March 13, 2014
Escape from Big Mountain: Come on Beachball!
If Big Mountain considered itself conquered it certainly wasn't showing it during the night, as my fitful sleep was repeatedly interrupted by the howling winds rattling at my boarded window and the sound of the snow ploughs boldly heading out to continue the battle. Come daylight I rushed upstairs to the common room to look out of the window (only the upstairs windows were not boarded up) and saw that the snow was still falling, almost vertical in the strong wind. I could just about make out the road and a small car was struggling along it. It drove across the summit, then appeared to get stuck in a snow drift as it began to descend and could go no further. I sighed. It looked like I might be moving into this plough house on a more permanent basis.
The problem was that I didn't want to be stuck on a mountain with a bunch of Turkish snow plough drivers, friendly as they were. Over breakfast Hamdy looked at me through sad eyes, he had the most incredibly sad eyes, and said "Problem, big problem" over and over again to me. Hamdy, by the way, looked almost exactly like Doug from the American sitcom 'King of Queens.' If you don't know who that is, I suggest you google him, because, just in case you weren't sure, google knows everything. All of the drivers were now sitting around over a leisurely breakfast and, much as I was being polite, I was secretly thinking it would be much better if at least one of them was still outside clearing the road.
I was worried that I was going to get completely snowed in on this mountain pass but after breakfast I went back upstairs and saw that the snow had stopped and the wind had died down. The car that had been stuck was gone and then I watched as another car drove over the top of the pass too, from the direction that I needed to go. Clearly it was possible to get through and with the snow stopped, now was the time to make a break for it.
There was much opposition to my decision to head on out into the cold. Hamdy was still repeating "Problem, big problem." Then he told me the road was closed and would be open at one in the afternoon, which seemed a bit of a mistruth given the fact that I'd just seen a car drive past. Then he told me that "a soldier car is coming to get you." A soldier car is coming to get me!!! Do you mean a tank? I don't need a tank to get me down off this mountain, I've got a bike! By now another man was vehemently trying to stop me "No! No! No! Danger! No! No! No!" Of course I had to respect their opinion as they no doubt knew the mountain better than I did, but I believed that their concern was based more on the fact that they just didn't understand what a bicycle was capable of, and the truth of the matter was that if a car could get through then I could certainly get through. And if soldiers were really coming to get me, then I had better try and get down quick! There were no happy goodbyes, just me stubbornly forcing my way back out into the cold with sad-faced and annoyed men watching me from the doorway.
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There was snow and ice on the road, but it was possible for me to cycle. As it was all down a very steep hill, however, there was no need for me to ever turn the pedals. In fact it was all I could do to keep my speed down to a safe level. Given the conditions I didn't want to exceed 15kmh, and employed four brakes to stop me going too fast. They were my front brakes, my rear brakes, the snow itself, and my left leg which I sometimes dragged along the floor through the snow. With these methods combined I was able to make my way slowly but surely down through this:
After fourteen kilometres of this I finally got down to a point at which the road was clear and safe. Almost exactly at the same moment a Jandarma van drove up and stopped next to me and three soldiers in camo gear got out and walked over to me. Once again the magic power of I-phones were called on to translate for them as one of them typed in a message and then showed it to me. 'Road conditions bad. We go down together' it said and I looked up and saw him pointing at his van which did clearly have space for my bike. Naturally I had no desire to get in the van, especially as I had just cycled through fourteen kilometres of terrible road conditions, and getting in a van just as the road surface became very good would seem like an extremely strange course of action, more suited to a person willing to use motor vehicles. I pointed at the road and told them that the road surface was not bad and I would be fine. They typed some more: 'We got news that you were in trouble.' Not from me you didn't, and I thought you were coming in a tank.
The Jandarmas left me to it and I was very relieved that I had left the summit when I did, and that I made it down just far enough. I don't like to think about what might have happened had they met me higher up the mountain. In any case I could now relax and enjoy the scenery as, while the road was clear, the surroundings were still heavily blanketed in snow. I stopped at a little rest area where there was a mosque and a few houses and a dog came running over to me. I fed him a lot of food as I thought he looked cold, and named him Beachball.
Me and Beachball became such good friends that when I left he tried to run after me. "Hey Beachball, if you can run 70 kilometres down a mountain very fast you can be my dog okay!" He couldn't.
After 35 kilometres I was finally down below the snow and started to travel alongside a river through natural spruce forest. It was the first time that I had seen such an environment in Turkey. But after the town of Dereli, a busy place where I returned to civilisation drinking tea with a man named Mehmet, the road became very busy. It was still a narrow road with no shoulder and was in very bad condition in places but was packed with cars and quarry trucks, making it significantly more dangerous than anything I'd faced higher on the pass. Where was my tank now, huh?
But I made it all the way down and suddenly I was looking out over the Black Sea for the first time since Bulgaria. It still wasn't black, more of a grey-blue, apart from around the city of Giresun, where the water was suspiciously brown. The view was further spoiled by the four lanes of traffic that were between me and the sea, but the major highway that I would now follow east all the way to Georgia did at least come with a wide shoulder and I raced along on the flat.
As I did so a couple of bored-looking attendants at a gas station called me over to them. "Yes, of course I want tea." I think I might even have said this before they offered. Anyway they were very nice and reminded me very much of Little and Large. Large spoke some English, claiming that he spent eight years living illegally in the United States. He must have been hiding a lot and probably didn't get out too much though because his English wasn't actually very good. I managed to establish that he was caught running a red light and spent three months in an American prison although he followed this statement up with "America, very nice country!" so I assume the prison system can't be all that bad there.
Another attendant appeared from inside and came over with a very big smile. This one looked just exactly like David Walliams, but with a pencil moustache drawn on his upper lip. He asked me what city I was from and when I replied he said "Manchester City?" despite the fact that I had certainly not said Manchester. But he went on; "Liverpool... Chelsea... Michael Owen." I was beginning to understand what his level of English was, but just to clarify he went on to add "I speak leeetle Engleesh."
Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 14,713 km (9,137 miles)
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