Tires

I’m home, the bike went to visit its parents for Christmas, and there's time to catch up on commenting the gear etc.

The Heidenau K60 tires held up well. They now have exactly 10k kilometers on them and they look like taking one trip more in the spring. As mentioned, they are good in soft sand. I was ready to lower the pressure when getting stuck, but didn’t have to. Even at 2.4/2.0 the rear had enough traction to come out of any hole I got it into, and both went easily flying on the surface already at 2nd gear. Also on rocky paths, which I found plenty of during this trip, I was too lazy to lower the pressure, because they felt good enough as they were.

Mud is different. It’s probably an issue that I have with mud, but there they really just slip in all directions. I’m trying hard not to panic, and in most situations can allow both wheels to slip without falling. Still, mud is only good for me as a warmup exercise, not as a surface to enjoy riding on. Even snow and ice feel better. The pic is from packed mud in Moldova, where both wheels just went sideways at one point; I didn’t crash, but ended up beside the track facing the wrong way.

The K60s are dual-purpose, and although I take every opportunity to get off tarmac, the fact is that most of the distance still gets covered on the highway. Time-wise the proportion is better of course, but distance-wise I’m afraid the practical schedules (e.g. needing to get from München to Istanbul in 2 days) result in the percentage being about 90% tarmac. Two impressions from that part too.

On the first evening with these tires, still in Germany, I got a chance to practice panic braking on the motorway, as a driver two cars ahead of me decided to bump into the next one, and the one before me reacted by hitting the brakes. The speed was moderate, and the GSA's integrated brake lever is wonderfully responsive, but it was still hard work for my index finger to get all this weight stopped. Made a note to retrain myself to keep TWO fingers on the lever at all times. 10k km later, the training is successfully done, two fingers go on the lever automatically. But the main lesson was that the new (250 km by that point) front K60 felt decidedly soft. Could almost feel each knobble give way. The same experience repeated later on tarmac hairpins where the K60 felt really out of place. And I’m not fast on those hairpins.

The rear K60 surprised me on a rainy motorway near Thessaloniki. Going uphill at constant 110 it started skidding. The ascent was nothing much, like a normal motorway. The rain was indeed heavy and the surface really wet. But still I didn’t expect or like the skidding at all.

The overall balance seems good, however, and the current feeling is that my next tires will be the same.

Made it

So it appears that 800 km a day in 0..3 degrees and intermittent rain/snow is doable. That included some sandy trails (my favourite surface) in the pine forests around Riga as a lunchtime warmup. 0 km to home.

13th

From Ukraine to Poland at Ustyluh was 13th border crossing this trip, and about 40th land border crossing this year. It was the first one that was unpleasant, that took more than an hour, and that involved irritated and shouting border officials. The whole problem was on the Polish side; Ukrainians were nice and helpful and finished with their stuff long before the Polish gate opened to accept the next car.

The queue seems to be a normal thing there, and experienced fellow travellers told me to jump the queue, because bikers always do. I didn't believe at first, but when people before me in the queue started telling me to go, and one of them actually moved his car to make room, I decided to give it a try. Indeed, nobody objected, and even the Ukrainian officials went out of their way to help me through. One even walked with me to show where to circle one of the border buildings. As a result, I only waited 2 hours; for the drivers, it took probably the whole day.

What the Polish did: checked the passports twice, then took the passports into their building and did something with them behind their mirror windows for ten minutes per car. Ten minutes, without exaggeration, also for Polish people getting into their home country. (And there were hundreds of cars waiting.) Then customs searched the cars, and my bike. Twice again. And then there was the last signless window where the lady took my passport 5th time and said something in Polish. I apologised for not understanding and asked her to use English or Russian. She repeated her Polish a couple of more times with an irritated face and then called a younger colleague, who translated: do you have fuel with you? Wtf? How common can electric bikes be at this border crossing? Worse - why ask at all, if my "yes" answer still allowed me to pass?

I wonder what is it with land borders. Why do governments get away there with wasting thousands of person-days each day on this crossing alone, out of sheer stupidity? The only other option is hostility, because at airports they prove that the same procedure can be done about a hundred times faster. If it needs to be done at all, see Schengen.

Planned to ride straight to Lithuania to avoid the Polish government collecting taxes on my hotel night, but got too tired and frozen, and allowed safety concerns override the irritation. So stopped at a random place, which happened to be Suchowola, claiming to be "the centre of Europe", 760 km to home. At least I won't buy fuel in Poland, with special reference to that idiotic last question.

Culinary studio

Best food of this trip, and possibly a couple of previous trips too, at culinary studio Крива Липа. The whole centre of Lviv is cool. English seems to be the clearly preferred lingua franca; twice did I try to address people in Russian as in smaller places this had worked best, but here the reply was invariantly "Do you speak English?" Maybe it's a sign of how bad my Russian is. Maybe not.

It was a hot (+8.5) sunny day and I decided to take in a piece of the Carpathian mountains. The road there was in appalling condition, people were driving at walking pace because of the potholes, and I didn't go much faster because of the ice. (Btw, the K60s have more grip on ice than they do in mud, and snow is even better.)

So the place is Lviv, 1276 km to home, and the updated forecast suggests I only have two more days to get out of here. Will try to start early tomorrow.

Ukraine

Crossed to Ukraine, again at sunset, and again the border crossing was pleasant and relatively fast. The first place with hotels was Chernovtsi, where the neatly renovated pedestrian street has restaurants full of local young people, rather than being empty or closed in the absence of tourists, a sight I had grown used to.

1551 km to home, and the weather forecast looks like I have four days to get there.

Roads in Moldova

Especially South of the capital, there's again nowhere to turn off to, the small ones are not closed, but only lead to the next field or farm. However, even major E-numbered highways provide enough wrestling with the bike to keep warm in the zero temperature. If they are paved, there are potholes with dimensions that I really wouldn't like to test if my fork can handle at 90. For a large part they are not, or then have drivers created new unsurfaced lanes on the side of the surfaced ones, because it's less bumpy there (first pic). Later when desperately needing a warmup, I did find a nice half-slippery sandy-muddy side trip near Frumoasa, including first snow (second pic). Frequent monasteries provide the only splashes of colour in the overall greyness of the countryside (third pic).

 

Heavy vehicles

Heavy vehicles not allowed on the main street of Chișinău. Didn't try how well they enforce that.

Yes, I'm in Chișinău, 1911 km to home. Saw first below-freezing temperatures while riding today and stopped well before dark, which gave me lots of time to walk around. Quite a charming city. The centre is modern, but only a couple of blocks away there are childhood memories (I grew up in the Soviet Union).

Roads on the Romanian coast

On the Romanian coast, there's nowhere to turn off the road to. But some of the roads actually used for traffic between the villages are enjoyably off themselves. And long at that, for instance from Pietreni to Rasova it's 20 km of pure fun over the rolling hills (pic). Mongolia for beginners.

Roads on the Bulgarian coast

Things marked as hiking trails in the Strandzha Nature Park are actually quite fast gravel roads. They get narrower and twistier towards the sea, but are certainly not closed for vehicles. There's not much to see though, because the whole area is thick forest (that's what the nature park is there for). What you do get to see is the logger characters and the park ranger characters from the Orizont movie.

In touristier areas on the coast, around Burgas and Varna, it is near impossible to turn off the highway, everything is closed, some roads even for bicycles, with signs about huge fines. The pic is from the singletrack that resulted from a non-closed road I did find between Batovo and Odartsi (follow the unfinished bypass, don't stop when that ends with a drop into a river valley).

Crap

The supermarket sells all kinds of crap here.

Lost son

Yesterday I stayed at an unbelievable place: Guest House Preslav in Nesebar, Bulgaria. Arrived early, to have a skype meeting for qlaara in the afternoon. While I was rushing to set up the meeting, the host surprised me with a bowl of delicious beans and a salad. How did she know I hadn't had lunch? "I've seen the likes of you before," she said. In the morning, when I went downstairs to scrape the ice off the bike, there was no need: the host had covered the bike with a blanket. And she even gave me a small present for the new year when leaving. Not to mention the room with a balcony and lots of light and the plentiful breakfast. I really felt like a lost son returned home, not like a hotel guest. Can't remember such thought-reading attention to detail from any guest accommodation, the only thing that might have come close is a five-star hotel in Firenze where I stayed many years ago.

The pic is from Nesebar old town at night. The authentic parts of both Nesebar and Sozopol (the two ancient cities on that stretch of the coast) are charming, which is quite a contrast with the overall industrial scale of the tourism industry here. Sunny Beach (Слънчев бряг) right next to Nesebar, for instance, is a proper 10 km long city of high rise hotels, closed and deserted at this time of the year.

First ice

Reached Bulgaria at sunset yesterday, at the easternmost crossing on the E87 (which btw is a nice lonely curved highway, recently renovated on the Turkish side. The border crossing was fast, no queue, but the procedure was different again from Bodrum, Edirne and Ipsala. Nobody is stopping you, you have to go inside the building yourself to look for the officials. They will only stop you later if you don't.

The weather has been unbelievably favourable, +12 and sunny, and looks like continuing this way. Only in the morning the bike was covered in ice. Given this weather and the wonderful roads, it's such a shame that I haven't seen any other long-distance bikers this whole week, riding or parked or anything.

Yesterday crossed to Europe at Canakkale by ferry. The ferry is fast, cheap and goes every half hour. Hoped to do some riding on the peninsula there, but that just doesn't happen. The whole peninsula is the biggest war memorial I've ever seen, with marked battle sites everywhere, signposted with how many thousands of people were slaughtered at what time on the morning of April 25th 1915. The mountains also level out around there, so the only fun to be had was 6th gear gravel roads on the plains later.

The pic is from Pergamon the other day, which is a nice change, provided that you have satisfied the first hunger for riding mountain paths. The ruins are at a hilltop with good views, and the signs explain technical details like why were the Romans able to build a much larger terrace than the Greeks before them.

Two countries

Both in Greece and Turkey, mountain roads are thankfully open and sometimes tough. The pic is from a road on Kos that narrowed to a singletrack and contained gradients that tested my limits. (If you are wondering about my riding level for comparison, then it's approximately where Aras, Hechlingen and Stehlin aim with their "advanced" courses.)

The difference between the countries is that while in Greece, as mentioned before, even major roads just end in random places, my impression of Turkey is the opposite. Roads always connect to the other side, so if you want to cross a mountain range and find a track going up from the highway, then this track is quite likely to take you all the way to the other side, with multiple branching points, even if it's not on the map. Wonderful place.

Another difference is that tourist towns on the Turkish coast are much more lively than the ones on Rhodos or Kos.

Greek island ferries

Not recommended, at least not in the winter, for getting to Turkey. The ferries between the Greek islands are fine, the difficult part is the last 100 m (almost literally) to Turkey. There are no ferries at all from Rhodes. If there is one (from Kos) then it is not known in advance if it takes vehicles. The ticket office is closed with no sign about opening times. The travel agent in town does sell tickets, but lies about prices, and actually fails to call the ferry company with the reservation (it was pure luck that there still were places when I got to the harbour). This last 100 m costs twice as much as the overnight journey here from Athens. Border formalities take an hour on each side, mostly consisting of waiting for the customs officer to arrive. But at least the bike could enjoy the coolest cardeck ever, and the view from the bench in Bodrum where I waited for the Turkish customs guy was not bad either.

Beach

Best thing about a beach? Car tracks all over it, suggesting it's ok to go. Couldn't resist again, and rode until the next river where a local fisherman suggested it's not worth trying to cross. That was Pamukçuk beach just North of Kuşadası. The people in the background were nice German ladies looking for their husbands who had gone swimming. The husbands emerged from the bush shortly thereafter.

Where my bike was in Athens

While I flew home for a month, the bike was taken good care of by Motion n' Style, thanks so much once more. Service manager Konstantinos Skordas also recommended removing the front mudguard. So far it has been dry and stony, let's see how that works when the mud comes, and whether there are any side effects like more dirt reaching the visor. There will surely be opportunities to find out further North.

Insurance likes snow

German insurance providers do get information from the Bürgeramt about your address. I didn't know that.

When moving my residence back to Estonia from Germany I planned to keep the bike in the South and continue slow travelling, leaving the bike near airports and flying home from time to time. 

The first reality check was that the Estonian vehicle registry insisted on physically seeing the bike to change my address in the registration papers. What for, I have no idea. And this insistence is in stark contrast with the claim that in E-Estonia you can do anything online except getting married. Well, it seems you also can't do something as simple as changing your address in your bike papers. You can change it in your own papers online, without having to have your person physically inspected. Apparently bikes are that much more important. (==end of rant==)

Ok, next plan: include Estonia in the travel plans for next summer, going on to Nordkapp from there. This plan became under doubt when, in Istanbul, I received a message from the German insurer, asking for my new address. Ouch. Fortunately they were slow to react, and only cancelled my insurance starting 1st January next year. Had they done it starting 1st December, I would have been in deep shit, but now I could relatively easily change the plan and ride from Athens to Estonia in December. The weather doesn't make it a dream destination this time of the year, but doable it should be. 

Next question is the route. Could I still keep to the original plan of Sicily-Sardinia-Korsika, and then circle the Alps in the West? On the flight to Athens, just decided to take the eastern route instead, following the Black sea coast through Bulgaria etc. The monthly weather forecast seems to be mild, let's see.

Olympus

Climbed Mt Olympos the other day. It's a 2000 m climb on a well marked path with several refuges, that the guide books recommend doing in 2 days. As usual, my plan was one day. Managed to find a loop path, some 20 km horizontal in total. Yes it was doable in a day (10:40 in my case), although at the top I did have to answer surprised questions about whether I really wanted to go down today and if I had a torch and a radio. I did have the torch, but it was not needed as I reached the bike soon after sunset.

Most of the climb was dull (1st pic), but then from the Skala summit, when the view to Mytikas opened, it became really frightening, a "YDS class 3 rock scramble" according to Wikipedia. There were rope attachment places and views straight down on both sides, and the general feeling of being about to fall off the mountain. But the weather was unbelievably favourable, sunny and no wind, so I decided to go anyway, despite wearing my Salomon town shoes. Most other people had proper boots and helmets, some also ropes, and the guidebooks say that most people climbing the mountain never even attempt the actual summit. In retrospect it was a very enjoyable "class 3 scramble".

Border crossings

Given all the refugee business, with pissed-off truckers rumoured to block border crossings, my expectations south of Schengen were pessimistic. But it turned out ok. All of the following on the main Zagreb-Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul highway were doable in less than an hour:

• Croatia-Serbia 15 min queue, no problems 
• Serbia-Bulgaria 30 min queue, no problems 
• Bulgaria-Turkey no queue

The system at the HUGE new shiny white border crossing complex on the Turkish side was interesting though. When you approach the police, they don't pay any attention, so the natural thing to do for me was to move on slowly and expect to be stopped. Indeed, the customs lady stops you, says you need to go to the police. Park your bike here and walk back. Ok, done. The customs lady looks at the police stamp and waves you on to the third counter some 300 m further. There the guy looks at the bike papers, then at his computer, and says you have a problem. You have no customs clearance for the bike. Go back to the customs lady. Ok, third meeting with customs, and the bike has clearance. Back to the third guy, who asks for the barcode sticker. What's that? You get it from customs. Go back to customs. Ok, fourth time at customs, sticker attached to bike, and the gate at the third counter finally opens.

All of the people involved were friendly and helpful, looking professional, working with their unbelievably complicated database system with a 1990s style UI, manually keying in data from my machine-readable passport for the nth time (yes I peeked at their screens). If the point of this process would be to solicit bribes, I would understand. But they didn't, to the contrary, there were large signs about bribing being a criminal offence, and, once more, the people were really friendly and helpful. What's the point then? No idea. Anyway, it seems travellers are expected to be proactive on the Turkish border, and ask to be checked.

Being proactive and actually looking for a police officer to check me certainly worked when exiting Turkey. The Turkish-Greek border was fine, almost looked like a border between two friendly countries (if you disregard the numerous gunmen standing around everywhere).

Morning exercise

This time, did the morning exercise without the bike. Yet another closed coastal hiking path off-season. Getting past the closure took quite some scrambling, but found these heroic flowers in the process. Don't know what they are called in English, but at least in Estonia they used to be one of the most common domestic plants in my childhood. After the jog, thought of going swimming, but the beach was sort of ..um.. flooded?

Mudguard

Another morning exercise, BMW riding school, lesson 17: riding with a blocked front wheel. The front mudguard on the GSA protects the mud well (compare bodyguard), it takes VERY hard work with a tire lever to clean the narrow gap between the tire and the mudguard. No idea what the engineers were thinking when designing this - that it never rains around here? That people only do wheelies in the mud? That the adventure with the GS Adventure is getting to know nice local people who help push you out of the mud again? (In Hungary last year I ended up drinking beer with the kind guy who pushed and pulled the bike with me for about 4 km.)

Anyway, since I had seen this before, turned around immediately when the mud started accumulating, but going back those 200 m to firmer ground still took a whole hour.

If anybody knows what to do with the mudguard, please comment. Removing it involves removing the front wheel, which is not my idea of fun when already stuck in the mud. Having it always off seems to leave several fragile-looking parts vulnerable. Touratech sells a replacement, but it is not really much different, and even cannot be, because there is simply no room for a more distant mudguard.

A view on Europe from the outside

Just before leaving Istanbul (the posts are out of chronological order now), crossed the Bosphorus for this pic.

Off the road again

After the Startup Istanbul conference the schedule was finally relaxed and I got off the motorway. Here is the beginning of the real road. Regardless of what your map or gps tells you, there is a decent road on the coast between Dikella and Platanitis in North-Eastern Greece, in most parts doable even for cars, and lined with signed architectural sites.

 A little morning excercise in the sand. The Heidenau K60 felt better in the sand even with full luggage and normal pressure, than my previous TKC 70 without luggage and with lowered pressure. More on the K60 in a future post though.

And then some work on qlaara in a taverna that later served absolutely delicious local fish.

Later in the afternoon, there was one thing about mountain roads that I had never seen anywhere: they just ended. Not like ending at a remote farm, or at a landslide, or simply fallen out of use and grown full of trees, all of which I also saw that day. I mean really ending, so that there is nothing at the end of the road and there has never been a continuation, just unspoilt mountain ahead. The one on the picture is small and sort of expectable, I came from the left and it ended on the right. But also much larger, almost two-lane, maintained and used gravel roads simply ended in the middle of nowhere, without any warning, many kilometres after the last turning point. I tried four such roads in an attempt to get North from the abandoned village of Kaliva, and all of them ended like this.

Vignette

Slovenia has recently updated their vignette system with more automatic checkpoints and also manual checks at the borders, if you approach the border on a highway. A week's vignette for a bike costs 7.50 eur, the fine for not having one is 150 eur. The police is nice and speaks languages and accepts cards. I think the balance is now even, the fine approximately covers all the vignettes I have not bought over the years.

Alps

As usual, was trying to beat the gps in navigation, but didn't notice that the route over the Alps I chose involved a railway shuttle, Bad Gastein to Mallnitz. Didn't want to turn back either, because after all I'm in a bit of a hurry, so took the train. This was my first and probably last time to do this, because, really, why would one want to be in the tunnel under the Alps and not riding on top of them.  Anyway, the shuttle goes every hour (20 minutes past the hour from the North), costs 17 eur and does take bikes. Bike groups require advance registration, because they have fixed straps for securing the bike, and I only saw one set of straps.

Therme

The first stop was at Therme Erding, claiming to be the biggest in Europe, a large part of it textilfrei. Well worth a visit.

In the middle of the night, realised that I had forgotten to fetch my new fancy business cards that had been waiting for me in Tübingen. This resulted in wasting almost 3 hours looking for a fast printer in München who would do business cards, getting there by filtering through the Stau, and getting the cards printed. The one I found was Wenzel in Schwabing, again very helpful people, printed and cut the cards for me in about half an hour despite the constant queue at their counter and the fact that it normally takes at least 4 hours. After that, finally got on my way South.

Starting again

Finishing my lovely and rewarding stay at Tübingen and starting the next trip. No commitments at this stage, but this just might become a long one. To start, heading down to Turkey and Greece. In addition to random thoughts and impressions, the plan is to also post information that might be useful for fellow riders considering similar routes.

My bike was very helpfully prepared (and stored before this start) by the friendly people at Walz Motorsport in Herrenberg. The photo is with Eveline Walz and Klaus Walz. A big thanks to them.