A few more countries

Well, a ship job didn't materialize when I had hoped, so I need to fly myself back over the Atlantic. Well, not exactly "myself". I joined Alix in flying "home" on a stand-by ticket thanks to Alix's good friend and pilot, Elisabeth. My friend too of course.

So the plan was, ferry over from Samos to Kuşadasi in Turkey, spend a few days in the area, head over to Istanbul (not Constantinople), spend a couple of days, then fly out on Delta's direct flight to NYC. That was the plan. All went well until the "fly out" part. No seats, very busy.

So now we're on a train heading to Bucharest where we have an excellent chance of getting a seat on tomorrow's flight to NYC. We're at the Bulgaria-Romania border crossing and it's much smoother than leaving Turkey. Well, not that leaving Turkey wasn't smooth, but they made us all get off the train and line up to get our exit stamps. By the time we figured out what was going on, Alix and I were near the end of the line, and for some reason, they decided to start handing out tourist oriented surveys. The Mexican girl ahead of me got an English form when she admitted to speaking English, then Alix was pulled aside for a survey too, but apparently there were no more English forms left so they sent her on her way. Then, seeing my Greek passport, they gave me a Greek form... ughhh... lots of big words, and judging by the English form, quite a poor translation. So as I copied the answers off the Mexican girl's form, Alix went back to the train and worried
about what was taking me so long...

I am a man!

In case you didn't know. I now have proof.

Long distance bicycle touring

I had an epiphany the other day. It came when Alix and I were trying to lug our 50kg+ each of unwieldy luggage. How can something so efficient, adventurous, beautiful, sleek, quick and nimble as a fully loaded touring bicycle be reduced to such an unmanageable pile of luggage?

I got to thinking about some of those long distance, round-the-world, keep cycling till who knows when, to who knows where cyclists that we've come across in our travels. Perhaps their passion is born of simply NOT wanting to drag their crap onto taxis, buses and airplanes. The solution? Just keep cycling!

I've often thought that it would have been much less tiring to have spent a week or 2 cycling there when we load all of our stuff onto a bus to head from one part of Mexico to another for a bike tour. The same goes for our time in Greece where we're dragging around many more things for camping, plus souvenirs, etc...