kaleb's blog: that simple place

Three mornings ago, dawn light on a nowhere road. A down-valley track all ruts and stones slick with the unsettling snow. Hands loose on steering, minimal braking, getting to know and trust my bike again. It runs well, fast and heavy on the rough. Three crop-eared dogs join in for fun, yowling alongside. I've come to enjoy the dog chases, stoop to their level (chase me! chase me!); speed up and goad a little. Bells ahead and around a corner there's cows coming, a bovine roadblock. Skid stop, kicking out to stay upright simultaneously checking the dogs who've hung back to bark me off. High-octane stuff. Two hard looking cowmen unsmiling at me now as I pick through their steaming herd, biting my grin to mutter garma jorba; silence; bells and barks. Ride off down the valley. There is a wonderful nowness, immediacy, to riding a bike in the early morning. It is great to be out doing it again.

I left Tbilisi North on Monday. Armenia is South but my detours seem to yield all kinds of unexpected special bits (Vienna, Belgrade, Greece entire, Kapadokya, Bristol... etcetera) and they help to reiterate that 'bike ride' spirit; for its own sake as it were. And I'm in no special hurry. So this week I've made a perfectly inexpedient 250 mile loop up towards Russia, East towards Azerbaijan and tonight I'm just South of Tbilisi again, on the Armenia road. One day, I forget which, was sublime. Here Winter, there Autumn. Stark frosted forest at dawn. Cold blue skies, hot sun. Willows weeping gold and all day the Caucus mountains' brilliant white streak of peaks hovering over the horizon to my left above. Hot fresh flatbread at lunch and in the gloaming woods a man appearing to give me tangerines and best wishes, a beaker of homemade vodka which I threw in the fire once he'd gone (woompf like petrol). I am dry since the flight...

The other days have been harder. Daylight is short and grey. Skies are sodden. Roads are black slush. It is cold out. I've always enjoyed a camp fire; never, as I recall, needed one - until this week. Five subzero nights out and I am becoming expert at the routines, learning by error and wet necessity. If you leave the tent open a flap then the inner stays dry from condensation. Lower pine branches are generally dead and kept dry by those above. Anything wet outside the tent will freeze. Everything is wet. Carry lots of plastic bags. Be sure to defrost the brake cabling and calipers in the morning (somehow!). Go slow, frozen sweat is grim. Last night triumphant all the skills came together. Sitting by the fire amidst heaps of spare wood and gloves steaming dry to the side, with hot lemon honey after my pork dumplings... snow falling all around but warmer than I'd been all day, I had an ace feeling - the sweeter for its recent scarcity - that I'm actually pretty good at this.

Today, then, was all test. One thing after another like a comedy. Imagine all the petty things that could go awry on a wintry camping trip by bicycle in a foreign land and you're half way there. When the kind man who'd offered me a bed out back of his petrol station in the day's first upward turn rescinded the offer just as I'd strung out all my wet things (which was everything) and turfed me out into the now-dark and freezing night I couldn't cry for laughing. So instead I have a hotel! A dingy affair but at least I'll be able to charge my flat Kindle and write this. The power cut was immediate after check in and lasted a couple of hours... Inevitable today. Instead I've been trying drying six days of wet gear on a sixteen inch radiator in the dark. I'd be better off in the woods! But the shower was good; simple pleasure of towells.

Photos, overdue: