15.07.2003

<peddlers of life>

my friend johann has just embarked on his 15month cycling trip from

turkey to new zealand

i thought i should make a little publicity about here since

he and his partner literally started with minus-zero income and looking for sponsors

to give them just a little, so they can tell the rest of the world

!live life be free!

he sent me this sweet little note today:

... the hills today were quite nice - gentle, and awesome views.
it was like consistently gorgeous. and went thorough many small towns,
and the people were so nice and friendly. the kids would run alongside
us (going uphill and having kids run faster than you can cycle is quite
unnerving now that i think about it). we stopped at a teahouse for some
cay (prononuced chai, turkish tea) and the owner gave us some banners
from turkish soccer teams and refused to accept money for the tea...
and the locals were telling us the best way to get where we were
going... its cool trying to figure out turkish, luckily we got dan's
phrase book

dan's this guy from brighton who is following us (more like we
following him, the way he cycles) with a bike that had its 5000km of
life and is now starting to crap out - and he knows next to nothing
about bikes. so we fix it everyday, and everyday his chain, shifters,
pedals, something or the other would die slowly. so alex & i spend
large amounts of time sitting on the side of the road, on the
pavement/grass/sand/cowdung putting it together whilst he looks and
tries his best to learn and help out. its fun actually, but we're doing
very little in terms of mileage. 220km the last 4 days - at this rate
we'll take forever to finish turkey...

i hope they pop by beijing

it's a pretty good place to get spare parts from...