djb

Taking the ferry from Levis across the st Lawrence to Quebec City the other day.

CMAW 

Went for a wash on the wrong side of Bürdür lake, sticky blackish clay that took me 40 minutes to get rid of since I couldn't use my rationed drinking water .

CMAW 

What's happening in this thread? Nobody on tour, no pics? Anyway, I'm on a roll and I'm going to post about it.

CMAW 

Some of my best, most exciting miles ever, in the Lesser Kaukasus. Despite the big dogs chasing me every half hour or so.

PedalingWalrus

hope he is with her ;-)

Clyde1820

Beautiful.

Looks a bit like the "badlands" area of Wyoming and South Dakota in the USA.

djb

The place is a Turkish Delight apparently.

djb

very cool landscapes, cool photos.
Being so wide open, if the weather goes bad, I'm sure it could be quite a handful, and little shelter.
Were those tires ok, I think I'd have preferred wider.
Are they 1.75, 2 inch?

Must have been really neat biking there.

CMAW 

I swear the guy was making a video! Started up close and then kinda moved back and made a 360° movement with his phone .

CMAW 

It was only a day and a half up there and in case of really bad weather I could have found shelter in one of the shepherds summer camps, there were quite a few of them (hence the dogs). 2 inch schwalbe almotion in the back, front is a 40 mm GTR1 (bontrager) because I had a blowout earlier. Not great for this kind of terrain, true. Wish I could choose my tires in the morning, depending on what's coming, like you pick out a tie. But it worked, slow and steady when it got really bad.

djb

I have yet to try Almotions. Ive ridden a lot on 2in Supremes 26in, and for those sort of surfaces you were on, wider would be better. As you say though, either due to frame limitations or just balancing how much rough stuff you'll be on vs manageable stuff, it's always a bit of a guess of how wide to go---carrying a certain amount of weight, I lean more and more towards wider nowadays.

Ive used some Schwalbe Hurricanes, inexpensive 2.1 inch with a flattish tread in center, dimples off center, and then some actual knobs on the sides. Worked really well in mixed terrain, and nice with a medium load similar to yours when going in softer stuff cuz the side knobs help a lot in those situations (they make 27.5 and 700 versions in 2.25 and 2.4in) .....BUT there is always a compromise to be made for traction, speed and comfort isn't there?

and as. you say, I've been fine getting by like you with slow and steady through bad bits, but hopefully those aren't too long.

tire talk aside, those areas you're biking through look really cool.

StarBiker

I am willing to edit.......

CMAW 

Georgia is fantastic, bit of a hype destination in Europe recently. There's a flat portion in the north, it's called the beach, and the rest of it are mountains . So you have to be careful and take lots of time off, to enjoy the great food for example.
For wider tires I'm gonna need a new bike, maybe in a year or two - Fits Fatties Fine, but times change and you get older. Since a few years I've been toying with the idea to bring an extra tire for the front, a medium knobby Thunderburt, for this kind of situation. I' ve never done it (the weight!) and at some point always regretted it.

djb

Salut le belge, unless you're a Flemish speaker so maybe no French....I spent a few days in Belgium earlier this summer, riding over from the Netherlands. Ended up in Ghent where I was surprised people mostly spoke English (my first time in Belgium so no experience)

I have a different model of fatties fit fine, that can take up to 2.5 maybe 2.8 tires, a Troll, and that was the appeal for me.
But there are lots of neat bikes that can take wide tires now, and I'm probably a lot older than you, so really like the wider comfort thing.
And wider and low pressures works pretty good for different terrain, within reason and to a certain extent anyway.

CMAW 

Cool, Ghent is maybe the best city to spend some time in on tour. We're a small country, invaded by everybody with a half decent army, so we speak our foreign languages.

djb

On your last comment, that is exactly why I rode into Belgium--I went to drop in on my grandfathers kid brother who went there in '44 and stayed there, but unfortunately buried soon after in a small Canadian military cemetery near a tiny town not far from the Dutch border.
And oddly enough, it's only about 60kms from Paschendale where my grandfather left a leg back in 1917......weird eh? nearly 30 years apart, thousands and thousands of kms from Canada and the two brothers go through all that ugliness in almost the same place in Belgium....but at least my grandfather came back.
cheers

CMAW 

It's less weird (but just as sad) when you think of it as one war with a pause in between, as some historians suggest.

Stadjer

How else would they be able to communicate with their fellow countrymen in the South?

I agree. Bruges might be prettier but it has a bit of the same issue as Venice, that the ratio between tourists and inhabitants takes the soul out of the City. Ghen it much more a real living city while it also has really old stuff and canals.

djb

I admit ignorance on my part, I just assumed everyone spoke both Flemish and French and didn't realize English was so widely spoken.
I was wrong.

CMAW 

This is just a sarcastic and pretentious comment that has no place in this thread.

Stadjer

Besides the fact that many Walloons don't speak Dutch, the country is mostly divided by language and having to speak the other's language is not power neutral which makes it complicated. So in the younger generation they often speak in English to eachother because that doesn't carry any political or historical weight. But English is getten spoken by most everywhere, France, Germany, Spain and Italy still not at the front but also moving in that direction. Flanders has always been close to the Dutch in proficiency despite being much better in French than the Dutch.
It was a bit sarcastic for good humour, but if English can lighten up the language issue a bit I'd genuinely like that. I didn't want to make it heavy either but I notice from your reaction it still is. For me it's just something that is particular to and interesting about Belgium, which is very dear to me. .

str

15 days, 1500km, Spain, Extremadura, Castilla la Mancha, Castilla Leon

CMAW 

You can get Estrella Dam and Mahou in Georgia! And I was trying so hard not to think about Spain .

str

have you been in Georgia? cool. great place.

str

15 days, 1500km, Spain, Extremadura, Castilla la Mancha, Castilla Leon