Some song lyrics, to inspire my visit to yet another country

Now Jordan's banks
They're red and muddy,
And the rollin' water is wide,
But I got no boat
So I'll be good and muddy,
When I get to the other side.

And when I pass through the pearly gates,
My gown be gold instead,
Or just a red clay robe,
With a red clay wings,
And a red clay halo for my head.

            Gillian Welch

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I am in Chaouen, Morocco, Christmas day, 2010; not so long ago, 1920, Christians were forbidden from this town and "entered on pain of death." I keep searching for suitable music on my little AM-FM walkman radio, but as you may imagine, celebration of this most holy day for Christians seems to be unknown here. Therefore, for your listening enjoyment, here's inspirational lyrics I have on my  MP-3 player, as well as from an old KPIG tape...

Press on o Pilgrim in the way of love,
Step in with Jesus to that home above,
Through every trial you are safely led,
Press on o Pilgrim there is joy ahead!

Keeping your love light shining here below,
Trusting the One from whom all blessings flow,
Though I am with you are the words He said,
Press on o Pilgrim there is joy ahead!

Press (press on) on (press on)
O Pilgrim (o Pilgrim),
By love you must be led (o love eternal)
Singing (keep singing),
Shouting (keep shouting),
Glory is just ahead!

Be not discouraged when the way seems long,
Jesus can turn your sadness into song.
His wings eternal are above you spread,
Press on O Pilgrim there is joy ahead!

Press (press on) on (press on)
O Pilgrim (o Pilgrim),
By love you must be led (o love eternal)
Singing (keep singing),
Shouting (keep shouting),
Glory is just ahead!

Bluegrass group unidentified, KPIG, 2008

Stop the press! Extra, extra, read all about it!
OK, got your attention, now here's the thing. For any newcomers to my blog it is very user un-friendly, so you have to scroll down to the bottom and then slowly scroll UP through the photos if you wish to view the trip in chronological order. And let me warn you, you are about to see lots more photos of ruins throughout Turkey. However it will CERTAINLY be worth your while because only yesterday I took a picture which may signify ¨the end of the world as we know it¨, a UFO hovering over the ruins of the ancient library at Ephesus! Yes, it's true, but it may take me a while to get all the recent photos on the blog, so keep tuned, and thanks for staying interested.

"The effect of the bicycle on daily life is now drastically

underestimated by many historians, who tend to see it as an 

instrument of self-inflicted torture. Simple truths have 

been forgotten. As almost everyone knew a hundred years ago,  

the secret to riding a bicycle as an adult is to pedal just hard enough to keep the machine upright,

then to increase the speed very gradually, but without becoming 

too breathless to hold a conversation or to hum a tune. 

In this way, with a regular intake of water and food, an uncompetitive, moderately fit person can cycle up an Alp,

with luggage, on a stern but steady gradient engineered for an eighteenth-century mule. Descending is more difficult but statistically much safer, to all concerned, than in a car."

Graham Robb, The Discovery of France, 2007

 

“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.” - John F. Kennedy

This is for Ian, who I hiked with in Moab

Lyrics to "1952Vincent Black Lightning", by Richard Thompson

Oh, says Red Molly to James, "That's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like"
Says James to Red Molly, "My hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme"
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill, they did ride

Oh, says James to Red Molly, "Here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
For I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine

Now I'm twenty-one years , I might make twenty-two
And I don't mind dying, for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride."

"Come down, come down, Red Molly," called Sergent McRae
"For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery,
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside."

When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said,  "I'll give you my Vincent to ride."

Says James, "In my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a '52 Vincent and a red headed girl,
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeves's won't do
Ahh, they don't have a soul like a Vincent '52."

Oh, he reached for her hand, then he slipped her the keys
He said, "I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels, in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home."

And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride.

How salty is the taste of foreign bread
And how hard a path it is to climb
And then descend the foreign stairs.

                                            Dante

I have just returned to the USA where my world tour will soon continue, in a country where I can speak the King's English. The cold and snow and rain were getting to me in Europe, as well as my poor skills in speaking Turkish. This last deficiency I plan to remedy- by learning Italian (!),  the most beautiful language. I plan to return to southern Turkey in 9 months, having just charged a RT ticket, this time with a Syrian visa in my passport. Shortly I'll post a few more pictures from the trip so far.

Well Lazarus you fell to the ground,
   Lazarus died
Right there in the heart of town,
   Lazarus died
People gathered all around,
   Lazarus died
Lazarus, Lazarus, where did you go
When you left that mortal world?

We wrapped you up in your death clothes,
   Everyone cried
We said goodbye and the tomb was closed,
   Everyone cried
When Jesus spoke and you arose,
   Everyone cried
Cryin` "Lazarus, Lazarus, how did it feel
When you left this mortal world?""

Lazarus, oh Lazarus,  have you heard the news?
They nailed Jesus to the cross
And there`s something you can do.
Lazarus can you bring him back
Like he did for you
For he has left this mortal world

Well you pray the best prayer you know how
   Lazarus pray
Bring Him back to life somehow
   Lazarus pray
But Jesus is in God`s hands now
   Lazarus prayed
Well Lazarus I do believe
That Jesus still lives
Beyond this mortal world.

Lazarus, oh Lazarus, have you heard the news?
They nailed Jesus to the cross
Is there something you can do?
Lazarus can you bring him back
Like he did for you,
For he has left this mortal world.

lyrics to `Lazarus` as sung by the Bluegrass group Marbletown
but I don`t know who who wrote it.

Just finishing a book I loved and here is an excerpt from a chapter called "Dinner at the Negresco". It is a hotel-palais in Nice.
"...The walls covered with flower-patterned genuine seventeenth century cotton percale, the chairs upholstered in red velvet, the crystal chandeliers are all the product of Madame`s discussable taste: but you can`t eat the decorations and the table arrangements were beautifully done, and when course after course arrived escorted by the least forbidding type of maitre d`hotel, under silver covers that were whipped away simultaneously to reveal dishes of such insubstantial-looking beauty that one was reminded of eighteenth-century water-colours of flowers and vegetables, everything else was forgotten. Among the dishes that we ate were courgettes a la fleur et aux truffles, a dish in which the baby vegetables were scooped out, the orange flowers folded and filled with the puree and then cooked in batter with basil, the courgette from which the flower sprouted being sliced, launched into a butter sauce and surmounted with slivers of black truffle. There was also gallette de pigeonneau aux cepes et girolles, a fan of underdone slices of pigeon`s breast with almonds and a mushroom sauce composed of fresh cepes and chanterelles, and, most wonderful of all, saumon au gros sel et tous les legumes frais, fresh salmon flown from Scotland, steamed, surrounded by freshwater crayfish, minute cucumbers, carrots and sliced turnips so small that they could hardly be seen, served with crystals of sea salt, a masterpiece, like no other salmon I have ever eaten.For a sweet we were given one of the creations of Jacques Torres, one of Maximin`s adjutants, gratin de fraises des bois au beurre de Grand Marnier, wild strawberries in a sort of creme brulee with Grand Marnier...

   Had hoped to ''be ın the Hoıly Land'' by Christmas. Unfortunately I got turned down for a visa at the Syrian border south of Antakya, Turkey- they were intansigent, said I had to go through the embassy (in Washington). So I biked back to Turkey which I am enjoying, notwithstanding lots of ıncredible thunder/lıghtning storms.
   Time to send out my annual holiday card, this will be the first year as an electronic one- see pictures below, Merry Christmas from Ailes Photography 2009.
  

That is no country for old men.The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
Those dying generations- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackeral-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

Sailing to Byzantium, 1928, Wm.Yeats

Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!
I take exercise every afternoon that way. Oh, to just grip
your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing
through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds,
avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're
going to smash up. Well now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it,
into the tub, rub down well, then into a soft shirt and down to the dinner table with the evening paper
and a glass of wine  in prospect - and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again! "
                             

                                                                                               -Jack London

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?

Bright Lights Big City
  So here I am in Budapest, just cleaned up at the hostel, it is getting late, I need a KEBAB. On the big pedestrian street two women accost me, Didn't we see you last night at such-and-such bar? No, I was probably in my tent. They are very friendly, Esther has bleach blonde hair, Petra is a university student, they are chatting away about movies with cute accents. Casablanca- director is Sukor, Cukor,  means sugar in Hungarian, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergmann, this favorite movie of Petra and me, and so on. Since my mother resembled Ingrid Bergmann, only more beautiful, I was of course intrigued. I'm thinking Glad I shaved and wore this Tommy Hilfiger shirt.Well, before I knew it, I was on an elevator about to enter a fancy restaurant with candlelight, wine glasses on the tables, loud music, WAIT, all I want is a fast food Doner kebab,  sorry girls, I'm out of here, got a plane to catch. I escaped. This would have cost me way more Forints than I wanted to spend, I'm sure they wanted me to buy them dinner. So get this, the kebab shop had just closed down and it was over to the McDonalds for some cheeseburgers. Sometimes it is better to just have a memory of what might have happened that evening.

   Now in Budapest, Hungary, after Bratislava in Slovenia, at a hostel where I just took the best shower of my life.Yes, my last one was Sep.15 in NYC, it is wild bicycle camping I am doing. I have been using the Handi-Wipes method though. And tonight will be my first night indoors since then, it has been getting quite chilly in the mornings and today I saw the sun for the first time in 6 days- weather has been gloomy and wet.
   Cannot download pictures yet. Five days ago, or was it six, I had a hectic afternoon in Wien (Vienna) trying to save the pictures which I just posted today, for your viewing pleasure. I screwed up the memory at an internet cafe. After 5 attempts into camera stores in this, my mother's beautiful city, where my trailer wheel had also just FALLEN OFF, I found a sympathetic fellow who spent 2 hours at the computer and recovered my images, praise be to JAH. The shop was right across from Steffansdom, loaded with hundreds of tourists when I went in. A few days before in Passau I was in the baroque Dom there with just 2 cleaning ladies and a man giving me the hairy eyeball so I would not take pictures, after all it is a church not a museum, as the sign said. I saw the worlds largest organ, and maybe you will too when I post my surreptitious camera work.

Finally talked on the phone, after many attempts, to Marc, my  old friend from Germany. We met 9 years ago on the beach at Ko Chang in Thailand, where we drank bhang lassis, (being the black brothers that we are).Although I would have loved to visit him in Munich I decided to head toward Ulm to pick up the Danube. His words of advice-Ben, you are sleeping in the woods? That's crazy, we have wolves, they are coming up from Italy. Wolves! So now something else to add to my worries, what next land mines?

   Dr.Derek was right-I am going mad. It is a Saturday morning and the previous night I had camped by the side of the River "Blue", another river after I had abandoned the Neckar River somewhere east of Heidelberg. It is damp and chilly today, I finally wore my blue balaclava for the first time.And my fingerless gloves are too cold-time to get out the full ones.Why are all the supermarkets closed through many kilometers of outlying towns-is it Sunday already? No, my camera clock/ calender assures me it's Saturday. I finally get to the large town of Ulm and here's the crazy part-I paid, PAID, 4 Euros for the priviledge of climbing the 763 tight, cramped, continuous vertical spiralling stone steps to the top.It happens that the whole weekend is a national holiday- 20 years since Oct.3,1979 since Germany became unified. Didn't President Reagan have something to do with this? Tear down this wall, no, that was Berlin and Gorbachev.
   I took my first step into the tiny staircase and for at least 20 minutes bells were constantly ringing, it was quite the exhilarating climb. At the top, my first view of the Donau, the Danube, which I hope to follow for quite a way.When I returned finally to the bottom, a bride was getting out of her limo and a wedding was about to start in the main sanctuary.
   Bicycling out of the city in the late afternoon I was unsuccessful in finding any food for dinner-I'm living hand -to-mouth, so I picked 2 ears of corn in one of the thousand cornfields.Well this corn is a lot tougher and more golden than our corn. Even after boiling it on my propane stove for 25 minutes it was so chewy I wasn't sure - I was a malcontented masticator, know what I mean Vern? I was famished and worried about my digestion, but no problem. Next day, Sunday, no food stores open, only the overpriced gas station markets. I believe I dined at McDonald's that evening and had 3 "Euroknallers", 2 chickenburgers and a cheeseburger, plus a chocolate sundae. It was great.

I've been enjoying the full moon the last few nights, this morning I woke up to a sunrise and the moon, both visible from my tent in the field. Here are some verses sung by Jerry Garcia.

Standing on the moon
I got no cobwebs on my shoes.
Standing on the moon, 
I'm feelin' so alone and blue.
I see the Gulf of Mexico
As tiny as a tear,
The coast of California
must be somewhere over here,
over here.

Standing on the moon
I see the battle rage below
Standing on the moon
I see the soldiers come and go.
There's a metal flag beside me
Someone planted long ago
Old Glory standing stiffly
Crimson, white and indigo
Old Glory standing stiffly
Crimson, white and indigo,
Indigo.

Standing on the moon
I see a shadow on the sun.
Standing on the moon
the stars go fading one by one
I hear a cry of victory,
Another of defeat,
A scrap of age-old lullaby
Down some forgotten street.

                          DEAD

Germany- my main impression is how extremely silent it is, maybe because I am often on the back roads. Unfortunately, the kilometers seem longer here than in Holland, I am sure of it. And even though I have maps I  CONSTANTLY get lost. Am starting to doubt my compass, which my boy (who is now a doctor), informs me is a prescient sign of impending madness.

Amsterdam

Only 2 photos, Amsterdam, smells real good.

      I was about to hear from my friend the main thing which I had to do for my upcoming trip.
     "Ben, this is the main thing you gotta do for your trip, " said David. "You need to get a tattoo of your social security number on the bottom of your foot."
     "Really, why?" I asked.
     "Well,  let's say you're in say, Turkmenistan, passed out naked on the floor of a seedy jail cell, someone can look at the bottom of your foot,  see that it's a U.S. social security number, and maybe they can help you out, notify the authorities..."
     "But, I don't like tattoos," I replied.