June 10, 2014 Istanbul is a very crowded and crazy city of 14 million people. Fortunately city transportation by ferry, tram, bus and the metro are great where we stayed in the old city. In-between that there are very reasonable taxi rides. We spent the week walking around the many interesting sites, and taking a few metro subway trips to pick up family members at the airport.

Along with that I worked on Asian visas for the next part of our journey. Thanks to Stantours.com for all of their help with explaining the process. We are currently working on obtaining visas for Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, plus the GBAO permit (necessary for traveling the Pamir Highway). It is nice that Georgia and Kyrgyzstan are free countries for us.

My family including my wife Andee, son Cary, sister Tish, cousin Al and his wife Lou flew from Istanbul to a resort on Bosbuk Bay in southwest Turkey. We will spend a week here before returning to Istanbul and our bikes. This beautiful and fun resort on the Aegean Sea gives us a chance to reunite and have fun with our family before starting our Asian journey.

Our bikes are being refitted with Rigida 36-hole rims with XT hubs and DT Swiss double-butted spokes as the new rears were already showing signs of stress. These wheels are used on many world crossing heavy touring cycles. Along with that Jocelyn’s kickstand was removed and where this was attached to the frame there were severe indentations along with small cracks. The Surly obviously wasn’t safe to ride anymore. We found out that Surly has a notice out not to use this kickstand. Her frame is being replaced with a Santos Travelmaster 2.6. All of the other components are in great shape. Thanks to Bisiklet Gezgeni bicycle shop in Istanbul http://www.bisikletgezgini.com for their great service. They come well recommended from many touring cyclists we have met.

Next week we will return to our journey for the start of part 2: Asia.