C10-12: Batumi Rest Days

August 4, 2024

The body must have needed the sleep, as it was close to 14 hours straight. By the time I came to it was almost 2pm. Unbelievable. Well for a multitude of understandable reasons this trip is making me exhausted.

The hosts were top notch at the hotel. Earlier I had met the teenage son of the family and one of his first questions was, "Why are you doing this biking? You must be spending a ton of money. What is the benefit to doing all this?"

It was a legitimate question and I tried to explain: physical exercise, personal challenge, and learning more about the world. The bike is one of the best litmus tests for how the locals interact with you and getting a sense of the country.

I didn't want to tell him this, as he was such a nice guy, but I was beginning to see a pattern: the Muslim countries were more welcoming to solo bike travelers, and the Christian countries less so. You almost got a sense they hated us. In fact his question reminded me of my Dad, at one point a staunch Catholic who shot down my sister's idea of a bike tour through Mexico. At the time he said, "What fulfillment do you possibly think you could expect from doing this? You would ride a bike on those roads and risk your life to get killed, all for what?" After half an hour of this belittling talk, he crushed my sister's dream and she never did a tour, not even to this day. Then he went ahead and disowned us all anyway. What a real sport.

I also found out after he died that he was one of those MAGA types who had been warming up to Vladimir Putin and was willing to give him a pass. He also parrotted those talking points about how money was being wasted to support Ukraine when they couldn't secure the southern border with Mexico. Then he said Ukraine would be better off just surrendering to end the war. Unbelievable stuff.

But the hosts here were so nice I didn't want to say any of that and just answered politely. The teenager had many more questions and was genuinely curious about my trip. So the next day I met them again and he invited me to sit down with his Dad. They asked if I had breakfast then said "How can we help you? Ask us for anything you need, we are eager to help."

I asked if there was somewhere to buy a SIM card. The father said, "Come with us" and took us for a ride in his car. He said, "Don't worry about the bike, we have a car."

I chatted back and forth with the teenager and he wanted to know all about my story. I told him that I taught math in China and he was shocked at how much money was involved in doing this. He spoke a little Chinese and said, "I really want to go there. Now it's possible with the free visa policy." I said, "Welcome anytime brother" without saying that my goal was to get the fuck out and failing miserably at that by the way.

While this was happening I had my seatbelt on and the teenager said, "What is this about? Is there something in Canada where people wear seatbelts in the back of a car? Just take that thing off. Don't be afraid, we don't follow those stupid rules, we are safe."

As he said that the Dad drove like a maniac on the city streets exceeding 80km/h and braking heavily to avoid hitting a pedestrian. It was just like the cars on the road I had seen while biking. Just great, we really are in safe hands aren't we.

I was about to throw up to be honest. Eventually we found the SIM card place and succeeded in getting one. All the while the teenager kept asking, "So do you have any more questions? We want to help out. It is our tradition to do so. You are a special guest here." I asked about nightclubs and he said, "There are many clubs, tell me what you want." and I said, "Just a place to dance really, I don't want any of those other ones." and he laughed and recommended a few. Knowing him, he had been to all the clubs in the city and his Dad even recommended he show me around. That is doubtful it would happen, but it goes to show you that teenagers aren't stupid. All the rules in the West and China can't stop them, so why even have rules? Come to Georgia.

That amazing exchange done, he offered to be of more help tomorrow and now I wish I had stayed here longer. But there wasn't much way to make use of this since I absolutely had to leave for Tbisili on Tuesday to stay overnight once more and fly out on Wednesday to Thailand. The flights couldn't be changed, and covid slowed down my biking speed to get here. So that was that.

With bike in hand I continued my own city tour from where they left off.

Old Soviet era buildings. Remants of Joseph Stalin

Later on there was a social event and it became very clear they pandered to Russian speakers. I met several people who said "No English" and I tried to be polite by saying 'Privyet' and greeting them in Russian which is the extent of my very limited vocabulary. They were receptive to that, but overall I was being ignored at this event despite my best efforts. Even with the English speakers, I was having a nice chat with one of the organizers but a group of Indians barged into the conversation and took over. I was then left out in the cold. Trying to salvage it somewhat by walking around with a coffee and attempting to talk to others, it wasn't working then I realized I would be better off making for the elevators and leaving.

As I did so, a Ukranian woman walked into the elevator with her small dog and evidently she was bouncing from this failed even also. She said some stuff which unfortunately I assumed was Russian to which I said, "Sorry I don't understand, I'm an American."

Her response was the opposite of what I expected. She beamed and smiled and said, "Me Ukraina!" She then showed me the blue and yellow flag. At that point I said "Slava Ukraina" (Glory to Ukraine). She replied with "Heroyam Slava" (Glory to the Heroes). Unfortunately that is all I could say as while I could recognize Cyrllic, I completely forgot other conversational gambits in Ukranian.

We wished each other well, then I resolved I would throw the entire August giving budget into Ukraine support as well as get back to learning the language. For people like her, they have an extremely tough time. Georgia is absolutely slam packed full of Russians trying to escape the war. The vast majority stop off in Georgia and just cause trouble being bored. They could go somewhere else I suppose, but they choose Batumi. It is literally next door. They make no contributions to the local society. They just hang out and get into fights constantly. I saw such a violent fight last night at the casino that I turned tail and ran the other way.

Meanwhile this Ukranian woman surely gets mistaken for being a Russian constantly -- I just made that mistake. She somehow puts up with it. After all she had just sat there and listened to over an hour's worth of a boring speech in Russian and who knows what she must have thought while enduring it. But life is not easy for them. It cannot be.

Continuing on, a knockoff version of Starbucks. But the coffee was genuinely imported from there. The guy who runs it sources products, they just can't run a Starbucks franchise.

Closest location spotted where the nightclubs were at. In the end I didn't go, it was too intimidating

I put the bike back into the hotel storeroom for safety, then set out on foot not knowing what to expect for the rest of the night. After losing a small amount at the casino, I tried the clubs. It was just too intimdating. I saw another group of three Russian men arguing with the bouncers and becoming very confontational about it. Didn't look like very much fun.

But this trip was teaching me a lot. Sometimes you have to take a stand and deal with the fallout. This means in my case, say yes to Ukraine. Put it this way, if your father was a Putin sympathizer would you still defend your position? I guess it doesn't matter now, he's no longer alive. But it must be infinitely harder for the Ukranians who are fighting for their own survival. They are even fighting for the freedom of the western world on our behalf and that includes the MAGA supporters who criticize Ukraine policy. So let that sink in.

I don't think that people realize the gravity of this war and what's at stake here. This shook the foundation of the Post Cold War reality and the mistaken belief we all had, myself included, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was going to usher in a period of global peace and prosperity. Maybe for a period of time it happened, but we failed to take into account the Russian perspective and their history. Hint: they don't take humiliation very well. We also got it wrong with China on similar mistaken beliefs. Here is a direct quote from Xi Jinping himself: "Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered. In the end, nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist." This topic, he studies day and night and is obsessed over it.

The next day was more successful. The hotel had the delicious breakfast and then I set off on the bike for another city tour. Finding gyms would be somewhat of a priority too. Then it was updating the budget and trying to make sense of all the madness.

After that, not much happened to be honest. Just a couple trips to the casino where I won a little bit, then sat down and tried to deal with the stock market meltdown. At some point I did manage to go for a random walk and find a restaurant. Not easy given the lack of them, I'm getting a sense this isn't a restaurant culture. Supermarkets are slam packed. The walk was interesting as it felt somewhat like recovering Soviet vibes. All manner of life was about and it sure does feel like this is an up and coming country.

Today's ride: 13 km (8 miles)
Total: 858 km (533 miles)

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