BEFORE THE RIDE

Here I am, planning the next expedition. As far as common wisdom goes, all I have to do is pick up the trip from where I left it, that is, from Alexandria, Egypt, and continue West into Libya. Incidentally, Libya is the name the Greeks used to use to refer to the continent of Africa until the Latin term Africa was adopted. This is what I thought I would do, but the big guys seem to think differently. I already had a problem with the Greek passport, meaning the two stamps from Israel, which would prohibit my entrance into some Muslim countries. I was pretty sure that Libya is one of them, so I developed a two pronged strategy to deal w/ the problem. I would talk the Libyans into letting me in the country claiming that my visit to Israel was in fact a visit to Jerusalem that had a strictly religious character. At the same time I would be asking about my “friend” who will be traveling w/ me who has an American passport untainted by blasphemous stamps. The answer was short and curt. Absolutely not!!! An Israeli stamp renders any passport useless, and as far as untainted passports, like the American or a Greek one w/o an Israeli stamp, the passport owner must know someone in the Libya that will sponsor him and, in addition, that process takes a few months, if it is ever approved. The conclusion was NO LIBYA. Too bad for them.

If I have to skip one country I might as well move on to the next one, Tunisia in my case. No problems there, don’t even need a visa. According to all accounts it’s a friendly and beautiful country. Of course, Algeria would be next in line and then Morocco. I knew that Algeria needs a visa, so I paid a short visit to their embassy in Athens. I was prepared to apply the Libyan strategy w/ them but, as I found out, it was not necessary. Israeli stamps do not bother them. Instead I would have to submit a ton of papers and documents and, as I found out, to issue a visa they need a minimum of 15 business days. This unbending time frame was prohibitive. They also have problems w/ Morocco and the border between the two countries is closed. That ruled out Algeria for now and Tunisia w/ it. The only choice left is to pick up my trip in Morocco and bike into Spain and leave Tunisian and Algerian ambitions for next Xmas.

Drawing on my Egyptian experience, where there no bike stores or bike mechanics in evidence, I decided that besides maintaining the bike, I would have to learn how to fix it myself. This is a valuable skill to have for someone who like myself wanders far off his home base. To that end my friends at Piranha Bike Store were very helpful. Dimitris, the owner very eagerly told me that he and the other guys that work there would be happy to instruct me, and instruct they did. Kostas, George, and Dimitris taught me almost everything I need, including taking off the cassette and the back wheel and truing it from scratch. The only thing that could not be fixed was the super duper wireless odometer that I have. Dimitris even send me to the dealer and still the odometer could not be fixed. Finally, I had to resort to the more reliable and tested technology of the “wired” odometer that JT had given to me and I had already used in my first biking trip through Turkey.

This is Dimitris


This is the support team






Finally, when I decided that it was time to buy the airline ticket to Morocco, I visited my friends at Aktina tours. My incorrigible practice to leave everything for the last moment caused problems again. We couldn’t find any tickets for the dates I needed or the prices were prohibitive. All that until Despina stepped in and saved the day. The date was fixed for Tuesday the 22d of June.