Day C6: Just Who Are We Caucasians?

July 31, 2024

I woke up much later than expected at 11am and completely hungover. Oh boy. But the decision was made I had to get going otherwise there was no way I could make it to Batumi. The hosts treated me to a lovely breakfast again. I said "Well this may be a dumb question but is there anywhere I can buy a small bottle of cognac and give to my wife? The only ones I see in the stores are these huge bottles." They said unfortunately that was the only option. The husband said "Why not buy her gold? You can find that in the city market and it's world famous"

How amazing is that, she even did my laundry

Last night they had even told me "We see many guests here. All kinds of people. Nothing surprises us anymore. A guy like you on a bike trying to solve a midlife crisis is a first but we also met someone before who was running away from his wife. Good thing you talked to her last night and tried to work things out, I thought you were going to be version 2.0 of that guest. But even if you are, you're still welcome here anytime"

I thanked them very much for the hospitality and the whole thing only came to $60 for two nights. Now we were finally getting somewhere. That was still much less than what the bloodthirsty taxi driver took from me.

We did talk a lot about that last night also. Anna said "It's really not about the money although people might think it is. When they cheat you like this, it is their entire view of the world and how they see people"

I said "Exactly and it is a massive form of disrespect. When they do this they are basically insulting you to your face. So yes I sure take it fucking personally, it is them making a mockery of you and saying 'Hahahahahaa look at this rich foreign idiot showing up here all by himself, he is a non person, and we're going to do everything we can to take from him. We'll smile and act friendly to his face and say welcome to Armenia as we stab him in the back"

It is particularly this kind of attitude which irks me and it really isn't about the money but how people like this live by a dark and nihilistic view of the world. It reflects more on them than me.

I did realize I missed my wife a lot while sitting there having breakfast the next day. The host was making orders on her laptop and negotiating with buyers for freight logistics and while a different business it was a very similar kind of thing.

Next thing the recruiter of the school got back to me after I wrote him. He said yes definitely take your time, I am also a family first person. He said he was continuing to look for other candidates and the way this was going it was pretty much dead in the water for my immediate Middle East dreams. So yes the whole thing was completely predictable and friends back in Shanghai were calling bullshit the whole time. At this point it looks like they won.

But is this a resolution to the midlife crisis? It can't be. All this accomplished was to kick the can down the road another year and it will be the same thing all over again, but maybe solving the problem in Azerbaijan.

Speaking of which I had been very careful all trip to document every hotel stay and booking as best as possible to prove with a paper trail that I didn't visit any contested regions. Who knows if Azerbaijan would even ask for that anymore but better err on the side of caution.

The hosts last night told me over much cognac they even had spies come over before. One such person was a kindhearted French woman and they said "She's too kind and innocent to be a spy, but if she was she would be the best one. And look at you, you're the same as her, super nice and all that, how do we know you're not a spy?"

I said "Maybe I am but I would be the world's worst one."

"No!" she said "You would be the best one possible"

Found a small bottle. Now will carry this all the way to Bangkok

Well if I'm a spy then who are my masters? I'm not interested in that, I just want for all us to have fun and make a fortune.

But for now I wanted the border with Turkey open for a selfish reason: I could cross it and ride through flat territory and a tailwind instead of being forced up the mountains in a raging fucking headwind towards the Georgia border.

The scenery was absolutely spectacular there was no doubt about it. With insanely strong cold headwinds and relentless hills however, I was mainly thinking about survival.

What do we have here? Well whoever they are they passed right by

It was the most bizarre thing ever. These people out of nowhere showed up on rollerblades and ski poles, passed me, then turned back around. But where did they come from? I was seeing no villages whatsoever.

At this rate there was no way I would make it. The winds were getting stronger and the hills steeper, it would be faster just to walk. So I did that.

Fortunately a fallback hotel came up to save the day. I had been eyeing it all along as a place to bail in case of conditions like today's were to happen and so I checked in after a measly 43 km on the bike.

After setting in I had a most amazing meal and more people spoke English. This was turning out to be a very pleasant surprise! Unfortunately I was exhausted from everything and still battling the remants of what surely must have been the latest covid variant so I took it easy and went for a nice hot shower then bed to keep on updating the blog. If indeed this was covid and I still managed all that in the last week then my fitness levels even amazed myself. Who knows where I got this, probably on the party yacht, but the symptoms are almost gone now.

Anna had said last night "We're used to seeing bike tourists come in, but when locals in general see guys like you the first thing they ask is why? Why suffer like that? Why all this inconvenience? Why not just drive a car? It's not like Europe where things are set up for biking either, here it's just not a thing. Locals here just want the easy life. They want to drive everywhere, eat all the time, drink alcohol, just whatever is easiest."

I had to tell her, "There are dozens if not hundreds of countries that are the same all over the world where people think like this. Everyone wants the easy life. Comfort and nothing else. The problem with this mentality is it's an illusion, just like that museum. As a bike guy, I really and truly appreciate comfort and am extremely grateful for a bed, hot shower, water, food, and people to talk to after an exhausting day on the road. When you pursue the easy life that 99% of people do in this world, it becomes a neverending trap. You just want more and more convenience. Before you know it, you're so fat and oversized you become out of breath by climbing the fucking stairs and now you insist on elevators everywhere. Then you say the elevators are too slow in the building and they should install more. Next you don't even want to leave the apartment and insist on using apps to have people deliver your food. Things are only getting worse and worse in this world when it comes to all this."

I went on to say, "I'll let you in on a secret. In life you need friction, you need resistance. People hate it but they need it. If you hook up a battery to a circuit and don't put a resistor in, guess what? You short it. Even my 6th grade middle school kids know that. Resistance is crucial to making sure the electrons do work and you get a power output. But all these people who want no resistance in life? They might as well short themselves to the grave because that's exactly where they're going."

She said, "You're right, and you wouldn't believe what my brother does. Listen, I'll tell you. We're not forcing you to drink more cognac, we ask first and offer it and you seem to enjoy it, but he sure as hell would force you. He comes in at any time of day or night with a bottle of vodka, drinks the whole thing, then gets back into his car to the supermarket and buys another one. Yes, you heard right. He drives a car completely wasted. He then becomes very violent and slams the bottle on the table and yells 'Drink up b....' and if there are guests over he also yells and becomes very aggressive if they aren't drinking."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told her I was sorry she had a brother like that. He's actually an asshole. This trip was becoming such a wake up call that too much of a good thing is truly abuse. I'm not saying those dry countries in the Gulf are correct to go the other extreme and ban alcohol sales (yes, Kuwait is one of them), but there has to be some balance here. Maybe Thailand has the best policy, alcohol is somewhat regulated and you can only buy at limited times. It won't stop abuse but it slows it down, unlike here where it's a free for all.

With such draining and exhausting biking conditions, it helped my brain to just assimilate all the conversation last night and more or less process the whole thing.

Still, we weren't much closer to answering the question of who we white males are and why we got the name Caucasian. I was now becoming desperate to find the source of my ethnic heritage. Finally some clues began to emerge as I dug up more research

"A slave trade lies at the center of the history of white people as Caucasians: the age-old, eastern, white slave trade from the Russian borderlands to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. The figure of the white slave is invariably female, always young, emphatically white and invariably beautiful. Beauty plays a leading role in the designation of "Caucasian." A leading figure in Russian and Western European Orientalism, the beautiful white slave usually comes from Georgia or the Caucasus."

Clues were seeming to point in the direction that the white slaves originated from Russia or nearby. From the Caucausus region, they were traded and sent to Europe among other places. That was starting to explain things. We white people have no almost no idea of our heritage nor desire to find out. Just "somewhere in Europe" is about as good as we can say. In start contrast to my Chinese brothers and sisters, they can trace their ancestral heritage down to the exact village. Yet for whatever reason, we became the most privileged people group in the world and we hardly deserve it. And all for what really if we indeed started from slaves?

It also started to make sense why these extreme right wing white nationalist groups in the US warmed up to Putin and are now eyeing Russia as their utopian society. Russia is certainly capitalizing on all this by offering a safe space to such people who want to move there. Good luck and good riddance if they do.

All told, this was not the kind of discovery of my heritage that I wanted to find out. But it might explain why I'm so passionate about the Ukraine issue, the people there staunchly reject Putin's version of a Russian ethnostate and are moving forward to create their own destiny.

Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 649 km (403 miles)

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