February 25, 2014
Welcome to the world of bicycle touring Hanna: Are you okay?
After ten days of sitting around doing nothing in the sunshine of an unseasonable Ankara heatwave, there was a sense of inevitability about the grey skies and drizzling rain that we woke up to on the day that I would finally get back on the bike. And I now had some small blonde company of course, small blonde company that had never done any bike touring before. Trying to cycle out of Ankara in the rain was going to be a harsh introduction for poor Hanna.
We walked a fair bit, or cycled on the pavements, to get away from the centre. At one point we had to cross a very busy road. There was an underpass for pedestrians to take, but the only way to get down to this was by steps which was a huge pain. Well, I mean, its a huge pain for anyone in a wheelchair who lives in Ankara, and, I suppose, a bit of a pain for us. We couldn't take the underpass and there was a central reservation and so when there was a gap in traffic we quickly pushed our bikes across the road and up onto this to wait for a chance to cross the rest of the way. The central reservation was raised but narrow and there was traffic zooming past us in both directions as we stood in the middle of it all. I was eagerly looking for a break in the flow of cars to give us a chance to run for it when a very pale looking Hanna swayed towards me.
"Hanna, are you okay?" I asked.
"No. I feel faint."
"Do you need to sit down?" There was absolutely nowhere to sit.
"Yes" she said, and I took hold of her bike as she crouched and sat on the ground. Now we really were in a dilly of a pickle; in the middle of a massively busy road, Hanna semi-conscious on the floor of the central reservation, me helplessly standing next to her with a heavy touring bike in each hand and nowhere to put them down. I realised that she needed sugar, she hadn't eaten much breakfast. I heroically managed somehow to reach into my food pannier and pull out a packet of strawberry cookies. Looking back I'm not entirely sure how I did this because I do remember that I definitely did have a heavy touring bike in each hand and yet, I definitely did extract the cookies from my rear pannier using a hand and, honestly, the only way I can picture this happening in my mind involves me having three hands. I don't think I have three hands, but I can't think of any other reasonable explanation. Anyhow, the strawberry cookies revived Hanna just enough that she could stand up and push the bike across the road where there was a bench and we sat and ate a proper breakfast.
This seemed to revive my companion and we continued south, taking the route through Dikmen Valley that I had walked previously. It was rather wonderful to get into the park and away from all the traffic for a few kilometres. It was at this point that we had to cycle up a couple of very steep sections for the first time and Hanna trailed behind and finally gave up and walked. I was at the top of one of these steep sections, taking a picture of some porcelain goats, when she arrived looking a little worse for wear. I looked at her bike and saw that she had been trying to cycle up the hill in her big chain-ring instead of the little one. She had effectively been trying to cycle uphill in the most difficult gear, thus making the climb considerably more challenging than it needed to be.
"Hanna, you idiot," I said reassuringly, "you're in the wrong gear. No wonder it was hard."
She responded by saying "I think I'm going to be sick" and once again she handed me her bike to hold and ran behind the goats where the strawberry cookies were regurgitated. I should have liked to have soothed the poor girl, perhaps rubbing her back sympathetically, but I was once again holding up two heavy touring bikes and my third hand was nowhere to be found, if it ever existed at all that is.
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I was pleased when Hanna emerged from behind the goats to see that she had a smile on her face and she was happy to continue, because after Dikmen Valley the rest of the way out of Ankara was up even steeper hills. Knowing how to operate her bike properly seemed to help Hanna a lot with these, although she still had to walk a bit on some of the steepest sections, which to be fair were ridiculously steep. It didn't seem like she was having the time of her life though, what with the rain and the hills and the traffic and the almost fainting and the vomiting behind the goats. It was with great relief then that a man who introduced himself as Sally (Hanna thinks it should be spelt Sagli, I don't) stopped us and spoke to us with great enthusiasm (his opening line was "But its raining!" as if we hadn't noticed.) He asked if we wanted tea and when we said that we did he ran inside and brought us out two glasses. He said he had no time to stop and drink one with us, something about a meeting with his boss, and he drove off in his car. A short time later he returned with a well-dressed man in a suit in the passenger seat. Sally got out and ran back into his house, shouting "Sorry!" to us on the way. As he got back in the car he drove off, screaming out of he window "Hope you have a good trip!" as he went.
After three and a half hours we finally arrived at the top of the climb at the edge of the city. At this point we were actually quite close to the Kazakhstan embassy, which had only taken two hours to walk to, but lets not be negative about the slow progress. As the old saying goes, slow progress is better than sitting around for ten days waiting for visas.
And progress got a lot faster as we took a smaller road and I crested a hill and suddenly came face to face with a beautiful scene of large grassy hills and a big lake on one side and there was this moment, with fresh air blowing against my face, when I was overwhelmed by a sensation verging on euphoria which was the moment when I realised that I was out of the city. I was free from Ankara, back in nature and back to the glorious unknown of the road onwards. And the road descended quickly down to the lake, which we followed the shore of. The road was flat, the scenery beautiful, the look of relief on Hanna's face quietly reassuring - this was more like it.
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Beyond the lake we found more peaceful back roads further along as well. At one point two big dogs appeared in the road ahead of us, which seemed to worry Hanna, but I offered them soothing words and, such is my extraordinary connection with animals, they calmed and trotted alongside us for a while as we slowly plugged away on a hill. I had decided not to feed any more dogs after my adventures with Willow and Cheeky, but even without the promise of stale bread these two came along with us.
"What shall we call them?" I asked Hanna.
"Mukhtar. In Turkish it means the mayor of the city, but in Russian the same word is used as a name for big dogs."
"Okay Hanna, good idea. But there are two of them. How about Mukhtar One and Mukhtar Two? Mukhtar Two, keep up, good boy."
We lost the dogs on a steep downhill and we lost the quiet roads when we were forced to join the main highway south. We had two choices with regards our onward route to Cappadocia- follow this road south or take a less busy highway west. We had been undecided, because the main highway would be flatter and would take us past a salt lake which would be interesting. But the other way would probably be much better scenery and have much fewer cars. In the end this last point won the day, as the few kilometres that we were forced to do on the main highway in the slipstream of truck exhaust were about as much fun as fainting on a central reservation in the middle of Ankara. So when the turn off for the smaller highway came we took it, and then, because it was late, we found a place to camp. This was a little tricky because the landscape was mostly barren hills, with no forest or trees, but we found a nice spot and settled in for the night. Hanna seemed very tired after a rather epic first introduction to bicycle touring with just the slightest hint of terror in her face about the long road ahead.
Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 13,732 km (8,528 miles)
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