As Orit (my girlfriend) isn't a cyclist, this isn't a bike trip. However, of course I do my best to keep on good shape also along this hike-and-bus tour - which leads sometimes to rediculous situations. When we climbed to beautiful Sumela Monestary, near Trabzon, I TAFARTI - ıe ran up and down in front of Orit (who walked in a regular pace). The other tourists (most of them intern, Turkeysh, tourists, BTW), where very ammused, and asked me wether I'm a sportman. 'Merely as a hobby', I answered. On the day after we hiked to a Tea Garden, on a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Go-get-on Riding on asphalt has its own advantages - it´s fast, and the bike´s maintenance is far easier. But riding off-road is the real thing. In the last few days I cycled ways which were very quite and isolated, even in my terms. The hardest section, between San Sebastian and Belen Gualcho, involved some very steep uphills - so steep that I took off from the bike here and there; but don´t worry, a go-get-on as I´m, I never started to really walk with the bike - I always climb on the bike and start to ride, again and again. [url=http://cafe.themarker.com/view.php?t=2456 [View Full Entry]

---

---

a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Dear reader: R U CORRUPTED? (Hebrew) Home, sweet, home The slow noisy buses, the driver´s accessory gut hung out of the bus through the always-open bus door, most of his body in the air, outside the bus; The amazing dramatic mountainous scenery of green steep slopes; The sweet Mayan children, always amazed to see me passing with the bike; The beloved spanish; The liveful simple Central-American music. As if everything was waiting for me during the 3 years which passed since my last visit here. PSULEY TZILUM[ [View Full Entry]

---

---

Channel 2? Yediot? Read THIS! Workoholics 12-years-old waiters and cookers in restaurants. 10 years old children, carrying on the back heavy woods. 8 years old shoe-shiners. 5 years old children, who help their parents to feed the chickens and in taking care of theirs smaller brothers. It seems that no age is too early for the Guatemalans to start working. Todos Santos All the men here - even the little children - wear traditional funny clothes - red pants with blue and white vertical [View Full Entry]

---

---

SEXA PLANT While travelling in Venezuella, when I first encountered the extreme unreliability of the locals in developing countries, I invented the SEXA PLANT (MINA TZEMACH) method of orienting: before each turn-about I take, I ask 10 locals, and do complex calculations, which weights their age, gender, look and size of breast (in case the gender is "female"). The map (if I have any) is not weighted much more than 2 old men in these calculation- I think that instead of using expensive means such as sattelites photos, these countries simply pay expressionist artists for drawing their [View Full Entry]

---

---

HOW IS ERETZ ISRAEL BOUGHT? During my first 2 days in Guatemala I rode some 160 kms in Alta Verapaz, and found also the time for walking a little in 2 beautiful national parks. It showed me Guatemala just as I dreamed of - steep hills, covered by very thick green vegetation. The roads were quite, and thus the whole area is really a paradise for cyclists - well, at least for those whose legs are strong enough for negotiating with these fucking mountains. My legs aren´t, and thus this paradise was for me a bit like ERETZ Israel - i.e., [View Full Entry]

---

---

Here evereything began Well, not exactly: I've been a cyclist since I was 6 years old, and have used bike both as a vehicle and for sport & travel ever since then. But Venezuela was the very moment when I understood that from then and on I was gonna travel abroad only by bike. It happened after I noticed that though the places I saw during my 2 weeks of cycling in Venezuela weren't the most beautiful I had seen in South America, the strongest experience came from the cycling days. Danny Rup signing in the bureauThe sign at the entry [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hot on the Moon10 years ago, before I started to overload cycling with all my ecological & social principles, I was used to define cyclism merely as “school for dreams”. Mighty Leni Kravitz used to sind “if you want it, you got it - you’ve just gotta believe”. Very nice, but no matter how much you believe you would be the next president of the US, or the best basketball player in the world, that won’t happen. In the case of bike, however, dreams are indeed fulfilled - and you don’t have even to believe. All you have to do is [View Full Entry]

---

---

Trumpeldor ^ 2 Yesterday I saw a very nice person on the road, who offered me a coffee with him. Well, usually I don't refuse such requests (which I get here twice a day), but this time I refused indeed. Why? because this man's hands were cut. Well, I have got nothing against cripples, but - my main way of communicating with the locals is by hands, so talking to a person without hands would be just a "Shrubbery of deafs" (SIACH CHRESIM). A HIGH-RANK QUEZE (introduction: the roads here are so narrow, that hardly can two cars pass one in [View Full Entry]

---

---