Crusty Cassette

Hi Everyone,

I seem to be recovering pretty fast - my knees are a bit stiff and my left ITB is a bit touchy but other then that, I'm fine. My 'body was ready to QUIT about 3 days before we were done riding!! So I took it pretty easy the last days.

Turkey was quite interesting. Many of our riders got free water and fruit and a 'welcome' from venders along the road. When we got to Vize ( a small town) The Mayor heard about our arrival and gave our Turkish tour guide a free bus so we could go see some of their antiquities. This included a free police man to ride on the bus with us (?) When we got to a site where they were restoring a mosque the police man asked the workers to stop using their power tools so we could hear what the guide had to say.

Also the mayor sent a guy in a car to follow us and take pictures of us! It was pretty funny. Every where we walked on the streets locals would ask us where we were from and say 'welcome'. I wanted to ride in to Istanbul so Paola and I took a 'lift' (in the van) and rode in the last 65k. 2 women rode the vanthe whole way in and the diehards did 145k with 4000ft elavation gain! Plus the last 30k was getting into the city! That was a story all in it's self!! We all arrived safetly!! We were really very blessed!! I reached my goal of doing 2000+ miles and of crossing every boarder on my bike. It was definately a whirlwind tour! I can't find the slip of paper I wrote my 'k' on but the whole trip was about 2500miles and I completed 2100.

The oldest lady was 65 and she got the nickname 'the terminator' she does about 5 -6000 miles a year with her husband! Another Sis. Madonna.

Thanks for all your interest and support!

Love Mom/Helen

You can rip out the Cottonwood Page of your Largent Guidebook. We rewrote it yesterday. The rewrite didn’t include any naps but it did include a swim. I’m sure Steve would have approved.

more photos

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Elaine joined us on a Sunday 50 mile Palouse ride and suffered from the heat and lack of road experience. We were skeptical when she said she planned to rided Seattle to Portland in a couple of weeks.

She proved us wrong, though and reported a successful ride. I asked her for more info on the ride and once again she has delivered.

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The Hiawatha trail is one of the must do bicycle rides in this area. Our group tries to include this ride every year. More Photos

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Helen checks in from Turkey. Seems her typing has taken on a bit of eastern European accent, too.

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