Friday was travel day. We had an hour flight to Rio. Unfortuntaley, we had to go back to the international airport, which meant a more expensive cab ride. This airport is tired looking, as it was built in the mid 80's. Airline competition is alive and well in Brazil. A number of discount airlines compete with the national airline TAM. We went with an airline called Webjet, which was partially owned by Ryan Air out of Ireland. A funny thing occurred before we took off. A young lady boarded the plane towards the end. After she had a bit of difficulty finding room for her oversized handbag, the stewardess put her in the cockpit for the remainder of the flight! She must of have been an employee or relative of one of the pilots -- I ... read more

We couldn't have asked for better weather for our last three days here in Sofia. Temperatues reached the high teens and overnight temperatures were warmer than the they have been since Alexandroupolis. The rain even stayed away. I was able to where my shorts on Friday eventhough I was probably the one person in the city doing so. We spent Thursday doing most of our sightseeing. Because Sofia is so small, almost all of the major attractions were very central. We really lucked out this time, because our hotel was close to the tourist attractions and shopping. We may have lost out on the souvenier shopping in Istanbul, but we had a better shopping experience for clothes here in Sofia (we changed our trip from Istanbul to Sofia because of the prevailing winds in Western Turkey). ... read more

Total Distance Cycled: 672km We seemed to had a window to cycle on Saturday. It was warm and overcast, but no rain, so we went for it. Other than climbing out of the hole we had in Kavala (on the coast, but totally surrounded by hills), the ride was pretty good and we did have the aid of the wind for most of the day (that makes three in a row now :-)). This was certainly our second best bike day of the trip so far. Just like the other day from Komotini to Xanthi, we spent most of the day riding along the hills of Northern Greece, but just high enough that we get a good view of the countryside below, but with little traffic so we could actually enjoy the ride. Serres was our ... read more

Total Distance Cycled: 357km We were off to Greece today. We weren’t sure about what expect for hills but at least we knew we had a 300m drop in elevation. Unfortunately, 100m of that came from just getting out of Malkara! I hadn’t even got out of town, when I realized that the small repair I made to my gears yesterday had created more problems than I had fixed. Over countless stops I finally got my gears working enough to get to our end destination. While we had to deal with traffic and hills on the first two days, today would all be about wind. It started right at the start and it didn’t stop for the next two days… We just geared down, put the headphones on, and just grinded away. The rest of Turkey ... read more

Total Distance Cycled: 54km I can’t seem to keep up with Shauna with all of her Facebook posts and blog entries, as I have been spending too much time planning and too much time adjusting to all of this new technology. I’m also trying out TravelBlog, which connects with Facebook, instead of Ball of Dirt for a travel website. Ball of Dirt also hasn’t made any material changes to its website in a number of years - resting on its laurals. In order to catch up, I’m going to summarize my four days in Istanbul in to one entry. I never really appreciated the historical significance of Istanbul/Constantinople. For nearly 1,500 years, this city was the home of two great civilizations - Byzantine and Ottoman. When you look at where the city is located, it isn’t ... read more