42 Days, 13 Countries, 4,000km... on a bike. Location: Istanbul, Turkey.Distance Traveled: 3,776 km Once upon a time, two fairly normal guys had a fairly crazy idea. They thought it would be fun to ride their bikes from London to Istanbul to celebrate their graduation and see the world. September 27th marked exactly 42 days since they left London and completed their journey.
That’s right! We have ARRIIIIIIIIIIVED in Istanbul!Our last posting described the unsettling feeling in our stomachs as we closed in on Turkey. We hypothesized that perhaps it was because we were afraid that our finish might somehow be anti-climactic. Looking back, we realize just how ridiculous this thought was. If there is one thing that has been consistent about this trip, it’s that nothing comes easy. Each new day was filled with new challenges and lessons learned. Our final push into Istanbul would be no exception.  On the eve of our arrival we set up camp 30km outside of Istanbul to make for an easy morning ride into town. We found an abandoned apartment building perched inches from the water's edge of the Sea of Marmara. As we set up our tent for the very last time, we remarked that this was one of our finest camping sites yet.
Getting a tad bit sentimental, we rummaged the old apartment building to find a decrepit chest of drawers which we then pried apart to feed our raging bonfire. We sat back and listened to the mixing sounds crackling embers and crashing waves.
 That night we drank our ceremonial 'end-of-the-day-beers', we talked, we sang, and celebrated our last evening as adventurers before once again returning to normal life. As we were climbing into our sleeping bags we both admitted that we felt ready for this transition and and drifted off to dream about the glorious day to come.
As 5:30 AM rolled around, we woke up to the sound of pouring rain and the feeling of sopping wet sleeping bags. Our usually water-proof tent had given in and water drenched our sleeping bags, clothes and shoes. Still, our excitement for the final push outweighed the misery of packing up a soggy camp in the pre-dawn rain. By 6:00 AM we were on the road!
By 6:01 AM Ramsey already had a flat tire, narrowing the tally to 21 - 23. Chad, in a not-so-secret kind of way, was ecstatic that the flat tire count was nearly even. It seemed especially appropriate, as Ramsey had been mocking his skinny tires for most of the trip saying that they were too easily punctured and that he needed to get some "fatties" as he had done.
 This comment was always returned with a look that could burn through your soul while he muttered: “Your time will come Ben-Achour... Your time will come.” It seems, on our last day, it finally would.
 Patching a tire is different every time you do it. Sometimes you can get the tire off the tube and spend 30 minutes searching for a puncture that you never find, while other times it takes only seconds to find a guilty chunk of glass. Once the cause of the flat tire has been discovered, patching it is simple question of sanding the hole, applying glue, burning the glue, and pressing on a patch. In the rain though, all of this is more difficult. Since you can’t patch a wet tube, we found ourselves huddled over the tire, trying to dry it with a lighter and the only "dry" clothing we had left. With a bit of teamwork, the tire was changed and we were back on the road by 6:31 AM. By 6:32 AM Ramsey's back tire went flat too! Chad’s eyes glowed with satisfaction, and Ramsey jokingly wondered if perhaps he had slashed them overnight just so that his time would, indeed, come before the trip's end. In any event, with 30 minutes and 4 hands, the second flat of the day was patched and we were finally ready to go. Just before crossing into turkey a few days earlier, we had met a French man who had been walking and cycling around the world for two and a half years. He told us that the final stretch into Istanbul was a nightmare and that we should take a bus. We smirked and said we'd never taken a ride and didn't plan to either, but maybe we should have listened to him.... As we cycled the final 30 km into Istanbul, we were forced to ride on a busy highway with no shoulder. With cars passing at 140km an hour, we hugged the white painted line trying our best not to let the rain and wind gusts push us into traffic or off the road. It took all of our energy to focus on not swerving. Kilometers tallied slower this morning than any other of the trip. With 15km left to Istanbul a loud SNAP crackled through the air. Chad’s gear cable had snapped in half, reducing his 18 speed bike to a lousy 3 gear. Our bikes were literally buckling under the stress of riding 4,000 km. Kilometer after kilometer we rode up rolling hills and then back down them. Chad’s lack of gears, however, meant that riding up them was much more difficult than it should have been, slowing us down dramatically. Similarly, riding down hills with out a proper gear meant that he couldn’t pick up any speed. It was purgatory. Now with a clear advantage, Ramsey began to feel bad that he didn't have to push as hard to do the same distance. It somehow felt unfair after riding nearly 4,000 km under the same conditions that one of us should be struggling more than the other for the final push. Well, at that very moment, Ramsey's bike swerved and skidded and he was thrown from his bike. We looked down to realize that the cause of the accident was yet another flat tire. Now at 23-23... his time had finally come! Because this flat tire was more accurately a slow leak than a pop, we decided that it would be better to just pump it up every 10 minutes as we were so close to our goal. With 15 kilometers left to Istanbul, Chad had no gears, Ramsey was stopping every 10 minutes to pump his tire, it was raining, the wind was blowing, and cars were angrily honking at us. All we could do was laugh, and hope that the Blue Mosque was around the corner. So, often times when a sign reads 30km to whatever city its listing, it means 30 km to the center of town. This, unfortunately, is not the case with Istanbul. Rather, the signs here mark the distance to the city limits. Now its important to note that Istanbul has a population of 20 million people, and from one city limit to the other spans 90 km of urban sprawl. This is all useful information that we would have loved to have known. Unfortunately, we were ignorant to these facts. As it turns out, upon arriving at what we thought should be the center of town, we still had 40 km to go!  In retrospect it's quite funny to think about, as we didn’t know we had 40 km left until we actually arrived at the blue mosque. Rather, we kept on thinking “It must be around the corner! It has to be around the corner!” …It was NEVER around the corner.  In the final stretch to the end of our journey, we couldn’t help but think back to all that we had experienced, and about the good people we had met along the way. We remembered the beautiful small roads that winded through French villages, and the knowledge and inspiration that was imparted upon us along the way.  We remembered the hospitality and generosity that we first encountered in Italy when we met the Sami family. We were brought back to the breathtaking beaches of Croatia, and the war-scared landscape of Bosnia.  We thought about the scary Serbian men we met in Montenegro who turned out to be some of the kindest people we have come to know on trip. We remembered the gremlin children of Albania that helped to push us up unforgiving mountains, and the family in Kosovo that gave us a safe place to sleep away from the millions of landmines that litter the worlds newest country.  Macedonia entered our memories as a place where new friends helped to re-invigorate our souls, while Greece stood out as a country of beauty and sincerity.  Above all else though, we thought about our friends and families that supported us along the way. Our spirits were always lifted by the daily text messages from our girlfriends, the encouraging phone calls from our parents, siblings, and grandparents, the emails and WALL postings from new friends in London, and the blog comments from old friends from home and all over the world. It took a good idea and a lot of thinking to start our journey off right, but it took support from the people we love and the kindness of good people all along the road for us to finish it.  Reminiscing about all of these surreal memories, we began to wonder how we would remember Turkey. As the minarets of the Blue Mosque entered our line of sight, it became clear: we would remember Istanbul the same way as the Byzantines and the Ottomans might have... we would remember it as a place where great struggles end and dreams are fulfilled!  
Locatıon: Kesan, Turkey. Dıstance Travelled: 3,498 km  This morning we woke up to a cool Turkish breeze, wrapped in our sleeping bags, with ninja style headbands tied tightly around our heads for warmth. Tucked under the crumbling awning of an abandoned school, we had been perfectly prepared for an overnıght rain.  As the highway traffic began to roar, we quickly packed up camp and hıt the road. This morning, while sımılar to many other mornings of the trip, we are left thinking two things.  First, why do we both have a uneasy feelings in our gut? It's some strange combination of relief and disappointment. We are relieved that we're going to make it, seemingly on schedule, on budget, and on target. Although we don't dare whisper the words ''we've made it,'' as we know the power of the potentıal suprıses that the trip can throw our way. The hint of disappointment is a bıt of a mystery... perhaps a fear that the final push into İstanbul will be slightly anti-climatic? Perhaps sadness that this adventure will soon be over? But neither seem to really explain it...
 The second thought ıs that we realıze that we have truly adapted to our mission. There are many indications of this: - We have incrementally downsized our packs to half the size and weight of departure, as we now know exactly what we need and desire nothing of excess.
- We can spot a safe and sheltered place to sleep from 5 miles away and can unanimously agree on the perfect time to set up camp or peddle on.
- We can scramble for our rain gear and be completely waterproofed in 1.8 minutes at the onset of a rain.
- We can remove, patch and pump a tire in 12 minutes flat.
- Our darkened skin no longer requıres sun-screen.
- We freely cross borders with comfort and quickly embrace new languages, foods, religions and social conventions.
- We have developed a strange set of 'Ramsey\Chad World' rules and conventions such as rotating trash duties, budgeted bonus treats, a refusal to litter, and open and honest communication. Thıs all keep our little travelling side-show healthy and happy.
These however are somewhat topical. At the heart of our adaptation, which has taken a long time, is that we have found peace in uncertainty, and developed the humility to be helped. Since the now distant memory of Albania we have travelled through Kosovo, Macedonia and Greece.
In Kosovo, we peacefully enjoyed rich coffee under the shadow of a Mosque while German peacekeepers rolled by in armed tanks.  In Macedonia, we were treated like absolute kings by a friend of a friend named Dimitar. İn his generous, fast-paced, and quick-talking way he gave us a place to keep our bikes, drove us around the city for a tour, paid for our 2nd hotel of the trip, and treated us to two incredible Macedonia meals and countless Macedonian beers and coffees. With a mild hangover and many good memories we were on to Greece.
 In Greece we found that the seasons have officially changed. İn the period of just a few days the temperature has dropped 20 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, Greece has been wonderful. With an entire day off at the beach, hundreds of kilometers of coastline to ride, and tasty Gyros to eat, Greece has no doubt lifted our spirits.
Sitting here, writing this, we suddenly understand where the disappointed comes from... we now see that whıle our adaptatıon has taken weeks, in 3 days it will no longer be useful... our adaptatıon wıll expire... somehow wasted. Hmmm... but then agaın, perhaps we will carry some of the deeper types of adaption forward. This thought seems to lift the disappointment.
Three days to Istanbul and the sun ıs shınnıng! - Chad and Ramsey 
Location: Thessaloniki, GreeceDistance Travelled: 3,163 km  So its been quite a while since our last blog entry. Internet has not been as readily available as it was in the earlier days of our trip. We have officially made it 3200km and are currently on the Greek coast outside of Thessaloniki. Life has not been this great in quite a while. Actually, life has been pretty rough. When we last left you, we were in Podgorica Montenegro. We had been struggling with the Balkans but we had also been pleasantly surprised by what they had to offer. What we didn't know was that we were about to be savaged by the mountains of Albania....Oh Albania! .jpg) Since the beginning of our trip, people have been warning us about Albania. The usual remark people made was " ALBANIA!? ARE YOU CRAZY?!" Of course, we paid no heed to these warnings. To us, Albania was just another challenge that, if attacked head on, could be overcome. Well, in the end, it turns out everyone was right. We WERE crazy to go through Albania, but it was a challenge that could be overcome. The question, however, was at what cost. .jpg) Now let us preface this blog entry by saying that we have really tried to not complain throughout this blog. we've wanted to keep the blog fun and positive. We figured no one wants to hear about our sore bums, or our disgustingly putrid clothing that hasn't been washed in weeks. Well, the next few paragraphs represent a stark departure from that line of reasoning. With that being said, we would like to express our belief that Albania is the WORST place in the world you could ever want to cycle through! Holy Shit! We literally nearly died there. We actually found ourselves saying over and over in our heads " We WILL NOT die in Albania! We WILL NOT die in Albania!" For those of you who don't know anything about the geography of Albania, lets just say its a country of mountains. Mountains, however, come in all shapes and sizes. Some mountains are few in number but tall in stature. Other times they are plentiful but short. As it turns out, Albania has every type of mountain you can imagine. .jpg) There were days where we would cycle for 100 kilometers and 67 of them would be uphill...and by uphill we mean UPHILL. The physical challenge of climbing mountains on a bike is pretty damn difficult. The psychological battle that accompanies that challenge, however, is the real war. It seemed that the geographical nature of the mountains of Albania were such that mirages became the norm. That is to say, after winding up the mountains and finally reaching the top, our euphoric joy always turned to manic depression as we would realize that climb had only just begun. These psychological defeats were by far the hardest parts of our days.
.jpg) Two days into Albania we found ourselves in a horrible situation... With the sun beating down on us at 40 degrees, and mountains all around, Chad began loosing his senses. Dizzyness, nausea, confusion, exhaustion, and general disorientation set in. With the next village (usually consisting of of a few houses and an understocked general store) 50 kilometers away, this was the worst place in the world for one to get sun stroke, but that's exactly what Chad got. Our only option at this point was to pull over and try and get his body re-hydrated and cooled down. For nearly three hours chad lay on the side of the road motionless and in a daze. I collected water from a natural spring that was luckily very near, and forced ourselves to drink as much as was possible. It was during these hours that the scariest realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Even if we had wanted to (or needed to) quit, there were hundreds of kilometers of mountains in all directions that we would have had to climb. We were truly stranded. This was by far the lowest moment of the trip. .jpg) In the end, we waited on the side of the road and until the heat died down and chad came back to life. We pushed up the road as far as we could until we found a place to camp. Camped out next to a small stream and with trees to provide shelter from the unforgiving sun, we ate a dinner of plain rice and re-hydration salts. It was a dinner for kings. Ultimately, we took the time we needed to recover from the first blow that Albania hit us with, and we managed to push on. But this was by far the last blow. There is little time to describe the many ways in which Albania savaged us, and I'm sure you probably don't want to hear about some of them. Briefly though, Albania's roads (or lack thereof) slowed us down to no end. At one point, the main road turned into a gravel minefield of potholes that stretched on for 40 km. .jpg) This did quite a number on our tires, and some days all we did was change flat tires (the official count is now Chad: 23; Ramsey: 14). .jpg) Gremlin children used to chase us in the streets as we passed through their villages and would try and steal our food that we had attached to the back of our bikes (they got a load of bannanas from Chad, but sometimes helped push in exchange). .jpg) Also, Ironically, the spring water that potentially saved our lives when chad got sun stroke ended up giving us both explosive diarrhea...Ever try riding 120k in a full spandex body suite under those conditions? yeah...don't try.
Well there is so much more to say about Albania but we really have to run. If you ever want to know more about it, just ask one of us and we will be sure to rant your ear off for hours. .jpg) Since making it through Albania, though we have ridden through Kosovo, Macedonia, and now Greece. Every one of these countries deserves its own blog posting, and we will do our best to do that! We will see what happens though. .jpg) But for now, we must say goodbye! its time for a dip in the Mediterranean!
A litte video of the jump of the bridge of Mostar. The vid is of Chad, but Ramsey also did the jump... just replace the silent and rigid body with a flailing ball of limbs yelling "OOOOOOOOOOOHH MY GOD." .jpg)
Location: Podgorica, MontenegroDistance Traveled: 2,429 km
 I'm writing this entry from what we think is the only internet cafe in the country. Since our last update we have explored Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and by nightfall we'll be in Albania. The Balkans have so far been full of surprises. Since Ramsey has been to some of these countries before, you'd expect that he'd have properly warned us. I claim he never tried, and he claims I never listened :) Regardless, the last few days have been INTENSE to the saythe least. Here are our Top 10 things that Chad didn't know about the Balkans, and Ramsey failed to inform! They are a mix of things that make the journey both tantalizing and punishing! 1. Deadly Heat
Yesterday it was 45 degrees Celsius (113 fahrenheit). We now wake up at 4:30AM to try and beat the heat... with a bit of effort we're on the road by 6AM but somehow the heat always catches us.
 2. Beautiful Beaches Only 14 years after the war, Croatia is now one of Europe's hottest beach holiday destination. Yes, we definitely took a day off to work on our SERIOUS farmer tans.
3. Land Mines Right, so about this war. In hyper speed, it happened after a peaceful region lost it's uniting leader, Tito, and old and new conflicts lead to invasions, war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. The area seems to have healed up very well. The visible traces are bullet ridden buildings yet to be rebuilt, the ruins of once vibrant villages, and hundreds of cemeteries and war memorials for the estimated 100,000-200,000 thousand lives lost just over a decade ago. There also happens to be some 4 million un-detonated land-mines... which leaves lots of perfectly good land to waste. This of course makes camping difficult. Through much of Bosnia, we didn't dare leave the paved road unless it was on to somebodies yard. Don't worry, we are through the worst of it and all is perfectly well! It sound much worse than it is!  4. Mostar A 400 year old bridge, the Bride of Mostar, connecting the predominantly Christian Croatian side to the Muslim Bosnians side, destroyed during the war has now been rebuilt. Traditionally to prove their bravery, young men took the 24 meter plunge. Since it will apparently help us with "the ladies" we thought we better both do it.  5. Mountains What the F#$&*? We thought that the Alps would be the last mountain we'd see. Turns out we were wrong. Our daily pace of 140km has been crippled to an average of 95 km as we expend all our juice on climbing and descending ridiculously steep and windy mountain roads. But at least if you go up, you always get to come down! eventually...  6. Generous People While we found patches of generous hospitality in Western Europe, so far the Balkans have been consistent. Thanks to a fantastically welcoming family in Bosnia, the Tulyi family last night we had a real shower, ate a real meal and slept in a real bed . If two foreigners who didn't speak your language rode up to your house to ask for a place to camp, would you invite them in for dinner and then put them up in your guest room?  7. Snakes Because of the heat, we started sleeping under the stars, without the tent... Until the Tulyi family informed us that the dry rocky Balkan country side is ripe with snakes. Uhhhh we're back in the tent! 8. Rogue Cows
Nothing makes you smile more after a long climb than being passed by a rogue cow.
 9. Cyrillic The last challenge has been hilarious. So our map and everythingon it is now useless, as parts of Bosnia, all of Montenegro and much of many places to come use a different alphabet! Ohh cyrillic!  10. Seemingly scary Serbian men are a ton of laughs!  So yes, this has all been very intense... but really it's been an amazing few days and you don't need to be crazy to travel to the balkans. An air conditioned hotel room, pinacoladas, and lonely planet would set any of you up for a great vacation here!
If all goes well, we'll be on the streets of the worlds newest independent country, Kosovo, in a few days. We'll write from there!
- Chad and Ramsey
Location: Split, CroatiaDistance Traveled: 2,001 km
 Hello all, Our last blog entry left you with a video of some of our most fun moments of the trip.  We didn't have the time to write our full story, and sadly we don't really have time now either. So much continues to happen everyday that our memories are blending with one another and our days seem to be overlapping. One thing is sure though: we have cycled over 2,000 km away from Westminster Abbey and are in Split, Croatia. Today is our second day off since our trip began 19 days ago. I suppose we should start our story back with our arrival in Italy.  The first thing we realized upon our decent from the alps into the Italian plains was the heat. Gone were the cool wet days of England and France. Rather, just when we thought we had reached the apex of our physical capacity to push ourselves, we were met with a new struggle of how to keep our pace of 120km a day in 38 degree doldrums. It was a struggle that made our Italian experience miserable until almost the very end. That is not to say that we did not enjoy our trip through Italy, as it is quite hard to not enjoy yourself when there is so much good pizza, pasta, gellato, and wine to be had. Instead, Italy was where we began to face new challenges. The lack of rest days combined with the heat made us cranky at times...It made us insular and easily annoyed. We began squabbling about whether or not our food had been divided equally, and we became paranoid that we were secretly trying to sabotage each other. Our conversations slowed until there was a silence. No sounds could be heard except for the wind blowing over the cracked and dried maize fields that went on for hundreds of kilometers. We had reached our breaking points.  After 5 days of this, something had to give. We had began hoarding our food rations, and selfishly thinking only of ourselves. Our team spirit had broken down. It would take an exogenous shock to reinvigorate our spirit. After a few nights of renegade camping in a pear field, next a mosquito infested haunted house, and in a trailer park, we decided to revert back to our more sociable strategy of knocking on peoples doors.  It was by pure chance that we knocked on the door of a family that would make us once again realize the purpose of our trip, and in so doing, bring our team back together to attack with solidarity the second half of our adventure. Meeting the "Famillia Sami", was by far the highlight of our Italian adventure.  Their kindness and generosity was incredible. They allowed us to stay in their back yard, and immediately brought us a bowel full of fresh figs and pears, picked fresh from trees only 20 meters away. They gave us bottles of water, and a bottle of wine. They invited us into their house to relax and chat with the family. Well....to be honest, chat might not be the best word to describe it. What started off as primitive forms of sign language, slowly transitioned into the use of rudimentary words of Italian. incredibly, by the end of the night, both Chad and I spoke fluent Italian--either we are fast learners, or the wine transformed us into linguists. In any event, we communicated with the whole family, including the 85 year old grandmother who took a special liking to us. They invited us for dinner, and we graciously accepted. After eating salami, fresh grapes, pasta bolognes, more figs pears and wine, we were officially stuffed. It was amazing to us that this family could accept complete strangers into their house and treat them with such great generosity. It made us embarrassed that just the day before we had been bickering over one spoonful of rice. The next morning we woke up revived. we slept well, we had eaten well, and we had experienced a side of humanity that one rarely has the pleasure of experiencing in normal life. We both agreed, however, that this was not a unique experience. Rather, there are generous people all around the world and meeting them is simply a question of putting yourself out there.  With good memories freshly in our head, we pushed ourselves harder than we ever have before and cycled 200km in 8 hours to the Italian Port of Ancona where we caught a ferry to Croatia. Our next entry will attempt to describe the adventures sure to be had over the next few days.  -Ramsey & Chad PS- You may have noticed that our route changed. We have definitely decided that taking a bus, train, car, or gondola is cheating...but we are flexible on ferries. :) What do you guys think? 
We have arrived in Italy and crossed the Alps. Were not going to bore you with stories about how hard it was or how painful it was. We are not going to tell you about all the times we wanted to just quit... instead we are going to show you what we REALLY remember. Enjoy :) Current Location: Chambéry, France Distance Travelled: 1,130 km  We're in a town called Chambéry, nestled in the foothills of the French/Italian Alps.   In the 250km since our last entry we've been enjoying our last few days in the French country side, sipping affordable wine and plucking apples from the trees.  It's given us a lot of time to discuss how we should enter Italy. Should we go south through Monaco and totally avoid the mountains, should we slowly meander through valleys, adding kilometers, but avoiding altitude, or should we suck it up and go straight over. What we do know is that the crossing is 3,000 meters high and the temperature drops 1 degree Celsius per 100 meters of altitude. We feel that we're getting stronger, riding 7-9 hours per days, but we're not really sure if we're ready to cross the Alps. They came much sooner that we thought they would. We really can't decide...  Today, while taking one of our many pit stops, we were scarfing down an entire box ice cream bars when a little red car pulled up. Out of the small car, a woman in her 40s stepped out and walked into the shop. Left in the car was an old man, likely her father, who was meant to wait while she did the shopping. He sat there patiently with his eyes partially closed while we devoured our ice cream. Suddenly, the red door creaked open. He placed his legs one by one out of the car, and slowly and painfully stood up. He walked toward us a few steps then stopped. He took a long hard stare at our bikes, then at the road, then at us and then at our bikes again. After a few seconds of silence, he cleared his throat and said:
"En-profitez vous de votre jeunesse. Quand c'est tard, c'est trop tard."
"Take advantage of your youth. When it's late, it's too late." Ramsey and I looked at each other and instantly knew how we'd get to Italy. We'd climb the Alps.  The old man's words, while so simple, set off a storm of thinking. Not just about a bike trip, but about our lives, our contributions to the world, our careers, our families and our friends. Have we been taking advantage of the opportunities presented to us? It's a question well worth pondering. As the old man consciously reminded us, life is short.  So tomorrow morning we're waking up early for our first day of climbing, hoping to reach Torino, Italy in 3 or 4 days. These will likely be the hardest days of the trip, but we're excited.  We'll send our next message over Italian wine and pizza!
En-profitez Vous!
- Chad and Ramsey
PS-Since we have limited Internet access, can someone google to see if bike seat impotence is permanent?
Current Location: Dijon, FranceDistance Travelled: 760 km
 Well its been 8 days since our last post and a lot has happened. Not so sure we'll have enough time to go through it all as we only have a couple of minutes to spare in this Internet cafe. But here goes:  Approximately 7 nights, 1 ferry ride across the English channel, 50 peanut Butter sandwiches, 40 cheese sandwiches, 12 baguettes, 2 flat tires, 2 wipe outs, 2 swollen knees and a bruised rib since rolling away from Westminster abbey, we find ourselves 760 kilometers down the road in the French town of Dijon. And yes, this is where the mustard comes from...and its even better tasting when its fresh.  Getting here to Dijon has been the most amazing experience. we've managed to stay predominantly on smaller country roads, and have enjoyed some magnificent views. Some of the people we have met have been crazy, others amazingly nice, but all of them have been interesting to say the least. Every night we knock on strangers doors and ask if they know of a place where we can camp for free...we either get chased off with shotguns, or essentially made part of the family. To date we have stayed in a field of slugs, next to a cathedral inside of a castle, in the front yard of woman who just happened to be turning 60 that night, inside a cow manure filled barn, in a forest...twice, and in a park inside the french equivalent of Hollywood. We hope to find a tree house soon...   Every day seems to bring new forms of suffering, followed by new experiences of joy. Two days ago we rode 120 k in a monsoon. it only stopped raining once for 30 minutes...the exact 30 minutes we decided to take a break. Fortunately all of our gear was waterproofed. unfortunately, however, NOTHING that says its waterproof actually is. Despite a very long and wet day, we found joy in knowing that we didnt let that day beat us. We also found joy the next day when chad had an brilliant idea to jump off of a 40 foot bridge into a river! The good thing about rivers is that they are fun to swim in AND they serve as a shower :)  Well I know there is a lot missing from this blog entry, but time is money, and money is something we dont have. with a 5 euro a day budget, keeping ones tummy filled AND getting lost on the web is a luxury. We will write again as soon as we can. Hopefully we will be on the other side of the Alps by then. We will see. - Ramsey and Chad P.S. One day we got lost and stumbled upon a 300 acre forest of marijuana. Of course we were shocked and appalled that the French authorities would allow such a scandalous horticultural act to go unchecked. We did our part, however, by chopping down a small section of the forest for... "disposal."  You might think trying to finish your masters thesis three weeks before it's due sucks... you're right, it does. But what also sucks is trying to fit 80 pairs of spandex into two small panniers.
The likes of Ramsey Ben-Achour and Chad Hamre have teamed up for a mighty journey.  Starting off on August 17th with our rear tires rested against the buttresses of London's Westminster Abbey, and rolling up 42 days, 13 countries and 4,000kms later to the minarets of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul Turkey.
We'll try and write weekly updates and let you know how the trip is going. Here is our route:  Ride on Amigos.
- Chad and Ramsey |
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