I spent three weeks touring through Turkey from the 24th of August in to the first two weeks of Ramadan (staring Sept 2nd this year) and then flew to Rome Turkey is a beautiful country and the people are incredibly friendly, even after they find out you’re American. It's widely report in the media that Turkish people really don’t like America. "In June 2007, the Pew Research Center polled citizens of 47 countries on their attitude toward the US. Turkey turned up at rock bottom, with 83% of respondents holding an unfavorable view of the United States and only 9% of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Germany!!! After two months of Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia I had finally arrived in the organized splendor that is Berlin. A city where everything is in it's place, the maps are to scale, and the taxis have meters. It seems most of eastern Europe has not yet discovered the taxi meter thus every taxi ride is proceeded by a negotiating process, which I'm pretty sure I lost every time. There's is much to do in Berlin besides drink beer, but I wont bore you with any of that. Instead here are just few interesting tidbits. This is the Brandenburg Gate. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Okay, I realize I haven't made a new posting for some time now, but in my defense there has been much travel and when you can only type ten words per minute (that's five words for each finger I use) you need to be sedentary for period and have internet access in order to spit these things out! I am in Milan Italy now. Since my last post I have been to, in order of visit: Germany, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Italy again, France, and finally…Italy…again. Tomorrow I’m headed to Morocco to start a 12 day mt. biking trip through the Atlas [View Full Entry]

---

---

Photos from Troy, Izmir, and Bergama [View Full Entry]

---

---

Ok, so I spent a few days in Georgia and much to my disappoint I didn’t see any Russian tanks. There was actually a big map in the lobby of my hotel which supposedly showed the location of the Russian tanks but getting there…well let’s just say I think the Georgians are little opportunistic. I stayed in Tbilisi the Georgian capital and other than the big board with all the pins showing Russian troop locations and possibly mined bridge locations etc, I didn’t see any single sign of the war. No refugee camp like I was seeing on CNN…life seemed pretty [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m in Kiev now, which btw is a very cool city! After leaving Kazakhstan I headed to Moscow and then Saint Petersburg before arriving here. Moscow is a beautiful city filled with striking architecture, striking people, and striking prices for everything. It must rate second only to Hong Kong in terms of Ferrari’s per square inch of road surface…the Russian’s are rich right now and they love to show it! Still I loved this city, and even though it’s filled with Russians, I would still come back here and happily spend a week or so. There are little outdoor cafes [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m in Astana now which is the new capital of Kazakhstan. I arrived here via Almaty which is where I originally started and ended my biking trip and which had been the historical capital of Kazakhstan…at least for the last few hundred years anyways. To know why I believe this is important or even mention it let’s start with a quick Kazak history lesson. Kazakhstan was largely just a nomadic collective of tribes until around the mid 16th century when the Kazaks formed as the predominate ethnic group and then like most predominate ethnic groups of the era, killed off [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well I finally finished my mt. biking trip through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and while it was a very tough trip, it was one of the best trips I’ve ever done. I really had a great time! I hadn’t biked much in the past couple of years so I was not in biking shape at all and the first 5 days were really hard on me as they were all long hard rides that allowed no time for recovery. Luckily days 6 and 7 were heli-biking days which gave me the opportunity to recuperate a little! We actually went up in this [View Full Entry]

---

---

I arrived in Almaty Kazakhstan two days ago. Yesterday my bike mule (aka Jim Wilson) flew in with my bike and tomorrow we start off on 12 days of mt. biking from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan and back again. I t promises to be beautiful but grueling ride as we climb over 12K foot passes. I will write and tell you all about it when I get back to Almaty on the 11th! [View Full Entry]

---

---

After a few days in Mongolia here are a few of my initial discoveries: The Mongolian diet: The seasons are strong in Mongolia (latitude wise think North Dakota), the summers are hot and the winters are icy cold. In the winter the Mongolians eat almost nothing but meat and starting in the spring, in order to cleanse the stomach they believe, they eat almost nothing but milk products. I’ve visited with several nomadic families in their ger’s now and the offering always the same: first you're given a bowl of airag (fermented mare’s milk) which is about 3-5% alcohol, it must [View Full Entry]

---

---