Turkey

In the morning, after getting the tire fixed, I drove down to the Turkish border on the way it started to rain.

Met two guys from Lithuania while waiting for customs, the officers didn't gave us any preferred treatment and we didn't had any shelter from the rain, waiting there for hours, having someone to talk to was a nice way to let time go by faster. According to research on the internet I should have been able to buy an insurance green card at the border, because the bike doesn't have any insurance and I need one in the EU. Unfortunately that information was false, the only insurance I could and had to buy at the border is only valid for Turkey. Anyway my highest priority at the moment is to get a new front tire as soon as possible and in Turkey at least that can be an achievable task, whereas in Georgia near to impossible. Due to the rainy weather I sticked with ridding along the coast.

Shortly before Samsun a British rider caught up with me, we stopped hat a traffic light for a short chat and agreed to ride together until Samsun and have a coffee there. While looking for a place I saw a Yamaha motorbike shop and marked a waypoint on the gps to go back later to check if they have a front tire available. After we were done with the coffee I rode to the shop but saw one from Honda that I'd missed before and decided to try there first. It was a big shop with 3 brand new Africa Twins on display, so I had some hope that would have a tire on stock. Turkey has not been easy with foreign languages but here I was able to find a guy that spoke a little bit of English.

I explained that I needed a front tire, preferably road oriented, he picked his phone and called someone, now I got confused, we stood there for a while and I was thinking, how difficult can this be? A simple yes or no? Around 10 minutes later he said he has one. Another 10 minutes went by with standing near the bike and he talking to another guy, then a motorcycle rider arrived carrying the tire with him. I looked at it and saw that it was far from willing to buy it was late, the price was fair and I had no better choice, so I asked if they could mount it.

I drove the bike down to the basement and was invited to wait in the show room. Almost two hours went by and there was no sign from the mechanic so I decided to go take a look at the happening. There are two guys trying to mount the tire in the most primitive way, stepping at the tire with the wheel lying on the ground with no protection for the disk, so they're practically standing on the edge of the disk.

They have taken both calipers from the fork which is not necessary for this work but they don't seam to know better. Watching these two guys would have been fun if this was not the bike I was on. They have no idea about torque values and I had to stop them from eventually breaking a screw, they looked quite surprised and maybe said that I was crazy (they only spoke Turkish) but I didn't need unnecessary trouble with the bike. The good thing was that while I was waiting I met a Turkish Africa Twin rider that pointed me to stay in a really nice place. Next day I continued my ride along the coast but was caught by yet another thunderstorm.

Spend the night in Abama and woke up with more rain I waited for a while but then after looking at the radar decided to go on, the rain stopped 20 km later and I was able to enjoy the twists along the coast until almost evening when I saw the next thunderstorm coming my way, stopped after Zonguldak for the evening and it started raining the moment I took off my helmet.

The next morning more rain, now I had enough and drove the fastest way to the border.