The Final Push

Location: Istanbul, Turkey.

Distance Traveled: 3,776 km

Once upon a time, two fairly normal guys had a fairly crazy idea. They thought it would be fun to ride their bikes from London to Istanbul to celebrate their graduation and see the world. September 27th marked exactly 42 days since they left London and completed their journey.

That’s right! We have ARRIIIIIIIIIIVED in Istanbul!

Our last posting described the unsettling feeling in our stomachs as we closed in on Turkey. We hypothesized that perhaps it was because we were afraid that our finish might somehow be anti-climactic. Looking back, we realize just how ridiculous this thought was. If there is one thing that has been consistent about this trip, it’s that nothing comes easy. Each new day was filled with new challenges and lessons learned. Our final push into Istanbul would be no exception.

On the eve of our arrival we set up camp 30km outside of Istanbul to make for an easy morning ride into town. We found an abandoned apartment building perched inches from the water's edge of the Sea of Marmara. As we set up our tent for the very last time, we remarked that this was one of our finest camping sites yet.

Getting a tad bit sentimental, we rummaged the old apartment building to find a decrepit chest of drawers which we then pried apart to feed our raging bonfire. We sat back and listened to the mixing sounds crackling embers and crashing waves.

That night we drank our ceremonial 'end-of-the-day-beers', we talked, we sang, and celebrated our last evening as adventurers before once again returning to normal life. As we were climbing into our sleeping bags we both admitted that we felt ready for this transition and and drifted off to dream about the glorious day to come.

As 5:30 AM rolled around, we woke up to the sound of pouring rain and the feeling of sopping wet sleeping bags. Our usually water-proof tent had given in and water drenched our sleeping bags, clothes and shoes. Still, our excitement for the final push outweighed the misery of packing up a soggy camp in the pre-dawn rain. By 6:00 AM we were on the road!

By 6:01 AM Ramsey already had a flat tire, narrowing the tally to 21 - 23. Chad, in a not-so-secret kind of way, was ecstatic that the flat tire count was nearly even. It seemed especially appropriate, as Ramsey had been mocking his skinny tires for most of the trip saying that they were too easily punctured and that he needed to get some "fatties" as he had done.

This comment was always returned with a look that could burn through your soul while he muttered: “Your time will come Ben-Achour... Your time will come.” It seems, on our last day, it finally would.

Patching a tire is different every time you do it. Sometimes you can get the tire off the tube and spend 30 minutes searching for a puncture that you never find, while other times it takes only seconds to find a guilty chunk of glass. Once the cause of the flat tire has been discovered, patching it is simple question of sanding the hole, applying glue, burning the glue, and pressing on a patch. In the rain though, all of this is more difficult.

Since you can’t patch a wet tube, we found ourselves huddled over the tire, trying to dry it with a lighter and the only "dry" clothing we had left. With a bit of teamwork, the tire was changed and we were back on the road by 6:31 AM.

By 6:32 AM Ramsey's back tire went flat too! Chad’s eyes glowed with satisfaction, and Ramsey jokingly wondered if perhaps he had slashed them overnight just so that his time would, indeed, come before the trip's end. In any event, with 30 minutes and 4 hands, the second flat of the day was patched and we were finally ready to go.

Just before crossing into turkey a few days earlier, we had met a French man who had been walking and cycling around the world for two and a half years. He told us that the final stretch into Istanbul was a nightmare and that we should take a bus. We smirked and said we'd never taken a ride and didn't plan to either, but maybe we should have listened to him....

As we cycled the final 30 km into Istanbul, we were forced to ride on a busy highway with no shoulder. With cars passing at 140km an hour, we hugged the white painted line trying our best not to let the rain and wind gusts push us into traffic or off the road. It took all of our energy to focus on not swerving. Kilometers tallied slower this morning than any other of the trip.

With 15km left to Istanbul a loud SNAP crackled through the air. Chad’s gear cable had snapped in half, reducing his 18 speed bike to a lousy 3 gear. Our bikes were literally buckling under the stress of riding 4,000 km.

Kilometer after kilometer we rode up rolling hills and then back down them. Chad’s lack of gears, however, meant that riding up them was much more difficult than it should have been, slowing us down dramatically. Similarly, riding down hills with out a proper gear meant that he couldn’t pick up any speed. It was purgatory.

Now with a clear advantage, Ramsey began to feel bad that he didn't have to push as hard to do the same distance. It somehow felt unfair after riding nearly 4,000 km under the same conditions that one of us should be struggling more than the other for the final push. Well, at that very moment, Ramsey's bike swerved and skidded and he was thrown from his bike. We looked down to realize that the cause of the accident was yet another flat tire. Now at 23-23... his time had finally come! Because this flat tire was more accurately a slow leak than a pop, we decided that it would be better to just pump it up every 10 minutes as we were so close to our goal.

With 15 kilometers left to Istanbul, Chad had no gears, Ramsey was stopping every 10 minutes to pump his tire, it was raining, the wind was blowing, and cars were angrily honking at us. All we could do was laugh, and hope that the Blue Mosque was around the corner.

So, often times when a sign reads 30km to whatever city its listing, it means 30 km to the center of town. This, unfortunately, is not the case with Istanbul. Rather, the signs here mark the distance to the city limits. Now its important to note that Istanbul has a population of 20 million people, and from one city limit to the other spans 90 km of urban sprawl. This is all useful information that we would have loved to have known. Unfortunately, we were ignorant to these facts. As it turns out, upon arriving at what we thought should be the center of town,
we still had 40 km to go!

In retrospect it's quite funny to think about, as we didn’t know we had 40 km left until we actually arrived at the blue mosque. Rather, we kept on thinking “It must be around the corner! It has to be around the corner!” …It was NEVER around the corner.

In the final stretch to the end of our journey, we couldn’t help but think back to all that we had experienced, and about the good people we had met along the way. We remembered the beautiful small roads that winded through French villages, and the knowledge and inspiration that was imparted upon us along the way.

We remembered the hospitality and generosity that we first encountered in Italy when we met the Sami family. We were brought back to the breathtaking beaches of Croatia, and the war-scared landscape of Bosnia.

We thought about the scary Serbian men we met in Montenegro who turned out to be some of the kindest people we have come to know on trip. We remembered the gremlin children of Albania that helped to push us up unforgiving mountains, and the family in Kosovo that gave us a safe place to sleep away from the millions of landmines that litter the worlds newest country.

Macedonia entered our memories as a place where new friends helped to re-invigorate our souls, while Greece stood out as a country of beauty and sincerity.

Above all else though, we thought about our friends and families that supported us along the way. Our spirits were always lifted by the daily text messages from our girlfriends, the encouraging phone calls from our parents, siblings, and grandparents, the emails and WALL postings from new friends in London, and the blog comments from old friends from home and all over the world.

It took a good idea and a lot of thinking to start our journey off right, but it took support from the people we love and the kindness of good people all along the road for us to finish it.

Reminiscing about all of these surreal memories, we began to wonder how we would remember Turkey. As the minarets of the Blue Mosque entered our line of sight, it became clear: we would remember Istanbul the same way as the Byzantines and the Ottomans might have... we would remember it as a place where great struggles end and dreams are fulfilled!