First off. If you haven’t been there, you need to put Turkey on your travel list. I’ve never met a globe trotting traveler (or cyclist) who didn’t love Turkey.
Great food. Amazing history. Hospitality that rivals any country on earth. And lots of hills and mountain passes to climb (and descend).
Your trip will more than likely begin in Istanbul. For those looking to travel with frequent flier miles, Istanbul is in the “Europe” category and is probably the best frequent flier bargain around.
Kat and I stayed in the old city and the heavily visited Blue Mosque was a fifteen minute walk from our hotel. It was mobbed during the day, with hundreds of tourists waiting to get in and locals arriving to pray.
A friend of mine who had visited the year prior gave me a tip. “Go to the last call to prayer. The tourists will be in bed and you’ll find that the mosque changes from hectic to reverent.”
Wow, was he right. There were not more than 25 people there to pray. The imams chants echoed off the 400 year-old marble walls. We heard these prayers so many times over the following three months of our journey in Turkey. But they never sounded as beautiful as that late night in the Blue Mosque.
audio recording (Blue Mosque–Last Call to Prayer) by Willie Weir photo (Blue Mosque 2002) by Willie Weir
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Originally posted on the Adventure Cycling Association’s blog. The Adventure Cycling Association’s nonprofit mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle for fitness, fun, and self-discovery.
Every once in a while you run into a giant. A tree that stops you in your tire tracks and warrants a couple of hours of your life.
The giant on the right dwells in a sleepy town, barely on the map, near San Cristobal, Venezuela. We were looking for an alternate route to get to the border of Colombia and bumped along the cobblestone streets into the town square of San Pedro del Rio. Oh my God. The tree. It spanned the entire park. A living umbrella shielding us from the relentless sun. This is a tree you could spend a life under.
The road from San Pedro del Rio winds up into the mountains before steeply descending to Agua Caliente. Colombia is a stone’s throw away, but you have to continue to San Antonio del Tachira to legally cross the border into Colombia.
The giant on the left resides in the former homeland of Venda in South Africa. Legend has it that the gods plucked the baobab tree out of the ground and shoved it back upside down. The trunk is designed to store water in a land of frequent drought.
I stopped and lingered at the base of this giant, pondering what a baobab bike would look like.
<span style=”font-size:78%;”>photo (Two Giants, 1995 South Africa/2007 Venezuela) by Willie Weir</span>
<span style=”font-size:78%;”>click photos for larger image</span>
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Originally posted on the Adventure Cycling Association’s blog. The Adventure Cycling Association’s nonprofit mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle for fitness, fun, and self-discovery.
When I pedaled across Lesotho (the mountain kingdom completely within the borders of South Africa) there was exactly one paved highway. I was never on it. Instead, I pedaled on roads that could only be described as linear collections of large rocks. I remember one day’s progress … 9 hours of struggle … 17 kilometers.
I wheezed my way up to a small school at about 11,000 ft. I was invited to visit a classroom. The teacher spoke enough English that he could translate for me. I talked with the students and answered their questions about my bicycle journey.
In return, the students decided to sing for me. Now this was not the school’s choir. This was a history class.
Chills ran up and down my spine for the next 20 minutes as I listened to the soul of a country expressed in song.
I wish I had a photo of the faces, but for some reason not a single image from that roll of film turned out. Which, in some ways, makes my memory that much more ethereal. You can hear their singing at the link below. (The rough translation I was told: “When the sun goes down I am lonely. When it gets dark, where will I sleep?).
audio recording (Lesotho Serenade) by Willie Weir photo (Lesotho hut 1995) by Willie Weir
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Originally posted on the Adventure Cycling Association’s blog. The Adventure Cycling Association’s nonprofit mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle for fitness, fun, and self-discovery.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is Willie Weir and I’ve been a columnist for Adventure Cyclist magazine since 1997. My posts (Sights and Sounds) will mostly focus on international pedaling. A chance for me to dig through photos and sound recordings from a world of travel. I’m not an avid cyclist in the classic sense … not much of a gear guy or mileage hound. The bicycle is simply my passport to adventure … in my neighborhood, my city, my country, and my planet.
Dream. Pedal. Travel. Repeat.
Dugout View, Santa Clara, Cuba
It’s fall. Time for raking leaves, extra pots of coffee … and baseball. Once again, my team (The Seattle Mariners) won’t be in the post season. But I still enjoy watching the playoffs and the World Series. I am one of those who truly believes that baseball is our national sport.
Ironically, one of my favorite baseball moments isn’t from the United States. Kat and I spent three months on a tandem bicycle in Cuba in 1998. Cubans love baseball! If you plan on going (legally or not), make sure you attend a baseball game in any of the major cities. In fact, where ever you travel, make sure you take the time to attend a sporting event of some sort. Cricket in India. Lawn bowling in England. Rugby in New Zealand. It is a great window into the life and culture of a place.
The audio file below is the commentary I wrote after we attended a game in Santa Clara, Cuba. It originally aired on public radio station KUOW in Seattle.
audio recording (Beisball) by Willie Weir photo (Dugout View, Santa Clara, Cuba 1998) by Willie Weir
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Originally posted on the Adventure Cycling Association’s blog. The Adventure Cycling Association’s nonprofit mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle for fitness, fun, and self-discovery.
A sleepy town, barely on the map near San Cristobal, Venezuela. We were looking for an alternate route to get to the border of Colombia and bumped along the cobblestone streets into the town square of San Pedro del Rio. Oh my God. The tree. It spanned the entire park. A living umbrella shielding us from the relentless sun. This is a tree you could spend a life under.
We were told this was a weekend getaway for the residents of San Cristobal, with restaurants and shops. But at midweek, we had the town to ourselves. The shops were closed and we finally found a tiny restaurant open.
The road from here winds up into the mountains before steeply descending to Agua Caliente. Colombia is a stone’s throw away, but you have to continue to San Antonio del Tachira to cross the border into Colombia.
Thundershowers forced us to take refuge under the canopy of a roadside restaurant between Necocli and Arboletes along the Caribbean coast in Colombia. Hot, humid and wet. A bus pulled up and I took this photo as passengers boarded.
In the piece Gimme Shelter in Travels with Willie I refer to a song sung at our wedding. While Kat and I were traveling in the Balkans, I kept my journal in letters to my brother. Somewhere in Romania, I believe, I wrote: “There’s a lady asleep in my little yellow tent that I love so very much.” My brother wrote a song from that letter and managed to keep it a surprise until our wedding ceremony. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
And I do mean house. We were married at our friends Bernard and Susan’s house in Seattle. The wedding invitation announced, “a wine and desert party interrupted by nuptials.”
I now sing this song to Kat every year on our anniversary (not as well as my brother, but with feeling). Considering the alternative wedding gift options (cheese domes, silverware, wine glasses, etc.) I can’t think of a better gift.
“Most books about cycling end up being about nothing other than cycling–sort of like what The Great Gatsby might have been like if it were a how-to about making money off moonshine and gambling. Willie Weir’s Travels With Willie is one of the rare bike books that gets it right.”Read the rest.
