Day 12 Tuesday 17th July 2007

Sivas, Turkey – Agri, Turkey

Today I have been a bit of a Silly Billy. I saw some hills that looked like a nice place to stop and so left the road and took the stony track leading up into those hills. Once I was in a remote place I decided it would be nice to park on the grass – I don’t know why, because I wasn’t in the way of anything coming up and down the hill. But anyway, I rode onto the grass and immediately the front wheel sank a few inches into the soft ground. So I dismounted and tried to push the bike back onto the stony ground, but instead XS fell on her side.
I tried to pick her up and really she felt nailed to the ground. My feet were slipping on the soft ground, fuel was leaking from the tank and I was getting nowhere in my efforts. I was starting to sweat – partly from trying to lift a quarter of a ton back onto her wheels, but also because the realisation was coming to me that I was alone in a remote hill with my transport the wrong way up. I wasn’t panicking, but I could certainly feel a nasty feeling creeping up on me!
In a bid to lighten the load, I hurriedly emptied the panniers. Miracle of miracles I then managed to lift the XS back onto her wheels and back onto the stony ground.

In dropping the bike I had snapped off the front indicator and so now I had to decide if I was going to affect a repair or remove all indicators. Now this is the lucky bit – when I inspected the rear indicators I discovered that the road vibrations had already caused fractures in the welding holding the indicators to the bike. The rear indicators were well on their way to falling off and it was really very lucky that I discovered this before it happened. So half an hour later XS was now without indicators – to be honest I was getting the feeling that my fellow road users were ignoring those indicators anyway, so I did not feel to distraught about removing them.

And another bit of good fortune that came from this is that I found in my panniers a lovely woollen blanket that Caroline had packed and so I wrapped that around me before setting off and felt toasty for the rest of the days ride.

I finished the day feeling sorry for XS having to put up with me and these rough roads. Suddenly she seems a bit old and fragile for this. (Jonny Krause)