Ali Joins the Trip

Ali arrived this morning to join the little expedition for a week. After flying overnight in her bike gear and carrying all her worldly goods for the week in this super-deluxe immigrant style luggage, we went back to Peter & Filiz for a slap up Turkish breakfast complete with Turkish coffee, a sort of coffee sludge which is very tasty.







The bike needed a service and so did my hair. After a painstaking 30 minute trim of the remaining hair on my head and a quick prune of the beard, he then proceeded to scorch the little hairs on my ears with a meths soaked taper…..a very strange experience.

I scoured the town for a bucket to drain the engine oil into and the restaurant owner where we ate last night supplied an empty yogurt tub. 40 minutes later and quite a bit dirtier than before, the bike was all sweet again.



Peter & Filiz organised a BBQ in the evening and the men made fire and drank beer while the ladies did something else. There are a lot of street cats in this area and most of them look rather slinky and cute. Must be the diet of bugger all and the heat that does it. The work got out that someone was cooking and they began to assemble to get the scraps. As we finished the chicken bits, we tossed them to the pack and watched the squabbles. People say you are not supposed to give cooked chicken bones to cats but these ones didn't seem to mind.

As dusk fell, the thunderheads were visible and the thunder & lightening started. It was quite a big show and went on for about 30 minutes but with no rain till the end. It was all happening across the bay. At least this time, we were not on the road so could afford to sit back and enjoy the fireworks.