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sv-wolf
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Re: SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

#1141 Unread post by sv-wolf »

blues2cruise wrote:Question.....

When you know you have a sensitive stomach...and you know you're riding into hostile territory....ALONE....why would you choose to go there and not some place else more conducive to finding food you can eat and less chances of being bombed?

Inquiring minds want to know.

You might need this.... :shooting:
That's a very good question, blues, and I am not sure I have a wholly rational answer to it. I have an itch. I've travelled widely in Europe and to some extent in North Africa and India. Now I want to go further afield. I guess I am also a stubborn oik and don't like things to defeat me.

On the issue of my diet, it's a challenge, definitely, but I've decided that there are ways around it. The things I do eat are limited but consist of fairly basic foods that are available in most parts of the world, so I don't think I will find it an overwhelming problem. I plan to carry some emergency rations with me to keep me going for periods when I can't get anything locally. Other than that I intend to visit markets and do most of my own cooking, so I can keep tabs on what I put into myself.

I think we have the media to blame for presenting us with an image of the world as a violent and hostile place when, in reality, most of it is no more dangerous than central London. Of all the hundreds of two-wheeled travellers I have met, I know very few who have experienced any kind of serious threat to themselves. Sure there are some war zones that need to be avoided, but warfare is very localised. People travel safely through Afghanistan every day, for instance, rarely encountering any sign of recent conflict. You keep your ears open for where the fighting is and stay away from it. One biker I know has just got back from Iraqi Kurdistan. He had a great time and apart from seeing a lot of men and women in military-type uniforms, experienced no signs of military conflict. Another friend has just gone to the Sudan for Christmas. She is in her 70s!

The consensus of Western travellers is that the world is mostly full of helpful and friendly people, and because, in many places, the tradition of hospitality to strangers is still strong, those people are often very much more helpful and friendly than back home. I think in The West we suffer from a deeply rooted and often unconscious xenophobia which leads us to demonise people from foreign cultures and see them as untrustworthy or dishonest or very different from ourselves. In fact, people are much the same wherever you go. They may have different beliefs and customs but they all have lives to lead and have the same concerns as you or I, getting a living, bringing up their families, enjoying themselves.

It's also a fact that much of the world is now modernised in ways that are immediately recognisable to a westerner. Iranian cities, for example, are probably much more modern than most British ones, their inhabitants well educated and highly cultured. I began to realise just how modern the world has become in the last 50 years when I discovered that there is now nowhere left on the planet where I can't order bike spares and get them quickly in the event of a breakdown. Reading up on Uzbekistan and Central Asia opened by eyes further. I had previously had this image of endless steppe lands inhabited by an alien, tribal people eking out a living in a highly insecure environment. It is a strongly Muslim area, the land of Genghis Khan and Tamberlaine, and it's true that people here still hunt on horseback with eagles, live in yurts on the hillsides and wear traditional tribal costumes. But these days many tend to go into the big cities, like Tashkent, to do their shopping. And if they wish, they can take the kids on the Tashkent subway out to the north of the city and spend the day at 'Tashkent World' which is a local version of Disneyland.

I want to travel because I want to ride across the Afsluitdijk; I want to see (and smell) the apple forests of Almaty where all the apple trees in the world originally came from; I want to visit the old imperial backstreets of Baku on the Caspian coast and see the oil bubbling up out of the ground; I want to see the firepits of Turkmenistan; I want to travel up Lake Baikal on a cargo ship; I want to see the Tufa hills and underground cities of Cappadocia; I want to visit Santa Sophia and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul; I want to wander around the ancient city of Persepolis, and see the great central square of Bukhara; I want to travel through the hills and see the caves of Dalmatia; and I want to ride the Pamir highway and see for myself what many say are the most beautiful mountains in the world.

Like a lot of people, I have many complex and personal reasons for travelling, but the bottom line is that I want to stop reading about the world I live in, step outside my comfort zone and see it for myself. Right now I have a small window of opportunity to do that. It won't come again. If I don't take it, I suspect I will remain regretful for the rest of my life. I'm not too worried about things going wrong. Most situations can be dealt with one way or another. And I've never met a long-distance two-wheel traveller who ever wanted to come home or, once home, didn't want to set off again as soon as possible.
Last edited by sv-wolf on Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

#1142 Unread post by blues2cruise »

I had to look up both of the places you mentioned.

You better get over there quick..... http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ing-apples

Also...that road you want to ride....quite the story behind how it got built. I also looked at the satellite image....very long and straight.
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#1143 Unread post by sv-wolf »

Hi blues.

I've wanted to cross the Afsluitdijk ever since I first read about it as a school boy. It's a magnificent piece of engineering, and an impressively courageous bit of planning: 20 miles of dike built across the Zuider Zee inlet to hold back the sea. A Dutch friend told me yesterday that there is a museum in the middle of it that charts its history. The dike is only a short ferry crossing to the Netherlands from here, so in a way it's surprising I haven't visited before. I'm fascinated by major works of hydraulic engineering (as you might have guessed from my posts of the Crossness pumping station). I often travel up to the Norfolk fenlands in the east of the UK. These are 200 square miles of drained marshes, mostly below sea level. They are maintained by a vast infastructure of causeways, drainage ditches, leveed rivers, pumps, weirs, coastal barriers and other flood management systems. The whole area will probably disappear underwater when the sea levels rise.

Yes, I heard that the apple forests of Almaty were under threat, but this article makes it sound so much worse than I had imagined. Thanks for posting the link; it is interesting to read what is happening there: sad, but interesting. The world our parents and grandparents knew is disappearing fast. That's another reason I want to see the world as it is now, I guess. I always used to be optimistic about the future of the human race. In recent years I have become less sure.
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#1144 Unread post by sv-wolf »

I awoke in the wee small hours of last night with my body pouring with sweat and my mind racked with a nameless anxiety. For a full half hour I lay on my back motionless in stark contemplation of the blackness of night, experiencing the fragility of my solitary existence within the vastness of the cosmos. It was borne in on me, then, that either I was having an existential crisis, or this was the beginnings of flu.

It turned out to be flu. Over the last few years, my biome has established a Christmas tradition of keeping open house for passing bugs. Well, flu, at least, is manageable. On reflection, though, a full blown existential crisis would have been more interesting.

At least I will now be able to claim some of the privileges of the unwell at Christmas: accepting cups of tea and getting out of the washing up, that kind of thing.

I'm now going back to my blanket to enjoy a little more cosy, self-indulgent misery before I recover and have to get back to normal! :wink:

Happy Christmas everyone.
Last edited by sv-wolf on Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Hud

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#1145 Unread post by drumwrecker »

That means I had a narrow escape today. I was going to call in on you this afternoon but I was too cold and needed to get home plus I thought you told me you were away for Christmas.
Anyway merry Christmas to you Richard and hope that bug don't bring you down to much.
Merry Christmas everybody and best wishes for the new year.
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#1146 Unread post by sv-wolf »

We have had some remarkable weather this year in the UK. It has been the warmest year on record and the fifth wettest (last year was the wettest). The roof beams in my attic are damp and lightly dusted with mould. That's never happened before. It's nothing serious, I think, just condensation, but I've started putting a heater up there from time to time - just in case. November and December had above average rainfall, and yet we have had day after day of good riding because, bizarrely, almost all of the rain has fallen at night, while daytime temperatures have remained mild. The Met. Office issued a few snow warnings, but none of the white stuff has managed to get further south than the Scottish Highlands (or occasionally the northern fells), or further east than the Welsh and Cumbrian mountains. Most of England has remained damp and warmish.

Christmas and New Year passed pleasantly and sociably this year, and in their usual surreal haze. I have a theory that a rent appears in the fabric of the universe at the end of December, for only mass, it seems, continues to operate during that week, while space and time go into abeyance.

I usually rely on a bike ride or two between helpings of turkey and Christmas pudding to shock the ordinary world back into existence, but with an vicious head and stomach cold to slow me down this year and an inclination to cosy up on the sofa, the bikes continued to stand idle in the back yard under their covers. That, though, is about to change. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be delivering the DR to Zen Overland for its Adventure Bike makeover as well as hopping about here and there on the Fireblade, carrying out a number of small jobs related to my trip: new camera, maps, dongles, documents, that sort of thing. I spent yesterday sorting out my will (y'know, just in case) and making arrangements with friends, cajoling one of them to get hooked up on Skype so I can keep in touch.

Here's hoping everyone on the site has had a good break.
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#1147 Unread post by blues2cruise »

I did ..... have a good break.

I got to meet my new nephew. Here he is at 2 weeks old.
Ethan 2 weeks old.jpg

I also got to go play in the snow....here's my car in it....that is in Manning Provincial park. It's in the Cascade range of mountains.
Car in snowstorm.jpg
I had gone to Penticton for Christmas at my brother's place. It was a dry green Christmas.

Manning park is in between home and my brother's.
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#1148 Unread post by sv-wolf »

Glad you had a good holiday, blues.

Ah babies! Whenever I see one, I still want one - but perhaps only to borrow, these days.

I read some research today about human babies. Unlike the infants of other species, they are exceptionally plump, and it's the plumpness, apparently, that makes them cute. Whatever the reason, Ethan is certainly cute.

I googled Manning Park. It looks spectacular - and decidedly cold at this time of year to judge from your photograph. I'm presuming that it's relatively high up. Though the horizons or close, I get a sense of scale from the trees and the greyness beyond. It reminds me a little of Scotland.

I came home today through Bancroft park. In my part of the world, though, a park is an area of manicured grass with a few ornamental shrubs and a bandstand - not quite on the same scale.
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#1149 Unread post by dr_bar »

Yeah, we have big parks. Most people that have never been to Canada, don't appreciate the size of our country. When a visitor from Europe for example thinks it's just a hop skip and jump down the road to Prince George for example; they get to Hope and figure they've missed the turn off. Hope is about an hour and a half away from Vancouver, it is actually where you turn off for PG, then you have only 400 more miles to go. BC isn't the largest province, but it is a tad big...
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#1150 Unread post by sv-wolf »

LOL, Yes, I can see. Vancouver Island alone looks about the same size as Southern England. (But that's why we invented the Tardis, and not you guys! :wink: )
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