Ben Ailes World Tour

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Am in Dobovich, Bulgaria, not without some travail. This city, a large one, was not even on my AAA map, it was listed by the old name of Tolbukin. So I just bought a map of Bulgaria, all in Cyrillic, which , as it happens, I can read. I took 2 years of Russian in high school, and now it will pay off in spades, of that I am certain.This is the optomist in me speaking. The pessimist? Let me tell you my new definition of demoralizing. First day out of Bucharest ( where I lost my camera) I bike all day directly east. Headwind. Second day, head east again all day. Headwind. Third day, finally I get to go south all day into Bulgaria. STRONG headwind. Now that's depressing. Luckily have not run out of drugs yet. But I am a photographer without a camera, what next, my bike will disappear and I'll be a bicyclist without a bike?

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i've been travelling with monsieur kevin for a few weeks now. He prefers to be called 'nivek', the backwards spelling; he is a great driver and manages to roll his cigarettes while steering with his knees. nivek also has seen almost every movie in existence so we have conversations about actors, plots, criticizing incessantly. 95% of the time we get along just fine, but he has a habit which is driving me to despair. Whenever i burp or fart (As frequently i am wont to do), he pipes up 'god bless you.' If I have just swallowed a glass of milk and burp, 'god bless you.' If I'm practicing consecutive letters of the alphabet, there it is again, and in a french accent. Now when people sneeze i always say the german 'gezundheit' (good health) because i think it is a bit too much even in english to have god blessing everyone for a simple sneeze; to hear it every time i even semi-stifle a harmless fart or belch is getting me stressed (a word i also despise) to the breaking point. To those of you who have never travelled with a young frenchman in a small renault, sleeping in the car or in tents, cooking meals on a small gasoline stove, my attitude may appear to be unbelieveably petty. it is!!!

I'm fantasizing about better food out here in the sticks... '' the new burger world ginormous breakfast monster sandwich... one sausage patty, 2 eggs, 2 cheese slices, and 3 strips of bacon, a quarter pound of pastrami, 4 snickers bars, 6 more strips of bacon, 2 sticks of butter, 4 of our regular size burgers, 3 corn dogs, a pint and a half of chili, a jumbo turkey drumstick, and a baked potato with sour cream, all smothered with 3 fried onions on 2 sesame seed buns.''
''The ginormous breakfast monster sandwich- we dare you to try it. (De-fıbrillation not included.)''
Heard on kpig radio, 2008

I ran in the Bay-to-Breakers race again this year, 27 out of the last 28 years; it's one of the few things I can brag about. Did not win, the Kenyan men and women won the Mercedes yet again. Many thanks to Charles Gay who lent me this T-shirt, I'm now an honorary "membar" of Shiva's Slaves Motorcycle Club, Kathmandu. In the past I've worn a tuxedo, once painted half my face blue and dressed as "Braveheart" (William Wallace) carrying a large battleaxe, worn my Tibetan "drokpa" jacket- 7 pounds of sheepskin, worn a 30 foot Rajastani Indian turban, twice been dressed as Osama Bin Laden replete with black beard and white shalwar kameez, and the list goes on. Re: the last costume, people thought was I Moses? , a rabbi? Guess I'm way too short to be mistaken for this most-wanted villain who now has a $50 million reward on his head.

Provenance: Portrait of Dr. Gachet by Vincent van Gogh
oil on canvas
22 x 26 1/2 inches

1890- Theo van Gogh (1857-1891) Paris
1891- Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (1862-1925) Amsterdam
1897- Ambroise Vollard (1866-1938) (European art dealer)
1897- Alice Ruben Faber (1866-1939) Copenhagen
Mogens Ballin (1871-1914) Copenhagen (Obscure Danish artist)
1904- Paul Cassirer (1871-1926) Berlin (art dealer)
1904- Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) Weimar collector
1910- Galerie Eugene Druet (1868-1916) Paris
1911- Stadelsches Kunstinstitut und Stadtische Galerie Franfurt, acquired by the director George Swarzenski as a gift of Victor Mossinger

Our hero, Nikola tesla, here on the 100 dinar note of Serbia.
"...For a full two hours, Mr. tesla kept his audience spellbound. Before such colleagues as J.j.thomson, Oliver Heaviside, ...Sir James Dewar, Sir William Preese, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, and lord kelvin, Tesla proclaimed the driving force of his motivation. 'Is there, I ask, can there be, a more interesting study than that of alternating current?... We observe how the energy takes the many forms of heat, light, mechanical energy...and even chemical affinity...all of these observations fascinate us...each day we go to our work...in these strivings...we have found hours of untold pleasure, and we have directed our energies to the benefit of mankind."

"at 8:00 pm on june 20, 1957, in the ballroom of the Hotel diplomat in New york city, the interplanetary sessions newsletter announced a meeting to coordinate an expected visit by the "space people" to the planet earth. The event was planned by three individuals: george van tassel, author of "i rode a flying saucer";
george king, purported telepathic contactee with extraterrestrials, and margaret storm, author of the occult biography "return of the dove", a book whose transcripts were received on the tesla set, a radio-type machine invented by tesla in 1936 for interplanetary communication. By July 1 it was assured that the "martians" would have "full scale operations" in Washington, d.c., new york, and "general north american areas." it was also revealed that "tesla was a venusian, brought to this planet as a baby in 1856, and left in a remote mountain province in what is now Yogoslavia (sic.)"
both passages from "Wizard-the life and times of nikola tesla, biography of a genius- Marc seifer 1996

i biked up to a part of the wall which once completely surrounded the city. it used to have, before many invading armies as well as devastating earthquakes destroyed much of it, 360 observation towers along its length and it is recorded that a four horse chariot could be driven along the top of the wall, it was that wide. So Miss macauley continues, "The great wall which it is the tourist's duty and pleasure to walk round will have with its seven mile circuit over crag, mountain and ravine, a bracing, tonic effect, counteracting the enervating mood of voluptuous luxury." Now I am hiking over sharp stones , boulders of all sizes, barely a trail, it is excruciating and I am worried I might twist an ankle, very rough...

This looks like the blair witch project i realize- but here is the story. a half hour ago at about 9pm from outsıde my tent I hear ''Salaam Aleikum.'' So i respond in kind ''Wa aleikum salaam.'' It turns out I am camped on the farm of Amir's father. But everything is ''no problem'', Amir assures me, he just wanted to warn me about dogs. At least I think that's what he meant. And also to lock my bike, there are gypsy thieves about. If I understand correctly- this was done with the use of my Turkish phrasebook outside the tent in the dark. So it turns out after we conversed for a while Amir kept pointing to the word ''sex'' in the dictionary (which happens to sound the same in Turkish), and then pointing to me and to himself- you get the idea. OK, my headlight was shining into his eyes, he couldn't see my 10 day growth of beard, I was totally bundled up in black clothing, he had not noticed I'd gone for a week without a shower... Stıll,
Yeats says this is no country for old men-HA!!

I quickly get up and out of my tent at the marina 10 km. past Novi Sad, although I love sleeping at marinas and it has been an unusual warm night, the rain has just started. Should I stay or should I go- just like that song. Latest sign said Belgrade 87 km. so I should be able to get there if the weather does not worsen. Which it does. Plus I'm on the recommended route-a busy highway, no shoulders, big trucks, buses, traffic, cars madly passing uphill as well as down. Scared, I even put new batteries in my blinking taillight and headlight, tighten my helmet, zip up the reflective jacket, plus it is a 10% uphill grade all of a sudden, what happened to the river? My glasses fogging, I was miserable, although at least not cold AND miserable. I pull over, 5 feet from the road and make a cup of coffee, my first. I wait, what to do, should I stay or should I go, go back, down that hill I've been pumping up, no way. I wait. I make another coffee. A dog is staring at me, as is their wont, from inside his (dry) dog house. Maybe I should have a smoke. I count my money- 700 dinars, what's that, eleven dollars. Been in Serbia for 4 days now, without a map, just following the "Euro Route #6" signs. Well the clouds are lifting a bit, rain seems to be lightening, action!
OK, here's what to do- been here a long time even though I started early, so I start pushing my bike up hill, it's so steep anyway, at least my body is a bit to the side of the road, feels safer. Finally near the top it begins to level out, feels just like a mountain pass, and miraculously the route switches to small local roads, and there's a tailwind, after I've been fighting headwinds the last three days.
Now comes the reason people adore bicycling. I get the longest, gentle, fastest downhill of my five weeks of biking, kilometer after kilometer, down, down, just beautiful, in calm air even though I'm shredding, all the way down to a sign, this sign. I couldn't stop laughing. The line between love and hate, heaven and hell is very thin. As they say here, ciaou ciaou! I need a Doner kebab.

Was in Croatia, just for a day. My map, a German language bicycle route map of Hungary I had picked up in Bugapest, ended at the village of Suza, it was getting dark, so I camped, like many times before, in a farmer's field. Very early in the morning, as I was making coffee, the farmer and his helper show up, to spread fertilizer by the look of their tractor and bags of supplies. He was very pleasant, but only spoke Croatian, so he whips out his cell phone and I talk to his daughter, hand the phone to the father who speaks to her, I speak to her again, back and forth, and the whole time he is drawing this map. Something has to make my day, and this certainly was it.
BTW, that big loop I inked in is a wrong-way dead end detour, very annoying.

This neatly piled wood is as big as a cottage. The owner comes up to me, speaking his language of course, but then switched to broken English. "This me-Estrodom, this mine, you like?"
"Esterdom, it's very impressive", I reply. "Wait, I get book", he said, running back to his hut and returning with what looked like an old dog-eared dictionary.He rifled through it. "This my art.I..." He picked out a word, "stack, stacking, I stacker.uh huh. Another furious search in the dictionary.
"Fagot. I, I fagot-stacker."
"Oh really. If you say so," I say.
Esterdom explains, "Yah, I fagot- stacker. My dream, take to big festival in your country America."
"Sounds reasonable," I say. "What then?"
" I set on fire. I go to Burning Man!"

I used to have a Jag, older than this one for sale on a country road. Mine, a '64 E-type convertible had glass over the headlights, very dainty horizontal taillights, and toggle switches, not the newer,"safer," rocker type. It had a lighter on the dashboard which said "cigar". And I had a record player from Europe mounted between the bucket seats which would play one 45 at a time. Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" was a favorite of mine. And " Keep on Dancin' " by...And "California Sun" ...by the Nightcaps? nO, MAYBE THE rIVIERAS.

Ben Ailes World Tour

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

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