May 30th to 31st – Batumi
June 1st – 44 kms, Pirveli Maisi
June 2nd -11 kms, Vaio – shitty day due to broken spoke

Crossing the border between Turkey and Georgia is quite a contrast. Pierre is not the only men wearing a short. Women are wearing skirts. Alcohol advertisement along the roads. Even people swimming in the Black Sea! Yes, we are in another country.

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Few kilometers to absorb the contrast and we arrived in Batumi. Batumi is the second largest city of Georgia and is also known as “the Las Vegas of the Caucasus”. This is actually easily understandable : nonsense skyscrapers, casinos, many disco clubs, alcohol everywhere… It looks like many people from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are coming here to “unwind”.

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We met our new cyclist friend Flo here and enjoyed his company to visit the city during few days. Beach, ice-creams, restaurants, working on our blog, relaxing. We were also lucky as we were in the city for the last Friday of the month and could therefore join Batumi’s Critical Mass – a nice way to meet locals and discover the city. Cyclists in Batumi and Georgia in general are very few, but the Critical Mass is getting bigger and bigger according to the organizers. Again, they were struggling with the politics and mayors to promote bicycling in the cities, developing bicycle lanes aso. A tough never ending discussion that we know pretty well in France (and almost everyhere?).

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June 1st started and it was a good date to take up the road again. We quickly realized that drivers in this country are completely crazy. They by-pass everywhere, everywhen and anyhow. Honking for whatever reason. Also, if you believe the roads are in bad conditions in your country, come to Georgia! You will be surprised. Pot-holes, peddles, gravels, missing asphalt. Sometimes it is quite a disaster. It is common to see a car with 2 spare wheels on the roof. And often, the spare wheel is more worn out than the installed wheels. Also, the cars are rather old here. It looks cars from western Europe are all having a second/third/fourth life here. And also from Soviet Union. You can find cars with the steering wheel on the left, others having it on the right, which might be disconcerting as at first glance you just think that there is no driver.

So it is with such new conditions that we cycled towards the Goderdzi pass. A long uphill through a green valley following the Adjaris-Tskali river. As stiff that it is actually slightly difficult to find a place to camp. We asked a grandma if she knew a place where we could rest, and indicated us a nice spot along a stream. Perfect spot, with a small river, green grass, shadow and very quiet.

The following mornind we felt full of energy to attack the oncoming uphill. Unfortunately, after only 11 kms – BANG! – the sweet noise of something borking. It comes from Pierre’s bicycle. It’s a broken spoke. Pierre’s nightmare happened one more time. (Geek mecanic alert!) To give some background, Pierre’s rear wheel was completely re-laced with new spokes and trued before our departure, as the wheel was constantly breaking spokes after about 10000 kms. So we were confident with this new departure that spokes should not break on Pierre’s rear wheel. We were wrong. After a few 3000 kms, broken spoke again. But ok, we have spare spokes so it should not be a big deal to fix this one. Oh, wait a minute, the spoke is broken INSIDE the nipple. Do we have spare nipples? Obviously not. So we first tried to find a way to remove the broken part of the spoke from the nipple, in vain. And then, realizing : one of us has to go to Batumi to find a stupid nipple. It was easily 14:00 and we started to stress: it was a Sunday, and luckily one bicycle shop was open in Batumi until 16:00. So we should move quickly to be there before the closing – we were at 60 kms from the city. We packed our stuff quickly, Larissa found a place to wait far from the road with never stopping honking cars, and Pierre started to hitchhike. Took 2 minutes for a truck to pick him up. Pierre arrived at the bicycle shop with the wheel at 15:50, wheel was fixed 10 minutes later. Then Pierre took a bus back to Larissa’s place and it was easily 18:30. We both felt emotionally exhausted. So we decided to camp there, even though the place was for sure not the best one : weird people were hanging out inside their car, drinking beers and smoking cigarettes. At least they gave us some warm beer to raise our moral. Then we realized that we lost some tools during the rush before the hitchhike… And to end the day on a high note, when she came back from the shop to purchase some groceries, Larissa thought Pierre had been kidnapped or felt in the river as he disappeared. Pierre was actually looking for the lost tools, 200m away. It was the first tears of the trip. We ate quickly and went to sleep, this day definitely had to stop for both of us.

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