death” because rulers of Bukhara once executed criminals by taking them to the top, sowing them into a black bag and pushing them out, letting gravity do the rest.

Nowadays, one can find an amazing assortment of Uzbek pottery for sale at it’s base. And, remembering that we had a project K9 order in for a platter, we decided to purchase one then and there.

So we counted out a wad of сум, and bough the thing, but we were not free to go yet, for we were in a gaint market of pottery sellers and having shown now our willingness to fork over сум, we had to fend off the entire rest of the crowd, who had become increasingly interested in us.

One way to do that was to distract them with the majesty and glory of the Speed TRs. Unfortunately that leads to requests to take the thing for a spin. And, being the trusting chaps that we are, we agreed. The pottery seller on Scott’s bike came back after only 5 minutes of riding. The fabric merchant who had gotten on mine, however, disappeared without a trace.

So I sat down in her chair, where she had been selling colorful swatches, and began to wait her out. It was a long wait, and I had made very good friends with the rest of the merchants in the market by the time she arrived back, wearing a new outfit and with her kid sister riding on the rear rack. I thanked her for giving my cycle back, and we wheeled off.

Some people these days…

Feeling very satisfied with our day’s work, we packed up the platter and headed back to the Malika, where we spent the rest of the afternoon working furiously on correspondence for you, dear reader.

This morning began just as the last had, with a giant and savage breakfast at the Caravan Sarai Hotel in Samarkand Uzbekistan.

Stomachs plenty full, we climbed on the Speed TRs and started wheeling past recently build, bizarrely empty office buildings and unsettling water advertisements.  We decided for this wheel to just choose a direction and keep going in it, hoping thst as it usually did, this strategy would yield some adventure and insight into the city of Samarkand.

Eventually, we found ourselves in front of yet another giant ancient Uzbek complex. This one we’d never head of, but it was giant and inviting, so we locked out bikes and headed over to investigate.

It was some 50 cents to get in, so we decided it worth a look. The interior was delightful, and completely devoid of fellow visitors.

It had a very Registan-esque flavor to it, except that his one featured a number of fruit trees and grape vines inside the courtyard, which really made for a delightful change from the blue cloudless sky and the sandy desert tones of this ancient city.

We wandered in and out of the buildings that made up the complex finding them all quite deserted, all the more interesting, and very ornate.

And then we were wheeling again. Tearing down the road, and really putting miles between us and the complex. Suddenly, it was very obviously time to eat, we realized. Luckily, there were plenty of restaurant all around us, as we rode, and we had simply to select one. The one we did choose was a fantastic, truly epic place, where we were able to eat a delightful meal of Shashlik, soup, bread, and salad for about 3 dollars each.

They served the Shashlik there with the most delightful red pepper powder, which was made all the more come hither by it’s fantastic packaging.

After we got back into town, we decided to check out the Guri Amir,  which we’d just seen the back side of the day before. It was also impressive, and we took our time riding around it, taking it in from all sides. One could see, upon circumnavigation, that the restoration was still very much underway.

When we stopped outside the place to catch our breath in the shade, we quickly struck up a conversation with some of the locals who were doing the same.

This conversation soon turned into a kind of photo shoot, in which all the visitors to the Guri Amir, were invited to pose with the strange foreigners. We must have posed with 20 or 30 people by the end of it.

One of them even went and had the photo printed for us.

When we got back to the hotel, we found ourselves in conversation with the director of a school of industry, not far outside the city of Samarkand. After a brief introductory conversation outside next to the Speed TRs, which I believe added credibility, he informed us that he had in his possession some lamb, some cold chicken and some vodka that he would be deeply offended if we did not consume with him.

And so he called out to the hotel staff to prepare a table and we sat down with him. After perhaps an hour more of eating, drinking, and chatting, he announced that he was heading off to bed. We bid him good slumbers and headed off ourselves to find internet somewhere in this town.

That was no easy task, but 5 cafes, and 4 internet clubs later, we found a place that was willing to let us plug our machines into their network. Now if only the internet had been faster that 2 or 3 kb/s once we’d done so, it would have been a true victory.

The Caravan Sarai was an incredible hotel, a gem, an ace you might even say.

We woke up the next morning to find the most luxurious breakfast waiting for us. It seemed the feasting would not be ending any time soon here in Uzbekistan, and we were fine with that. The breakfast arrived in a number of courses of small plates, Russian tea house style, until the entire table was just covered with food.

There was fresh Lepyoshka, butter, various jams and preserved fruits, yoghurt, steaming hot blinis (Russian pancakes), fried eggs, buttery baked pastries filled with nuts and dried fruits, nutty and sharp cheeses, and thinly sliced sausages. It was splendid, and quite filling. As we lounged around drinking another few carafes of coffee, we read aloud from the Uzbekistan guide book that Shoney had lent us.

As we ate, we could not help but notice how ornately decorated the interior of this hotel was, with the walls completely covered with hand carved filigree.  There was even wireless Internet… on the way at least, but as was the continuing trend here in Uzbekistan, Internet would be tough.

We headed out the door, climbed on the cycles and began wheeling. We rode in search first of water, past this example of the amazing signs they use to display the house numbers in Samarkand. We eventually found a Produkti where we were able to buy water. Little did we know, however, that carbonated water was much more popular here than the still stuff, and it would be from this point forth difficult to find. But for now, we just inadvertently bought sparkling water, which exploded, fizzing everywhere, and tasted vile with overtones of carbonic acid. But it was hot and dry, so drink it we did.

We were soon approached by a crowd of Uzbek fellows, all of whom were interested in learning more about us. When they discovered I could speak a little Russian, we found ourselves pulled into quite the little pow wow, with all the surrounding vendors and shop keepers coming out to chat. They asked the most fascinating questions about America. These were mostly focused around Muslim America. Are there Muslims in America? Can Muslims in America possess a U.S. passport? Can they live in any city, or only certain ones? Can a mosque broadcast the call to prayer in an American city?

The answer to that last question, I had to admit I did not know. I felt that they probably could, given that churches can ring loud bells and play blistering recordings of chimes and choirs. But I had to admit to them I’d never heard the C to P in America.

Speculation as to the correct answers to any of these questions is, as always, invited in the comments.

Eventually, once the third kid to take my Speed TR around the dusty block for a ride came back with the thing, it was time to go, and we did our best to politely excuse ourselves.

The first thing we rode past was a giant domed and tiled compound, which we inadvertently approached from the rear, having been traversing the area by means of back alleys.

Wooshed by it, placing it on the list of places to revisit, and heading back into the alley, where we stopped to chat with a fellow washing his car.

From there we made our way back around to the front of the ornate edifice, riding down a large cobblestone tourist development road. When we stopped to drink water on the side of the road, we were surrounded again by such a massive crowd of people that we were forced to hand out all our remaining business cards, and then write our names and e-mails down for those who did not get cards. In the end, the pressure of the crowd was just too great and we had to excuse ourselves, heading out in search of a quieter place to have a drink.

Remembering quickly how foul the carbonated water tasted, we stopped our drinking and headed on down the road, picking up speed and beginning to really cover ground. The roads here were even newer and smoother than they’d been in the capital, and we found ourselves making very good time.

We were just whipping along, waving at people, and enjoying the fantastic signage for local businesses. All around us people we going for it, like this chap transporting tons of burlap sacks full of produce with his Lada.

Finally, tired of the carbonic acid water, we stopped to buy some of the good still stuff.

That purchase rolled into a 45-minute conversation with the owner of the shop about whether or not he could get a green card in the U.S., and whether I could help him to do so. I told him I would be supportive in any way I could, but that it was not going to be easy, and that it would take a lot of time.

We wheeled on from the water joint, and turned off onto an uphill unpaved road that took us to a little brick village. The village showed signs of recent habitation, but seemed almost completely deserted as we rode through, all the residents apparently at work in town, or hiding behind closed doors.

From the village, we continued back down to the main road and made our way around the city on what one might call the Samarkand Beltway.  Before too long, we found ourselves dumped into a giant fruit and vegetable market, which we took a moment to peruse, tempted as always by the dynias.

From there we headed to the Registan, the biggest and most famous tourist spot in all of Samarkand. It takes that title for good reason. It is very, very impressive.

We’ve been to a lot of places, dear reader, and will go forth and say: this one is worth seeing. It could go head to head with the Taj Mahal any day.

Just look at this:

We spent a few hours wandering through the place. Poking our heads in and out of its many bejeweled courtyards. At one point we were approached by a police officer, we were afraid might be there to hassle us, but he was in fact trying to sell us a private tour of one of the minarets at sunset. We told him we’d consider it and moved on.

Suddenly it was time to eat again, and so we headed back out on the bikes in search of food.

Not far from the Registan, we ended up finding a truly amazing place, where we ordered some Uzbek soup and a few shashlik.

All of it was amazing.

As we ate, we struck up a conversation with the people at the table next to us. Most of them had either partial or totally gold teeth. That was when I realized it: Uzbek people have a thing for gold teeth. Everywhere we went, people were rocking the mostly gold smile. It was incredible.

I tried to look past all the bling in these guys’ grills, and answer their many questions about America. How much is gas in America? How much is bread in America? Is it safe at night in America? Are the women beautiful in America? How many are blond? How many have black skin?

We wheeled next back to that glorious and beautiful Samarqand train station to buy our tickets on to Bukhara. The lines were not long; I was only cut three times; and the economy class tickets were dirt cheap, so it took relatively little energy to execute that mission.

Back on the bikes, we decided it might be worthwhile now to try and find an ATM machine. So we continued to wheel, asking people from time to time where we might find a machine which emitted dollars (to change on the black market, of course).

Everyone seemed to know of a different place that might give us dollars, but most of the leads petered out in either dead ends or ATMs that only gave сум. People were more than happy to help, to give us elaborate directions, and to generally chat for extended periods of time.

One group of men outside a credit union insisted on taking the Speed TRs for a little ride before letting us strike out.

We continued to wheel on, past this giant wedding, for which the families had rented a fleet of Mercedes Benz sedans.

We struck out too, here at the National Bank of Uzbekistan, which had no dollars for us. In fact no сум either.

Somehow we ended up next inside an accounting office, using their computers and chatting about AsiaWheeling, web design, and the world of Internet consulting with one of the managers there.

He claimed he knew the only place in town that would give us USD, and directed us to wheel down the street, but to hurry for they would close soon. We thanked him and hopped back on the cycles.

When we got to that bank, they apologized to us, explaining that it was the end of the month they were closing the books, and instructing us to come back in four days. Shucks.

As we wheeled back to town, we spotted a very fancy looking hotel, which we thought just might have an ATM. We ran inside and sure enough it did, and it served USD! But only for Visa cards… We had only MasterCards, so we left empty handed.

We headed back to the Caravan Sarai and dug into our secret supply of emergency USD, changing them with the manager of the hotel for pretty close to the black market rate.

After seeking a quick and delicious dinner of more salad and shashlik, we corresponded into the night and retired in preparation for the next day.

We woke up the next morning at the Yakubjanov residence, and the smell of more Plov was already wafting through the residence. Not to be outdone by Shoney’s grandmother, his mother too was eager to try her Plov out on us. Shoney had already been telling us about the majesty and wonder of his mother’s Plov. Nothing she’d cooked yet had been anything other that a home run, so we were excited to try it.

First we had to go on a mission for washers. I headed out with Shoney’s sister to go searching. You see, during the previous day’s open heart surgery on Scott’s Speed TR’s dynamo hub, we had been forced to remove and jettison quite a few pieces of the wheel, meaning that now the hub was a fair bit too small for the fork. My idea for a temporary solution to this was to simply fill the extra space with washers. So I looked up the word for washers in my Russian dictionary, and we headed out.

Eventually, after striking out a few times, we wandered into an auto mechanic’s shop. The man was not only swimming in washers, but he was more than happy to give them to me for free. “As many as you can carry!” he laughed.

By the time we all arrived back at the house, it was Plov time. And my goodness did she go all out.  The rice had been steaming in meat juices, and meanwhile she cut up a large piece of lamb, some horse sausage, a couple of hard boiled eggs, and unstrung a necklace of stuffed grape leaves. She then piled all this on top of the dish and presented it to us with a big smile, some apologies as to the out-of-season nature of the grape leaves. “You’ll have to come back when the grapes are in season. I’m sorry about that.” Mrs. Yakubjanov, we would be more than happy to come back and eat your Plov any time.

It was too tasty, the rice all filled with raisins and nuts, the grape leaves succulent and juicy, the meat salted and spiced to perfection. I just couldn’t stop eating it. It was served, as is the tradition, with a fresh salad of onion, tomato and cucumber.

Once again, we felt so full that we might have to be rolled out the door. And then it was time for melon! Another dynia, perhaps even sweeter and more delightful than the last.  My goodness do they eat well in Uzbekistan.

Then it was time to split. With so much gratitude that we could not tell which was more busting, our stomachs or our hearts, we thanked them again and climbed on the bikes.

“Now remember, my father has booked a room for you guys at the Caravan Sarai hotel. It’s the same place where he sets up his U.N. guests! The manager will meet you at the station. Good luck!”

The conductors on the train took one look at the Speed TRs, and saw an opportunity to extract a bribe. In the end, not knowing the rules of post Soviet rail travel, we paid them nearly $5.00 for each cycle.

As the train rumbled through rich Uzbek farmland, we chatted with our fellow passengers, all citizen of Samarqand. They seemed thrilled to be sharing a car with us. It was one older man, a cartographer by trade, and a mother and daughter. The woman ran the front desk at a hospital, I believe.

About every five minutes, I would hear “VooDya!” and the little girl would have sprung up with another question for me. My Russian was terribly rusty, and had gotten little better since I’d come to the Uze, so reliant had we been on Shoney to play translator. But now I was getting to use that old muscle, and it felt good, exhilarating in fact.

Near the end of the ride, they noticed the ukulele and asked for a tune. I was happy to oblige them with a little Doobie Brother’s “Long Train Runnin.”

We arrived at the station in Samarqand and were blown out of the water by how beautiful it was. It was the most impressive station Scott or I had ever seen, lit up dramatically in the night, and built out of gorgeous materials. We were just about to leave with the young manager who had come to meet us and take us to the Caravan Sarai Guesthouse, when I realized we had left our keys and helmets on the train.

I sprinted back and caught it just as it was leaving. The words for helmet and keys came back to me in a flash, and I was able to ask for them. Sure enough one of the women cleaning the train had found them and placed them in a large metal bin.

I came back out at a triumphant jog, the only words to describe my emotions at that point were in Lao: Uzbekistan Duuuh!

More feasting was the name of the game, here at the Yakubjanov household in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This morning it was three fatty, piping hot giant steamed dumplings called, of all things, Manty. More of that dark earthy halva, and eggs fried with sausage. Grapes and fresh bread were always nearby was well.

We were cautioned not to eat too much by Shoney, for there was lots of feasting that would need to take place today.

So we ate, doing our best to hold back, but with Mrs. Yakubjanov’s excellent cooking, we were none too successful. We were going to get to try even more Yakubjanov family cooking, for our next stop was Shoney’s grandfather’s house for some Plov. Plov is the quintessential Uzbek dish, a rice pilaf filled with meat, onions, carrots and savory spices. As it is cooked, the steam is said to rise to the heavens along with your prayers.

That morning, Shoney’s sister had taken Scott’s Speed TR out for a ride and had come back complaining that it was making a weird noise. It had been a while since that front wheel of his had eaten a bearing, so we grabbed one of the spares that we’d bought in Syria at the NSK shop, grabbed his front wheel, and hopped in a cab. Shoney’s grandfather was actually an auto mechanic and engineer, so we were assured we would have the tools to perform the repair.

As we drove back to Nazarkulov’s neighborhood, we passed this Lada carrying a trunk full of raw meat. Very interesting.

Shoney’s grandmother greeted us at the door, and very cordially asked us to take off our shoes. We were then invited to retire to Nazarkulov’s study, to peruse old Soviet books, while she got the last bits of the Plov done and Nazarkulov made his way back from dealing with a death. It turns out that in his retirement, he had become the man in their community to make himself an expert on the many bits of bureaucracy and cultural observation that must be handled when someone dies in Uzbekistan.

And so we waited, perusing his amazing collection of books. He also had a computer and an Internet connection as well! Very rare among the older Uzbek generation. Not even Shoney’s family had Internet in their home. This old man was refusing to fall behind the times!

And then it was time, once again, to feast. And my goodness was it an amazing meal. It began with fresh tomato salad and fried cauliflower. Have I commented yet as to the amazing quality of Uzbek tomatoes? They are like nothing available anywhere else in the world outside of a backyard garden. And they are consistently amazing, and the most appetizing deep red. I don’t think I ate a bad tomato my entire time in the country.

The next course was the Plov. And then more Plov. And then even more Plov.  It was delicious, hearty, and approachable. Too easy to eat, one might even say. So good was it, that we just kept eating until we couldn’t shovel another bite in. Part way through the meal, Nazarkulov brought out some of his homemade white wine, which he had bottled in an old vodka bottle. It too was scrumptious.

When we were too stuffed for words, out came a giant plate of some of the most delicious Uzbek melon. And once we had finished that, it magically reappeared, full once again with melon. The dessert featured both watermelon and dynia, which is a cantaloupe-like variant, which is famous all over the post Soviet world. All of them were impossibly sweet and perfectly textured.

Barely able to stand up from the table, we thanked our hosts again and again, then humbly asked if we might use their tools.

Nazarkulov produced a magnificent set of solid Soviet tools from the closet and we began to go to town on Scott’s wheel. When we got into the thing, we found that it was not, in fact, the bearing that had gone bad, it was the dynamo hub itself. So we proceeded to dig deeper, taking the entire hub apart and finding that the magnet inside had indeed cracked and was jangling around inside as the wheel turned. So we just removed the entire dynamo and threw it away, leaving the entire interior chamber of the wheel a big empty cavity.

And so we headed back out, wheel repaired, wandering on foot, over to a park across the street from the Soviet housing development where Nazarkulov lived. Shoney was on the phone with the hotel that had registered us, and the news was not good. We were quite sad to find the current registration only covered one day, and it turned out we would need to keep paying this hotel in order to stay legal in Uzbekistan.

We got over that pretty soon when we realized we had a bunch more feasting to do.

The next task was to buy shoes — pointy, black, leather shoes.  If we were going to operate after dark in the post Soviet world, we needed to look the part.  Shoes were step one; the critical foundation to any hard boiled Soviet sartorial ensemble.  So we headed back to the market, where we began searching. At first it was tough to locate the right pair, but after we stopped and bought some homemade kvas from an old Soviet doctor who was hawking her homemade brew in the street, the skies seemed to open up and direct us right to the perfect corner of the market. We dickered over a couple of pairs of Uzbek-style pointy black shoes before it was time to head to another feast.

We met up with Shoney’s parents at a Kazakh restaurant, where they treated us to a scrumptious meal of Kazakh five fingers horse meat soup, endless skewers of shashlik, and some Russian-style mayonnaise-heavy salads.

We woke up once again in Uzbekistan to a giant feast, laid out on the kitchen table for us by Shoney’s mom. Most of the dishes from yesterday were there, with the addition of a kind of buttery fried gluten, like caramelized roux, which was spread on bread or eaten straight.

Shoney’s sister Luiza came out to join us, and we all goofed around, drinking coffee and trying not to be outsmarted by the little firecracker.  She ate very little that girl, but could certainly throw back the Coca-Cola.

Our first mission for the day was to register. You see, dear reader, it is illegal to be in Uzbekistan for more than 72 hours without registering yourself with the government. So off to the registration and passport office we went, throwing our Speed TRs into a cab so as to be prepared to do a little wheeling later in the day.

When we got to the office, we locked our bikes outside and headed in. It was a two story, cheaply build Soviet structure, with sagging floors, now covered with flattened cardboard boxes, and peeling wallpaper. We began waiting in line, and scrutinizing the info-graphics on the wall explaining how one would be rewarded for turning in criminals.

Unfortunately, after waiting for quite some time in what turned out to be the wrong line, we were ushered to a new line and eventually into a room where a very grumpy woman looked positively crestfallen to see us.

“I am very sick today. I need a nap,” she exclaimed when we entered the room and indicated our intention to do the registration.

Shoney’s mother pressed on. “Fine then. I’ll need the full blueprints for your house detailing where they will be sleeping.” We of course did not have these. Shoney’s mother was not even sure she knew where to find them. So We walked out of the place empty handed. Fair enough.

We walked past the giant line of patiently waiting Uzbeks that had formed behind us, and past the gleaming black Mercedes 600 SEL, which was driven by the head of the office, and climbed back into a cab. We would need to think of a Plan B. One option would be to work with a hotel, who might register us for a cheap rate, given we wanted just the registration and that we weren’t staying with them. We talked about that for a while, but soon were distracted by the city of Tashkent flying by outside our window.

Our next stop was to meet up once again with Shoney’s grandfather, Nazarkulov.

We met him in the large central square where the government put most of its flashiest buildings and monuments. It’s place called Mustaqillik Maydoni, or Independence Square. We locked our bikes to a tree, where a nearby Somsa and drinks vendor had agreed to keep an eye on them.

Then we began strolling, and Nazarkulov began explaining to us the history of the square using this sign as a diagram. The square had first contained a statue of the Tsar. You see, Uzbekistan was first a colony of Imperial Russia. Then when the Soviets took control of the Russian empire it became a state of the CCCP, and the statue was replaced with one of Lenin. Then with the fall of the Soviets, the square was redone a few more times to bring it to its present state.

And what a state it was, with a giant monument showing the globe with Uzbekistan as the only country and a huge field planted with Siberian evergreen trees (each of which required it own shading device in order to keep it from withering in the Uzbek dry heat). We continued on into a nicely manicured and shady park, past old Soviet gardening trucks, to the Uzbek WWII memorial.

It was quite a memorial, and startlingly touching. The Soviets were very successful in the Second World War, but their methods for making war required some of the most reckless losses of human life ever recorded on our planet. In WWII 350,000 Uzbek Soviets died fighting against the Axis.

We wandered through the monument, where the names of each fallen Uzbek were carved onto great copper sheets, and collected like the pages of a book. Shoney and his grandfather struggled to locate the names of their own fallen relatives.

We moved from the monument out into the shadow of a giant pillared archway. On the top of the arch was a giant stork, the symbol, here too, of new birth.

We walked on past a giant fountain which had, in its hayday, blasted over a walkway, allowing visitors to walk through a tunnel of arcing water. It now sputtered weakly next to the walkway.

We sat down with Shoney and Nazarkulov in a special section of another nearby park to discuss Soviet times and this man Sharof Rashidov. Sharof Rashidov was an Uzbek leader during the Soviet times, made famous for his successful execution of an elaborate system of bribes and lies that convinced the Soviet government that Uzbekistan was producing more cotton and wheat than it actually was. This was of vital importance to the Uzbek people at the time, for they were not going to meet the quota that year, and would have suffered harsh consequences had they come up short.

Nazarkulov  was quite the fan of Soviet Uzbekistan, spoke perfect Russian, and spoke passionately about how life was better during Soviet times.

Having toured Independence Square now for some time, we were all ready to eat some more. And so Nazarkulov took us to an chicken restaurant, established during the Soviet times.  The chicken was incredible. It was served with a Bloody-Mary-esque sauce, which came in a little shot glass, and for a few cents more, your table could share a still-warm-from-the-oven loaf of Soviet style bread.

Not believing the reality of the pure volume of bills it took to operate in the Uze, we had attempted to pack our wallets with сум, figuring that we couldn’t spend it all in one day. Wrong we were, for just this cheap lunch took a huge chunk out of our pitiful wallet-sized wads.

Bellies full and wallets empty, we exited the restaurant and took a moment to take in the giant and mostly empty Hotel Uzbekistan, across the street, with its exquisitely filigreed front facade.

We then stuck out our arms, and the next car that passed stopped to pick us up. In case he did not agree to the price Shoney felt was fair, there would inevitably be another queued up behind him, ready to talk to us if we flagged the first one on. This cab system was amazing. We threw the cycles into the back of a black Chevy and headed off toward Shoney’s grandfather’s neighborhood, where a bike was waiting for Shoney.

The frame had been recently painted, and everything tightened up. It looked like a good ride, very 1983. And with some heartfelt thanks and goodbyes to Nazarkulov , we hit the road for a little inaugural Uzbek wheeling.

Traffic was light, and the roads were good, the main ones at least. Like everything else he applies himself to, Shoney wheeled hard and fast, heading on past giant Soviet apartment blocks and in toward the city center. Then, suddenly, Shoney’s tire popped, and the wheel ground to a halt.

We had a patch kit and pumps (in our seat posts), but what we needed was some water so we could see where the puncture was and patch it. The best water we could find was this river.

The river ran through a large Soviet sports club, where Shoney used to box. All the workers there were instantly skeptical of us, and just as instantly sympathetic when we explained the story of the flat. Some of the groundskeepers even offered us the use of one of their buckets.

But once we took the inner tube out, we found that no patch would solve this disaster, and thus no water was needed. The tube was an old cracked monster of a thing, and the flat had occurred because the valve nub itself had just torn free of the inner tube.

We would need a new inner tube, for sure. So we locked the bike inside the sports complex, grabbed the problem tire, and headed back to the streets where we caught a cab to the nearest bike shop. We ended up buying not only a new inner tube, but getting a package deal on a ridiculously cheap Russian-made tire as well. The man at the shop changed the tire and tube, and even pumped the thing up to show us all was legit.

Back in the park, we made short work of the repair, and headed back out to continue the wheel.

It was glorious to be wheeling again, sun bright, air fresh. Then a cop stopped us, and began to yell at Scott in Russian (of which he understood none) using very condescending language (Shoney later explained) and asking him what he thought he was doing. Turns out the cop had thought Scott was Russian and had some bones to pick with the Russkis. Shoney interjected in Uzbek, which surprised the cop a bit, explaining that we were American tourists and eventually he told us to wheel on, but reminded us that in Uzbekistan it was illegal to wheel more than one meter from the right side of the road, which if I am interpreting the law correctly, actually makes left turns illegal.

“They just want to have enough laws so that they can catch you breaking one of them at any time day or night,” Shoney explained. Fair enough.

We wheeled on toward the train station, stopping halfway through to grab some water from this M&Ms branded Produkti, which is the Russian answer to the convenience store.  Or maybe the convenience store is the western answer to the Produkti; speculation is invited in the comments.

We wheeled on past giant new housing developments and old crumbling Soviet structures. Though most of the signs were in Russian, one also saw plenty of Uzbek too, which is these days written in Roman characters and looks like this:

We paused outside a the train station to let one of the many street trams go by.

The city really had some impressive public transit, for the capital of a country with a GDP per capita of just under $4,000. Sporting two metro lines and eight tram lines, it was very impressive. Also, as Shoney explained, traffic was a new thing to the city as well, having only arrived in the past couple years. Traffic jams were still a rarity.

At the Uzbek train station, we entered a terrible do-loop of waiting forever in the wrong line, then switching to a new line, then having it be wrong too. Eventually, we found the right line, though, and bought  two tickets for the day after the next’s train to Samarqand.

On the way back to the house, we stopped by a certain hotel Shoney’s mother knew of, and bargained with them to register us. They were skeptical at first, but soon realized the opportunity to make some cash and agreed.

When we got back to the house, Shoney’s mother had made another giant meal for us, featuring a giant lamb and potato dish which, despite being extremely impressive, was presented to us with an apology!

The feasting showed no signs of stopping in Uzbekistan, for as soon as we had pried ourselves back out of the  comfortable beds that Shoney’s family had prepared for our arrival in the dead of the night before, we discovered a new feast had been laid out on the Yakubjanov’s kitchen table.

And so we did the only thing we could, which was dig in, begin drinking cups of coffee, and generally feast. There were fresh crispy chunks of Uzbek bread called Lepyoshka, fresh meat-filled pastries called Somsas, a dark sticky earthy Uzbek halva, fresh black grapes, peaches, cut turkey and ham for little breakfast sandwiches, and even hand rolled balls of hyper salty fermented milk called Kurut, which we would find were a Central Asian staple.

The fruit in this country! I was not prepared for how amazing Uzbek fruit would be. With each bite I was reminded of all the flavors that lesser fruits are trying to maximize. “And it’s all organic too,” Shoney assured us. “That’s just the way Uzbeks have been growing it for thousands of years.” I was already falling in love, as I popped another few grapes into my mouth and reached for another crust of bread to make a turkey sandwich with.

“We’ve got plans, guys,” Shoney explained. “My grandfather is excited to meet you and would like to show you around. Excellent, we thought. We were also introduced to Shoney’s sister, who turned out to be an impossibly thin but quite beautiful little girl, who spoke mostly Russian, and emanated a most piercing intelligence. There was a certain greatness about this little girl, something like one must have felt when speaking with Madam Curie or Barak Obama as a child. We were also introduced that morning to the house cat, a very popular fellow, given a traditional Uzbek name.

And then Shoney’s grandfather, Nazarkulov Yakubjan Palvanovich, arrived. He was a rail thin man, with fierce features and an even fiercer intellect. He spoke deliberately and intelligently, proving a veritable font of knowledge on all topics Uzbek.

We had brought out our giant stack of foreign currencies to illustrate as we explained the story of submitting our customs form, and Shoney’s grandfather was quick to add our first 500 Uzbek сум onto the top of the pile.

The сум is a gorgeous, if bizarre and hyper inflated, currency which he holds up now for us to photograph.

And with that, we headed out with Shoney’s grandfather. We piling into a cab and headed out into Tashkent. The traffic was most interesting and unique, being in large part comprised of old Soviet vehicles. Of those that were not old Soviet Ladas and Volgas, the vast majority were actually Chevrolet’s, a model called the Matiz, a Korean model, actually placed into the Uzbek market during a failed venture by Hundai, rekindled by Chevy.

Our first stop was the Abdulkasim Medressah. It is a complex attached to one of the nation’s most prominent Islamic Universities.

We wandered through the grounds, thoroughly enjoying the unique Uzbek architecture. Inside the Medressah, we had our first taste of Uzbek wood carving as well. The interior courtyard of the place was supported by giant wooden columns, all intricately carved.

Also, placed all around the grounds were constantly running drinking fountains for the people. Shoney claimed you could drink the tap water in Tashkent, though it might give you a little bit of stomach discomfort. We were not quite ready to try it, not having been reared on its essence, but we did find the ever running fountains an impressive choice. It was dry as a bone here, with the difference between the temperature in the shade and in the sun so drastic that you could see most of the people clustered in the shade of trees or overhangs avoiding the midday heat.

Perhaps it was the polarization, or the cooler feeling of the bright sun as seen through the optics of our Maui Jim’s, but for one reason or another, we were just eating up the sun that day. It poured over us, warm and comforting. We had no need to worry about stickiness, sweatiness, or general reeking. We could just move through this fascinating environment, taking in the many shades of blue and white tiles adorning the buildings, our sweat evaporating as soon as it was secreted, to the soft trickle of the public drinking fountains, and the lofty spire of the minaret, all from behind the comfort of our Dawn Patrols.

The call to prayer times prominently displayed on the wall inspired a moment of reflection on our concepts of time.

Soon, Nazarkulov’s bum hip began acting up, and we all noticed his limp increasing. And so it was that Shoney took bishop, so to say, and walked us back to the road.

He put out his hand, and the first passing car stopped, agreeing to take Nazarkulov back home for a dollar or so.

Our next goal was to change money. You see, dear reader, in Uzbekistan the currency has two exchange rates, the official one, and the black market one. The official one is about 1600 сум  to the dollar. The black market rate is much more like 2200 сум  to the greenback. So you see, dear reader, if you attempt to change money legitimately you are donating 37% of your money to the government.

Shoney took us to a market to find a black market money trader. Once in the market, it was not hard. Men with giant black trash bags full of money were wandering around calling out “dollars! dollars!” We stopped one, and Shoney began haggling an exchange rate for us in Uzbek. I could see a police officer in the distance, and attempted to subtly point him out to Shoney. “Oh, don’t worry, bro,” Shoney replied, “he’s in on it… probably gets 10 percent.”

Wild. We exchanged two one hundred dollar bills for a giant stack of сум .

We then understood why our dear Shakhrookh (Shoney is short for Shakhrookh) had always been wearing cargo shorts. We had thought it was just his Uzbek military punk style. But no, no; it’s for the сум .

The largest bill, dear reader, is when exchanged at the black market rate, worth just over 40 cents. This means that in order to pay for anything, one must use quite a few bills. This necessitates carrying around a serious bundle of cash, which instantly popularized the man purse, the fanny pack, and cargo shorts in Uzbekistan.  This monetary state of affairs has moved us to introduce the latest Tee-Shirt into the AsiaWheeling Trading post:  Business as Uzual.

Paying with the сум wad turned out to be one of our favorite parts of this country, injecting each transaction with new gravitas.

Wad in pocket, counted and recounted, we headed back further into the market. Our next goal was cell phones. We were back in the land of Beeline, AsiaWheeling’s preferred cell phone provider. However, it was explained to us upon entry to the shop that SIM cards were actually not legal to  issue to visiting foreigners. The man frowned and apologized, “There is nothing I can do.”

Of course, in reality, he just wanted us to pay him $4.00 instead of $2.00 for each card. And so we did. And christened with new beeline cards, we wandered back into the bright sun and the dry air, falling harder and harder for Tashkent.

We walked past vending machines selling unlabeled, hand-filled plastic drinks, to be poured and drunk from communal glasses and past stands selling ice cream in freshly made waffle cones. Everything was very cheap, and the locals seemed thrilled to have us around, looking up from their work with expressions between a welcoming smile and a shocked stare.

We continued on past a giant open concrete space that had in years past been packed with sellers, but had now,  for reasons that eluded even our dear Shoney, been fenced off and made illegal to enter. We continued up a long wide set of steps into the Chorsu Bazaar, where we continued our stroll, past people selling all kinds of foods: noodles, spices, flour, pickles, oil, olives.. you name it, dear reader.

People in the market were also quite curious about us, and we stopped from time to time to chat a bit, using Shoney as an interpreter. Shoney turned back to us for neither the first nor the last time and said “Uzbeks love foreigners, you know?”

The ceiling of this market was a fantastic golden dome, with a central skylight, which let in just enough light to easily inspect the products for sale, but not so much as to let it get hot inside. On the contrary it was actually quite cool, compared to the sunny street. We walked by ride merchants, and tea merchants, and interesting advertisements for American branded beers.

Then Shoney took us out to lunch in the ready-to-eat food section of the market.

We had a large plate of noodles with horse meat, some long skewers of very cheap and delicious Shashlik, served with vinegary onions, and a bottle of the delightful Russian soda bread known as Kvas.

Finished with eating, we headed off to look for wireless Internet, which can only be found in a couple places in all the city. The fastest of them is a central mall called Kontinent. Unfortunately, even in Kontinent, the connection was so slow that working on anything other than e-mail was nearly impossible. We had barely loaded a page by the time our hour was up and we headed off to do some more feasting.

We headed back out to the street, got a cab, and it drove us across town to a restaurant where we were to meet one of Shoney’s old teachers, a man by the name of Brooksy.

Brooksy turned out to be a fascinating character, and we enjoyed learning more about his and Shoney’s life here in Uzbekistan, over more Shashlik and a bottle of добрыи вечер (good evening) vodka.

We paid for the meal with a giant pile of cash, and headed home.

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.

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.