Istanbul

I'm here.  Kind of anti-climatic coming in on a bus.....

Oh, yeah, and I've had bronchitis for 2.5 weeks....

Up and Up

I can walk now.  I cut my cast off after a week.  I don't think the cast helped at all.  I started walking with a cane two days after the cast came off and on day four I could walk anywhere.  It's still sore and I can't do jumping jacks or anything, but I'll be back soon.

Bad Guy kept backing out on meeting up with Armine's brother to give us our money.  I woke up one morning by the sound of Armine's mom bitching someone out on the phone.  I don't speak Georgian or Armenian or Russian, but it was definitely a bitchingout.  She was on the phone with Bad Guy's uncle.  She finally hung up on him, after threating to take Bad Guy to court, and 30 minutes later Bad Guy called Armine's brother to set up a rendezvous.  We got our money.

I wanted to make the 4 hour bus ride to pick up my bike last Friday, two weeks after the accident.  Armine called the police to confirm I could get it and they told her my bike wouldn't be ready for at least another five days.  I was leaving for Turkey in 4.... I blew up and made Armine call back and translate for me.  The cop blew up at everything Armine said (poor Armine had to hear it from me and the cop) and ended it by saying that he had to follow laws and regulations and he couldn't give the bike back until the investigation was finished, at least five days.  I called the US Embassy, 30 minutes later they called back telling me I could pick up my bike on Monday....

I'm at an internet cafe in Akhaltsikhe, where I got hit.  My bike is locked up outside and I'm scared to death that when I go outside a car will have hit it and it will be wrapped around the telephone pole....I can't wait to get out of this town.

The Twelfth of October - Doctor's

Armine's dad and his brothers make wine every fall.  They buy something like 500 lbs of grapes....


Monday morning we went to another doctor, for a second opinion for me and for a first opinion for Armine. I got on the US Embassy website to find the number of a Dr. who spoke English. There were several listed and I called all of them but none of them answered. I’d look up the medical clinic’s web-site, and there wouldn’t be a phone number listed anywhere. It was driving me crazy. So I went with Armine and her mom to the Health House, with Georgian speaking doctors.

The Health House is more of a campus of doctor’s offices. General Care in one building, radiology in another, ortho doctor’s somewhere else, with no communication between any of them.

The first place we went did an ultra-sound on Armine. I’m not sure what they ultra-sounded, I wasn’t allowed in the room. Then they did an ultra-sound on my ankle, and told me there was a lot of blood around my ankle…. The technician lady gave me a prescription (ok, not really a prescription, I don’t think they have those here, she just wrote down what I should get) for some kind of gel that I would put on my ankle which would help the swelling go down. My whole foot was really swollen at this point. We’d spent the whole previous day at the police station and in a bus, so I never got a chance to lie down.

We went into another room and they did a bunch of tests on Armine, she was having bad headaches, so they were checking her balance and how well she could focus her eyes, etc….

Armine’s mom paid for all this and kept the receipt to give to Bad Guy. And then we hopped to the radiology building. They told me it was about 100 meters, which is about a football field. I still have no crutches….the doctor we visited first didn’t have any and didn’t know where we could get some. I’d been hopping on one leg for some time now. I had Armine’s grandmother’s cane with me, but it just isn’t as helpful as crutches. I didn’t want to get a taxi for 100 m, so I hopped. I hopped for a long time before we realized the building was further than we thought. So we ended up getting a taxi anyway. My right leg was killing me from all the hopping, and everyone we passed stopped and stared….

We got to the x-ray building and the machine was on the second floor, no elevator. We both got x-rayed and had to wait an hour for them to develop. Armine’s mom walked around the whole time looking, unsuccessfully, for some crutches. While we were at the x-ray place Bad Guy showed up with his cousin (a girl), and two buddies. Varazdat, Armine’s brother, knew Bad Guy was bringing friends, so he came with two of his buddies. Armine hoped a fight wouldn’t break out, I did. This time I had a cane and Bad Guy wasn’t driving car, so I would have the upper hand.

The x-rays were finally given to us but the doctor to look at the x-rays was in a different building. So I hopped another 100 meters to a different building, with 10 people in tow, down 3 flights of stairs to the basement. I hopped into a doctor’s office and he looked at my ankle for a second, then a car crash victim walked in with a dislocated shoulder and sat down on the exam table next to me, so the doctor diverted his attention. The guy was obviously in a lot of pain and Armine was getting really squeamish, so we hopped into the hallway to wait a minute. When we got back into the doctor’s office he looked at my x-ray and said it wasn’t broken and started to prepare a cast. I wasn’t cool with this. I had Armine ask a bunch of questions, but the doctor just shrugged them off. It was odd that the doctor wasn’t consulting; he was making his own decisions and just doing it. I didn’t want or think I needed a cast, but he was set on it. I didn’t want it hard all around, so he just did a hard cast on the back of my calf and then ran it under my foot. The rest is just a soft wrap. My foot was still really swollen, but it would be easy enough for me to loosen or tighten it, since it was mostly just a wrap.

But now I can’t put spread on the prescription gel to help with the swelling, the gel the first doctor told me to get. There isn’t any communication between these doctor’s. So one will tell you one thing and another will tell you another and I guess I just have to pick which one I’ll listen to….

The ortho dr then looked at Armine’s x-ray, which showed that one of the discs in her spine, at her neck, didn’t look right, so he told her to get an MRI. I sat outside the doctors office with Varazdat and his buddies and Bad Guy and his buddies while Armine went and got an MRI. The results wouldn’t come back for another day.

Bad Guy paid for the x-ray’s and was given receipts for everything else.

All Armine and I do all day is lay around. I keep watching this Argentinean soap opera which is dubbed into Georgian. Every 15 minutes Armine brings me up to speed on what is going on: “This girl is crying because her husband’s previously lost at sea wife just came back and he is still in love with her. But the lost at sea wife was having an affair with some other guy before she disappeared and she loves them both. Then some other woman is hiding from the police in a basement because she was having an affair with her sisters husband, who then framed her sister by killing her husband. And then this guy got run over by a car by some woman because he was cheating on her, and now his legs have to be amputated….” It’s great. And one night a TV show came on and it was the Georgian version of Friends. It took me about 2 seconds to say ‘wait a minute, what is this?’ The set is almost identical, though the coffee shop is called ‘coffee house’ not ‘central perk’. Georgian Ross is fat.

Ben has changed his ticket and will now ride through Turkey with me after Christmas.

My ankle feels like it’s doing better. I don’t ever put weight on it and it only hurts if I put weight on it, so I’m not feeling any pain. I’m very anxious for some type of conclusion to Armine’s MRI. I wish she didn’t have to deal with this.

All things considered, we’re both terribly lucky. I’m lucky that I have such nice people willing to look after me and that I’m not stuck in some hotel in the middle of nowhere by myself. And we’re both lucky that we more or less walked away from it. When we were in one of the hospital’s the other day they wheeled some guy in who had two huge black eyes, cuts all over his face and wasn’t breathing on his own. That could easily both Armine and myself in Akhaltsikhe, Georgia……

I’m going to go watch more soap opera’s…..

The Eleventh of October - Cops

The police were supposed to come to the hotel at 10 am to get our official statements. They didn’t come until 12. The police station was only about 150 yards up the street, but I didn’t have my bike, and neither of us could walk. We could both hobble ok, but 150 yards was too far. Never in my life have I had to consider taking a taxi 150 yards….

Bad Guy and his uncles came to the hotel to see us, twice. Both times we told reception we didn’t want to see them. I later found out he brought us a chicken…..But we never saw this chicken…..

The cops showed up and drove us to the station. Armine’s foot was hurting now and she was limping. I was limping. And neither of us had crutches. All the hotel staff just laughed when they saw us trying to move around. We were quite pathetic. I couldn’t help her at all, and she couldn’t help me, and neither of us could really help ourselves. If anyone did offer help it was always for me. A man would let me put my arm on his shoulder and help me walk down the hall, but nobody ever paid attention to Armine. It drove me crazy. They would offer me help and I would tell them to go help Armine, but they couldn’t understand, or if they did understand they were more interested in helping the American.

Of course the office where we gave our statements was on the second floor, no elevator. When I followed the officer into the office there was another cop gambling online on the computer. I’m pretty sure he was playing for real money. He played games on the computer for almost two hours while we were there.

The interpreter, Helen, showed up late. She is Georgian and is the English teacher at the middle school in Akhaltsikhe. So she was really good at asking me my name, where I’m from and what my hobbies are…..Armine did a lot of translating for the translator. I would say something to Helen, and then Helen would look at Armine so Armine could put it into Georgian. But I guess she served the third party stipulation.

The cop made me sign some papers stating that I would tell the truth and if I lied I could be punished and blah blah blah. The papers were all in Georgian, technically written and long, so Armine just summed them up for me. On all of them I wrote “I have not read this….” And then I signed my name. The cop didn’t like it too much, but that’s his problem.

My statement took forever because of the translating. Then Armine had to give her statement. We were there for 3 hours.

My bike was in the room and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. When I got hit I was going in the same direction as the driver, so really he just made me go faster. My handlebars spun around and it severed the cable for my bike computer. This also tore the adjuster barrel, for my front brakes, right out of the lever, and stripped the nut, which isn’t a big deal. The frame on my seat is twisted and the leather has several large gashes in it. The aluminum tube on the rack that carries all of my stuff is bent. Not kinked, but bent. It is not attached to the frame of my bike, and can easily be replaced. My rear wheel is just as true as it was before I got hit. I wasn’t able to ride my bike because my foot was in a cast, but I flipped it upside down to run the crank and all the gears worked fine and my drive line is still straight. My bike is a tank and the only thing I’m slightly worried about is that my frame was somewhat bent. But I really don’t think it is. I made a list of things that needed replacing and it came to $208.

After we gave our statements Bad Guy’s uncle came in to talk money with us. Apparently the way it works is we tell him what we want, and if he gives it to us then that’s it. If he won’t give us what we want then it goes to court. Bad Guy is a commando in the military (he was in Iraq last year) and has been in trouble with the law before and really doesn’t want to go to court, so between him and his family they will come up with all the money to cover hospital bills and for my bike. This is what they’re telling us at least. We briefly saw Bad Guy the night before at the hospital. He keeps wearing this “I’m really concerned and sorry” pathetic face. He’s one ugly mofo. I’m pretty sure he’s sorrier for what he’s going through than for what we’re going through.

I had to leave my bike in Akhaltsikhe with the cops. We got our things and went to the bus station to go back to Tbilisi. I can’t take my bike for a few days and there’s nothing to in Akhaltsike.

Armine did not call her parents the night of the accident because they would have freaked out. She told them while we were at the police station, and they freaked out. Extended families are all really tight over here. She’s really close with all her aunts and uncles and with her parents cousins and their children and I don’t even know how far it goes. When she calls someone her uncle I ask if he is her mom’s or dad’s brother and she tells me that it is her grandma’s cousin’s grandson or something, I don’t even know. For the 4 hour bus ride back to Tbilisi she got a phone call every 3 minutes from a relative wanting to know if she was ok and when she was going to be home.

When we got to her house she had a few aunts and uncles there, along with her parents and brother. I felt like an idiot. Riding a bike isn’t necessarily risky, but it’s my decision to ride a bike in these places, and getting hit by a car is always a possibility. But Armine never made the decision to ride a bike; I was just giving her a ride. So it’s not fair that she got hurt too. Sure it wasn’t my fault, Bad Guy didn’t have his lights on and he was drunk. But I can’t help but feel responsible for Armine. Her family has been really nice about it, but I feel horrible that she’s hurt.

Armine lives with her mother, Susanna; Father, Norik; Brother, Varazdat; and 5 year old son, Davit (Armine is divorced). They’ve offered to let me stay at their house, since I can’t walk. They’re taking very good care of me. I asked Armine if I could have some orange juice. She texted her mom, who was out running errands and asked her to bring some home. Then her mom, her dad and her brother all came home with different brands of orange juice, in case I didn’t like one of the brands…. Armine and Davit are the only ones that speak English, and Davit doesn’t understand that I don’t speak Armenian or Georgian or Russian (they all speak all of these languages and interchange all the time). So if Susanne tells me something I look at Davit and ask what she said, but he doesn’t get that I don’t understand her, so he just says whatever he wants.

Armine’s brother, who is 21, wasn’t ok with the fact that Bad Guy just said he would pay, I don’t really believe him either. So Varazdat got on the phone and got a hold of Bad Guy’s uncle, then his commander in the military and Bad Guy himself. He yelled at every single one of them. “If there is anything wrong with my sister…” “If you try not paying….” “If you don’t get that bike fixed….” And on and on. It was cool.

We’re going to another doctor tomorrow, because the guy in Akhaltsikhe didn’t do anything. Armine’s brother is making Bad Guy (who is in town for military) meet us so he can pay….

My brother is able to change his ticket, with a fee. He’s not going to come out in 3 days….I won’t be there. But he’s going to try and come out and ride with me in December or January. It’s going to cost a little bit of money, but it will work out.

Bad Guy got hit with a $750 fine and his car taken away. I don’t know if anything else will happen to him or not. He’s really scared that I’m an American. Armine’s brother told him I have connections at the embassy….

I cut my cast off halfway through the night. It was hurting and I didn’t want it on anymore.

The Tenth of October - Big Fat Car Crash

On my way out of Georgia.

I got hit by a drunk driver, driving a black BMW, license plate “KKK 779”. The girl, my bike, and myself are all mostly ok.

When I got to Tbilisi a few weeks ago I saw a flier hanging on the cork board of an English book store listing the time and meeting place for the Mormon church. I’m a Mormon and I hadn’t seen a Mormon church since Bangkok, so I decided to go. At church I met this girl Armine (pronounced ar mee nay) who speaks English really well, so we hung out and she showed me around town. She’s Armenian, but has lived in Georgia her whole life.
Armine

20 km from the Turkey border is a town called Akhaltsikhe, Georgia. There is a really famous cave monestary not too far away from Akhaltsikhe, called Varzia, and it was the weekend so Armine took a bus to meet me so we could go see it. We ate dinner Saturday night and were on my bike back to the hotel. Sure, it was dark, but there were plenty of streetlights everywhere, I have reflectors on my bike and I was hugging the 10” deep ditch to my side as tightly as possible. I was easing onto the brakes because we were almost there and the road went slightly downhill. Armine was standing on the back of my bike like a skateboard when the BMW slammed right into the back of us. The crotch of my pants blew wide open to my knees, on both legs, though I didn’t realize this until about 20 minutes later.

Everything happened really quickly and really slowly at the same time. There was a really loud ‘POP’ and I thought “nuts, you’ve got to be kidding me….”. It felt like my bike popped a wheelie, which would be really hard for a bike as long as mine. Maybe it happened, I don’t know. It felt like I flew through the air for a long time. Like in comic books when the super heroes are fighting or going really fast and the artists don’t paint the background, instead they paint red and black zebra stripes or swirling backgrounds with lots of colors, that’s what it felt like. Then I hit the ground and started sliding. It felt like I slid forever. I kept thinking “when am I going to stop sliding?”
When the car hit my bike lurched forward. Because Armine was standing, she flew onto the hood. It took a second for the driver, who was drunk, and to whom I will refer to as ‘Bad Guy’ for the rest of my story, to stop.

I stopped sliding and looked up just as Armine flew from the hood of the car. After we were hit Bad Guy swerved just enough to the left so that he didn’t run me over and he stopped just in time so that when Armine landed she didn’t fly into any parked cars. Thanks Bad Guy.

I immediately jumped up and started running towards the car screaming every bad word Spencer ever taught me. Bad Guy was starting to drive away, and for some reason, because I felt fine, I figured Armine would be fine also, so I tried to stop him from getting away. I pounded on the drivers side window yelling ‘stop you *#*@*#@*, what the #@*#*@ is @*##&@ wrong with you, you @&*# piece of @*#&#’ and so on and so on. Mom, I’m glad you didn’t hear me.

I opened Bad Guy’s door and started punching him in the face screaming at him. I pulled him into the street and kicked him in the side a few times before hitting his face some more. He was choking on his blood saying things I didn’t understand. I think he was talking bad about my mom, so I just kept laying into him. When he wasn’t breathing anymore I…..ok, not really.

This is what really happened: Bad Guy stopped his car when I started yelling and pounding on his passenger side window. I think everybody who was standing around stopped. Armine later told me that she was feeling confused and really dazed and the only coherent thing she could make out was my incoherent screaming. Bad Guy stopped long enough for me to jump in front of his car. Once in the front I was slamming my hands onto the hood and yelling and pointint at him. His bloodshot drunk eyes locked onto mine, and he started to turn to the right and hit the gas. Bad Guy already ran me over once in the last 30 seconds, so I got out of the way so he couldn’t do it again. But I saw his plate: KKK 779. Bastard.

I ran back to Armine and she was standing up with people around her. I just kept screaming the license plate number and that someone should call the cops or something or anything. It was so frustrating because nobody could understand me and everyone was just standing around. I’m not sure what I wanted anyone to be doing, but whatever they weren’t doing was driving me crazy. I felt like I was being rational, but I was acting very hysterically. Because nobody could understand me, it just felt like they weren’t going to do anything and that I had to do everything. This wasn’t the case, but it felt like I needed to call the police, and I needed to catch the Bad Guy and I needed to help Armine, and I needed to get my bike out of the street and I needed to do all of the other millions of things that needed to be done. And it made me very antsy. I was pacing and yelling and ordering and everyone just stared at me. The frustration I felt was enormous.

Armine was scared but she wasn’t bleeding anywhere really so the people standing around took her into the hotel. Bad Guy dropped her off right in front.

I was still anxious and had a lot of adrenaline going through my body. I ran up the street to get my bike and brought it into the hotel. I checked on Armine and she said she thought she was ok. I found some guy and wrote down the license plate number and pointed to a license plate so he would know what I was talking about. I ran outside again to find my phone in the street. I was frantic. And the crotch of my pants was wide open.

I found Armine again and she had road rash on her hip that she was cleaning. The hotel people said they called an ambulance and Armine wasn’t into it. She thought she was fine. I had been running around so much that I must have been fine. I sat down and looked at my ankle.

I had been limping while outside, but didn’t even stop to look at it. I then saw that my right hand was really bloody and swollen and filled with gravel. This was the hand I pounded on Bad Guy’s car with, which probably didn’t help my hand at all. And this is when I saw that my pants blew up. The ambulance came and decided they wanted to take us to the hospital. The ambulance was a marshrutka, which is essentially a van. This van was gutted and Armine and I sat on wooden benches that ran down the sides of the vehicle. The road was incredibly bumpy and the ride was very uncomfortable, but only lasted about 4 minutes.

We get to the hospital and I immediately regretted not bringing my camera. I knew the situation was very serious, but I couldn’t help but notice how strange this whole experience was.

The hospital was a Soviet era building. It was very drab and cold. Every room and every hallway had a single 35 watt bulb dangling from a wire, centrally located and visibly retrofitted. Nobody had given me any sort of crutches and at this point I couldn’t walk on my left leg anymore, so I had to hop everywhere. And everywhere I hopped I was followed. Not just by staff who were there to look after me, but by everybody in the hospital, which was about 15 or so people.

We went into an examination room and sat down. They started asking us questions: name, birthdate, address, etc…. Armine translated for me. I was a little nervous because we had already taken an ambulance ride, and I wasn’t sure what the cost was going to be. I’m an unemployed American, I don’t have any health insurance. Trying to be as responsible as possible, I looked into getting some before I left for this trip, but the best I could do was something like a 4 month short term policy which would probably work internationally…..I hated even spending the money on it because I didn’t think it would ever do anything for me, but the language was vague enough that I figured if I had to be life lighted out of Tajikistan I could get them to pay something. But this policy expired months ago anyway, and I wasn’t allowed to extend it.

A couple of minutes later the doctor sauntered into the room….smoking a cigarette. I don’t ever think smoking is cool, nor have I ever thought anyone smoking a cigarette looked cool. But this doctor looked cool. Ignoring the fact that he was the one who was going to give us the care we needed, I was amused. He didn’t speak very much at all and when he did he didn’t take the cigarette out of his mouth, he just let it dangle between his lips. The brashness of his attitude was oddly cool, for some reason. And I realize I just used the word ‘cool’ too many times, but that is the best description I could come up with for my ‘doctor’.

Once the paperwork was finished they told me to get onto the examination bed and he looked at my ankle. They phoned the lady who runs the x-ray machine, she was at home, and then started cleaning up the blood from my hand. Then we just waited. Armine tried telling the doctor where she was hurt and he said “You look fine, besides, I need to fix the American first or we’ll never get into NATO….”

A 90 pound nurse came with a wheelchair to take me to the x-ray room. Every doorway has a 2 or 3 inch threshold and the men stood watching as this tiny nurse put everything she had into getting me through the doorway. Armine was doing a good job translating, her English is excellent, but there was so much going on and so many people coming into and out of the room, to gawk, that she was being asked millions of questions and couldn’t translate everything for me. So when they put me in the wheelchair, I had no idea where we were going.

When they opened the door for us to go into the hallway there were at least, at least, 15 people huddled around the doorway to look at me. I’ve never before been a pregnant woman, but I could only imagine what it would feel like to be wheeled out of a hospital room with a newborn in your arms to a huge crowd of relatives, everyone craning their necks to get a slightly better view. It’s exactly how I felt. I just waved.

The x-ray machine was down several very long, dark and cold hallways. It was about 11 pm and the place was empty.

The machine itself looked like it was out of a WW II movie. Large steel tubes painted in a cream color with a very uncomfortable table for me to sit on. They gave me no lead blankets to cover myself with when the x-rayed me. The nurses jumped behind a large shield.

We got back to the examination room and the doctor said that my ankle was not broken. I laid down on the table and just stared at the ceiling in frustration. The next thing I knew, the doctor put a cast on my leg. A cast. ????? While we sat there waiting for the cast to dry several nurses kept coming and going. They all kept talking and laughing. The only word I could make out, which was said everytime anyone spoke was: velosiped – bicycle.

While the cast was drying two guys walked in. Bad Guys friends or cousins or uncles or something I’m not sure. Everyone is related in these towns. The cops had already caught Bad Guy. These two guys asked us to not take this to the police, Bad Guy was scared of going to jail, and they would just pay us whatever we needed. I said (with Armine translating) “why should I believe he’s going to pay?” “Oh, well, it’s a very strong tradition with Georgian men to be honorable. If we say we’ll pay, we’ll pay.” “Your friend ran into us and drove away….how is that being honorable?” “Oh, well, he was very drunk and he thought he killed one of you, so he was scared because he didn’t want to get into trouble, so that is why he drove away…”. Armine wasn’t really into talking to these guys so she told them to get lost and they started getting angry….as if them getting angry would help us change our minds….

A police man came and asked us some questions and then said he would get an official interpreter for my statement, because I was friends with Armine they needed a third party. So he would get my statement the next day.

The hospital then gave us the bill, $50, and told us we could go. Armine said “why should I pay anything, you haven’t done anything for me?” So they sat her up on the table and cleaned her road rash. And that was all they did for her. She asked for some pain medicine because her head hurt, and the nurse said “oh, the doctor has left and I can’t tell you to take anything without asking the doctor.” “Ok, I’ll just get something at the hotel.” “Oh, yes. Just take anything…”.

I went to bed that night very frustrated. The police had taken my bike to their station as evidence, so I couldn’t inspect it. I did know that the rear wheel still spun freely and it didn’t look like the frame was at all damaged. But I just didn’t know what was going to happen.

Two hours before Bad Guy hit us I had spoken with my brother, Ben, on the phone. We were supposed to be meeting in Turkey in 4 days. FOUR DAYS. He bought himself a bike and we were going to ride through Turkey together for 2 weeks. I was so excited. 20 kilometers from Turkey, 4 days from seeing my brother. Now this.

For three weeks now I’ve had a round trip plane ticket from Istanbul to Las Vegas for the month of November. My little sister is getting married after Thanksgiving. She got engaged about a month ago and it’s my little sister, so I’m not going to miss the wedding. But I didn’t feel done with my trip so I bought the round kind of ticket. I’ll get back to Turkey early December and spend some more time there before heading south into Syria and Jordan. That’s been my plan. But when I fell asleep that night I didn’t know what would happen with my brother or Armine’s injuires, or the rest of my trip, or my ankle, or anything. I still don’t know what is going to happen with most of these things.

It’s a couple of days later now. My ankle is on the up and up. Armine is kind of up and down. Mine and Ben’s plans are slowly coming together. But it’s still very frustrating.

I don’t feel like sitting at a computer anymore….so I’ll write the rest tomorrow or something.

More Georgia

Kazbegi. Mount Kazbegi in the background with some famous church in the foreground. It was about an hour hike to get to the church. It was fantastic. The church is perched on top of a hill and can be seen from town. The Soviets had built a tram up to the top, but the locals tore it down....

I took the wrong trail up and approached the church from the back side. The final 200 meters to the church was a high alpine grass valley and reminded me of running in Alaska (incidentally, about the only thing I miss from America, aside from a handful of people, are the Thursday Evening Epics....).

Tbilisi.

Water fountain in Tbilisi. They were all over and had water continually spitting out the top. I'm too leary of anything that I haven't treated myself, or that hasn't come out of a bottle with a safety seal, for me to drink it. This one has a man's name on it and was donated by his family after the man died.

I slept at some guy's house. His name is Luka. He lets travellers stay at his house. It fluctuated, but one night we peaked out at 16 travellers....I had to go to bed early so I could get a 'good' spot.

Heading out of Tbilisi.

My dinner....

I met Eitam and his wife Ali in Tajikistan, they're from Israel. I kept running into them. I met them in Khorog. We all left separate ways and then I met them again in Khorog something like 2 weeks later. Then I bumped into them in Samarqand a few weeks after that, and then again in Bukhara. They flew home from Uzbekistan sometime in September. Then Eitam and his brother and father were going to be in Georgia the same time as I was. We emailed a few times, and I knew he was around somewhere. Then one night I got back to my place and there was a note on my bike, from Eitam. He walked into where I was staying and saw my bike.

I met Ivan while waiting for the ferry in Aktau, Kazakhstan. When we got to Baku we separated and I hadn't seen him in 2 or 3 weeks. He went to Armenia and we had just missed each other in Tbilisi. Then one week later I was in the mountains walking across a parking lot and a car drove by with somethe yelling my name (which is weird when you're in a weird place and someone knows your name....). It was Ivan.

I met Corrinne while riding my bike in Tajikistan. She's an American and is on a bike. We are both headed west but have been using different routes. Then I ran into her in Dushanbe, along with a bunch of other cyclists I had met on the way. Just like with all the others I knew she was going to be in Georgia, but I didn't know when. I had just bought a banana on the street in Tbilisi and I looked back and saw her and Michael.

I met Michael in Khorog, Tajikistan. He's a German on a motorcycle. When I got to Dushanbe I wandered around looking for a place to stay at 10 pm and I literally bumped into him walking down the street. So we shared a hotel. I left Dushanbe and he was sick, so I got ahead of him. I just missed him in Uzbekistan. He went the southern way, through Iran and again, I knew he would be in Georgia or Turkey sometime, and I thought I would see him. Then I bumped into him and Corrinne. It's strange continually bumping into these people. I like it.

Gori. This is Stalin.

Michael and I left Tbilisi the same day. He needed to spend some time in Gori picking up a recovered stolen camera from some Icelandic friends of his (bureacratic nightmare...I hope his friends appreciate what he's doing...). So we met the next day in Gori, ate a couple of lunches and went to the Stalin museum. Interesting place. Not at all objective. The place was covered with pictures of him. Him while he was young, during the revolution, while in exhile, etc....Pictures of happy Soviets driving tractors, the first woman to drive a car, Stalin and the first luxury car produced in the Soviet Union, etc.... Everything was in Georgian and Russian, but there was an older Russian woman giving a tour in English. She spoke so quickly that the only question asked during the 40 min tour was "Did Stalin play the piano?" (when we were in a mock up of Stalin's office and there was a piano). The response was "No. Over here in this case we have the uniform....". She didn't want any questions asked.

A bronze mask of Stalin, taken from a plaster cast of him which was made a few hours after he died. Yes, that is a full size replica of Stalin's face on a white pedastal surrounded by red carpet surrounded by marble columns in a room all by itself.

The only negative thing I heard was this (I don't remember the exact numbers....): "In 19XX, while under Stalin, 1.X million people were arrested for political reasons. 800,000 were shot while the remaining prisoners were sent to a prison camp. Unfortunately, X00,000 died in the prison camp due to bad living conditions. Over here we have pictures of Stalin's second wife and children....".

Heading out of Gori.

A church outside Kareli.

Tbilisi is ultra cosmopolitan. Parts of it felt very European. Once you get outside of Tbilisi though the villages are in various stages of disrepair. I take smaller roads when I can, so I pass through tiny villages. It's odd that the roads between towns are often paved, but once I hit a village the road falls apart. Most of the houses are built from logs and look like they're barely standing. A lot of people stand around doing nothing and the shops don't have very much stuff.

I was noticing all these things about these villages and then talking to a local about it. Last year when Georgia was having a war with Russia (that sentence sounds strange....) Gori was bombed quite heavily, as were the surrounding areas. Which also explained all the rows of cheap, quickly built tract housing I saw in a few places. They were there because people's homes had been shelled.....

Fall.

I ended up spending some more time in Tbilisi than I planned, because I liked it there. It's caught between really wanting to be Europe, but still being a city from the former Soviet Union. It's been one of my favorite cities, next to that place in Laos that sold only watermelon, coke and dildo's, of course...

Georgia is a little frustrating on a bike. There aren't a lot of roads and so I've been forced to ride on the highway for some parts, which has a lot of traffic and a lot of really crazy drivers. Also, a lot of the places I wanted to see have only one road leading there. Maybe it's sissy, but it's mentally frustrating to ride 250 km up a dirt road only to turn around and ride right back down the same way....

I'm in Borjomi now.

In two days: Turkey.

Georgia

From my first Georgian campsite. Near the Azerbaijan border.




This is at Davit Gareji (sp?). It's a cave monestary. The sloped slab of rock in the back has housing carved into it where the monks stay.


I walked around for 2 or 3 hours and saw cave dwellings all over the place. This place was way off any main road and not near any towns and there were quite a few Georgian tourists making a day trip pilgrimage.




This cave caught water and then directed it through the 'pipe' into a 'bath' which had a weir that overflowed into a large pit.


My bike with Signagi in the back. Signagi felt very Italian. All the streets were cobble and there was a fortress wall encircling the whole town.


I rode up to a town called Ananuri. This reservoir sat beside it.


A Georgian snack. It's either walnuts or hazelnuts (I don't know how to specify one or the other...) strung onto a string and then dipped in some type of jelly made from grapes. When it dries it looks like pooh on a string, but tastes like a fruit roll up.

Fortress in Ananuri.

Ananuri still....
One of the motorcycles in the background is owned by a guy from Palmer, Alaska. The first Alaskan I've met since climbing in Thailand. I don't remember his name. He used to live out on Maude Road, but now lives near the golf course. He's been working in Afghanistan for awhile. He's a civil engineer.


The national dish is Katchapuri. Ok, maybe it's not the national dish, but it's everywhere. It's pretty much just cheesy bread. It looks like a pizza, but just has cheese. I love it.


Mtskheta.


I walked around Tbilisi on Saturday looking at old churches and I saw about 10 weddings. They were cool to watch. This one had an acapella group which would chant short prayers after the priest would sing something. It was fantastic. I also walked in on a funeral. There was a long line of people going into the church, and Georgians just mostly wear black anyway, so I didn't even realize. I figured it must have been a nice church....when I got inside I broke off from the line of people to look at some paintings, and if I hadn't broken off, then I would have been standing right in front of the widow...offering condolescenses?

Georgian's don't preserve their dead the way they do in the west. It was open casket and the man's face was a very dark greenish/grayish color. A couple of days later I was in a neighborhood and a funeral was happening. A large group of people were walking down a narrow street, filling the street. In the front were 6 men carrying an open casket in which was a man, with the same dark green/gray colored face. It was interesting. The setting was very peaceful, very beautiful. I didn't take a picture, I didn't comfortable.


Another Katchapuri type dish. It's a bread bowl baked with cheese in it. Then they put in a slab of butter and a raw egg. The heat from the cheese cooks the egg. It's delicious.