Double-Drat and Fiddlesticks…!!

It seems that the only certain thing about a “Round the World” trip, is that nothing is for certain…!!

Tonight, while I was writing a post about the past few days I have spent in Cyprus, and planning my last day here, I received an email from my Dutch friends, Lucien and Sandra, whom I had met on the ferry to Cyprus…

Seems we had both had the same idea of returning to Turkey on Monday’s ferry… They would be driving back to Holland, and I would ride a full day to the Syrian border…

Their email began with the fateful words: “Bad news today…!!”

We are not amused by the news tonight...!!! Grrrr...!!

It went on to advise me that all ferries to the Turkish mainland had been canceled until Monday the 22nd of November, due to a spate of Turkish holidays to mark the Muslim celebrations of Eid…!!

This was contrary to what I had been told, and came as a bit of a shock, as you can imagine…!!

On the positive side, I can think of far worse places to be stranded than Cyprus, but it does take yet another week out of my schedule, and has left me wondering how I will ever catch it up again…!!

Many people have asked why I need to be in a certain area by a certain date, and the answer is simple :

“Its all about the weather…!!”

I have tried to work around the worst weather conditions on the continents I have to travel through, and avoiding rain and snow as much as possible, is what sets the schedule… Naturally, this is not always possible, and in order to achieve this, I had to make a few tough decisions when planning my route…

One of these decisions involved riding through the heat of mid-summer in North Africa, where I experienced temperatures of  48º Celsius in Egypt, and even higher than that in the Libyan Desert…!! I had to do this in order to get to Nordkapp before the onset of winter, and then barely made it by the skin of my teeth…!!

I arrived at the Top of the World two weeks later than planned, and this due largely in part to the delays I had experienced months before in Egypt…!! This delay meant that I had to race through Eastern and Central Europe to avoid the early rains that had begun falling there… This did not allow me to enjoy that part of my ride as much as I would have liked to…

My next major hurdle, is getting to Alaska by the 2nd or 3rd week of June 2011, and every week I lose now, means I have less time to ride through South-East Asia AND ride around that little island known as Australia…!!

The road up to Prudhoe Bay, and the most northern point of the Americas, remains open at the whim of the weather in northern Alaska, and can vary from as little as 8 weeks of the year, to as long as 12 weeks….seldom more…!! I am trying to get up there in the middle of the season, to allow myself some leeway, in the event of early snowfall, and any other unexpected problems that might crop up between now and then…

I have almost 40 000 kms to cover before I set foot and tyre in Alaska, and a heck of a lot can happen between now and then…!! A one week delay in Cyprus, fits neatly into the “heck of a lot” category…!!

These little problems are all part of the “test”…!! An I accept them as such… Nobody said that this journey will be plain sailing, least of all me, and in fact, things have gone a lot more smoothly than I had hoped they would…!!

On Monday I will ride to the harbour town of Girne, to make sure that there is not a ferry crossing over to Turkey, and if I find this to be the case, then I will return to Larnaca for another week of R & R… (A loud wailing, accompanied by the sound of gnashing teeth comes from Room 206 of the Lucky Hotel, Larnaca…!!)

Routes I have ridden and plan to ride in Cyprus... Blue was completed on Wednesday, Red was the one I did on Thursday, and the Green one will be done tomorrow...!!

The extra time here will give me further opportunity to see parts of the island that I have not yet seen, and spend more time fine tuning my ride down to Singapore (which includes a flight to Pakistan or even the Arabian Peninsula…

The little matter of cracking the “100” is still on my mind, Dudes…!!

Tomorrow I will take a short ride along the coast east of Larnaca to visit Agai Napa and Cape Gkreko…

Then return to upload the posts I have put on hold while I digest my current state of affairs…!!

©GBWT 2010