Figure 8 On A Bike

Round 2 of our transatlantic travel started with a flight to London , but in a nice change of pace our flight left late on a Tuesday afternoon instead of early in the morning. I got to replace some broken gauges for my ears, and even convinced Susan to run a few more laps at the Norris Hill in an effort to scrounge up training time in the face of a hectic travel schedule. Luckily we had enough time left over to shower before squeezing into a metal tube for hours. With the white Subaru crammed full of us and our dedicated entourage of bags, Susan's dad drove us to Eppley and said a sweet goodbye to Maureen. Uneventful flights took us through Chicago and then to London and none of us managed to get much sleep in the accelerated overnight schedule of the plane. All our bags rolled off the carousel and Susan wrangled the heavy grey backpack while I plopped the bright purple giant suitcase (courtesy of Scott's parents) on the floor and Maureen shouldered her own load. Grateful not...

After struggling to meet our winter sports ambitions in Romania, Susan and I were wishing for a few last days of decent skiing in Bansko, one of the largest ski resorts in Bulgaria. We hauled our bags up out of the cave apartment into the bright sunshine, and despite the mid-morning warmth in Sofia the slopes of Vitosha mountain to the south still shone white with snow. We remained hopeful that the online reports of a decent snowpack up high would bear out and that, even without any powder, some nice, consistent pistes would hold on against the heat. Our bus to Bansko (there is a train but true to stereotypes the Bulgarian train takes longer than the bus) didn't leave until about lunchtime, so despite Susan's antsy-ness I dawdled in the apartment and we left about 10 minutes later than intended. This wouldn't have mattered much, except that finding the bus that goes to Bansko turned out to be a bit of a scavenger hunt. First, we'd asked our taxi driver to drop us off...

At this point in the trip we were feeling a little discouraged, a little gray, a little tired of packing, and a little ready to relax. We couldn't quite start this second round in Brașov relaxing; however, as we had to check out of the hotel and check into the Airbnb where we had left our stuff. Our host wasn't getting back to us, so when we checked out of our hotel, we used the codes from the last time to get into the complex. We snatched some shoes from our pile of stuff in the laundry room and left our mountaineering gear in the pile. Unburdened, we headed out for another day of sightseeing in Brașov. We checked out some places we hadn't seen during our first stay in Brașov. Like Rope street which claims to be Europe's narrowest alley. We enjoyed the street art and graffiti before heading towards Biserica Ortodoxa Sfântul Nicolae and the First Roman School. It was steadily raining and we were looking forward to hiding inside the museum. Alas, when we arrived...

After our string of city days we were looking forward to our time in Sinaia where we had a very nice apartment booked. Sinaia is a small town in Romania's Bucegi Mountains. To get there we experienced our first Romanian train. We had been warned that Romanian trains were old and slow and not up to European standards. To us Americans they were marvels of public transit, though we could see the complaint that much of the infrastructure in the country dated to the communist era and was in sore need of investment. There were no indicators of which stop we were at so we had to use Ben's phone GPS to anticipate which stop we needed to get off at. The station was small and cute and we managed to order a taxi to take us the short distance to our place up the hill. It was raining, which was depressing as we wanted snow. We took the day to run grocery errands and the following day we spent relaxing in the apartment and planning future parts of the trip. Rainy Sinaia

It's not the capital (partly due to the major earthquake fault just a few kilometers away), but Almaty is the biggest city and by far the most metropolitan area of Kazakhstan. It didn't really exist until the early 20th century, and expanded greatly during Kazakhstan's time under the USSR, so all the construction is relatively new and most of it distinctly Soviet. The city takes its name from the Russian word for apple, "elma", and the plentiful nearby orchards combine with its cultural significance to fuel its reputation as "The Big Apple" of Kazakhstan. The Alatau mountains towering south of Almaty

After almost 7 weeks (and minus one week in Istanbul), Susan and I finally bid farewell to the southwest corner of Türkiye and the Mediterranean Sea. We looked forward to starting a new stage of our trip after making a trove of good memories (fun climbing and international travel time with friends) and a few less-good memories (Susan in the hospital); but it was almost time to put our new, giant, heavy bags to use and find some Winter! One stop first, though - Cappadocia. Erciyes Dağı towers on the horizon of Cappadocia

Maria and I got dropped off at the Antalya airport together for our flight to Istanbul . Maria had a much earlier flight than me so she was allowed to go through security and I got to wait between security one and security two of the airport. It is more awkward than I realized trying to hang out in public places and not sit. I spent some time pacing. I spent some time reading leaning against a wall - oops, leaning is also NOT great for my back. Back to standing straight and reading. But then a nice family waved me to their seats when they left them and I didn't know how to turn that down politely so I took a seat for a while and then creakily stood up after I was sure they were gone. In the end, I paid for some curly fries from Arby's so I could stand at their high table to eat and read. Eventually I was able to go through second security and wait at the gate. Where I did some floor stretches. On the flight I sat for take off and landing and for the ten minutes we hi...

We left Flatanger campground , excited by the prospect of not sharing a kitchen that night. We started the bike ride back to the junction already fairly tired from climbing but the biking went smooth and quick all things considered. It kind of helps when you know the route and about where you will camp that night. We set up camp at a beautiful spot by the water with a bench and a big fire pit. We had some time so we did some yoga on the beach and skipped some rocks at sunset. It was an incredibly calm evening and we appreciated it all the more due to the recent chaos camping. Pretty riding back from Flatanger

From Sandnessjøen we started with mostly flat and good weather biking. We stopped at a really old church (Alstahaug church, built in 1150) and looked inside at the deep walls designed to keep out the cold and tried to remember Christian symbolism as we stared at the art behind the altar. From the church, I sped down the road fleeing allergies as Norwegians cleaned out their barns. I felt mighty proud of myself for catching up and passing the e-bike tour group. I got to the next ferry in Tjøtta and it looked about ready to leave but the worker told me they were waiting 10 minutes. Ben just made it, literally biking onto the ferry right before they closed the ramp. So satisfying! We rode on, past a sculpture landscape art installation that was a little underwhelming, but also impressive for the work that must have gone into it once you thought about it. A little too much to interpret in this artwork