June 10, 2013

Distance: 34.8 miles Climbing: 1656.8 ft

Athens apparently did not want us to leave and did everything in her power to stop us. About a block away from the hostel, Chandler dropped into his smallest rear cog ring and his bike produced an awful noise. He stopped to investigate and he noticed that the smallest cog was just spinning around and his cassette had come apart. We immediately pulled up on the curb and Chandler determined no major damage had occurred. The stack of three small cog rings on the cassette had just come loose. We have a tool to re-tighten the cassette and after a few minutes of fiddling his bike was back together and we were back on the road.

Is it supposed to do this?

About two minutes later, I noticed my front tire was a little low. We pulled over at a gas station and sure enough I had run over a staple. We pulled it out with our mini-vice grips (indispensible), patched up the tube and inflated the tire with the air at the gas station. Back on the road and headed out of town.

We made a stop at a little vegetable stand in the center of town to pick up groceries, then a bakery for more spinach pastry. Chandler spotted a bike shop so we stopped to pick up another chain to replace the spare I am currently using on my bike. A discussion between the owner and the employee ensued which is always a bad sign after asking the price of something. Not surprising, the chain was overpriced by about 10 Euro so we continued. Not two seconds after leaving, I heard a crunch and a familiar hissing sound. I had run over a small piece of glass which gouged a hole in my tire and punctured the tube. We couldn’t believe that after having only one flat tire in 5 months of riding in Asia, I got two flats within hours of each other. We quickly did the necessary repair work and continued on our way.

Tires and glass don’t mix

We were getting pretty fed up of trying to get out the immense sprawl of Athens and stopped at a McD’s for ice cream. We felt better after our snack and Chandler found a more direct route on the GPS, so we headed off once again. Then the Athens bike gnomes struck again as we were pedaling up a hill, my crank arm fell off. It wasn’t a huge deal (this happens all the time- both of our Shimano Hollow-tech II cranks are garbage and fall apart all the time, Chandler’s is currently held together with a piece of paracord, a tent-stake and electrical tape), but after all that had gone wrong, neither of us were in good moods.

Just like new

Finally, after several hours we made it out of the city only to find ourselves funneled onto a huge highway. Consulting the GPS, we found the highway was our only option for a few miles until we could get to a smaller frontage road. The traffic was fast and there was basically no shoulder. It was the only through road for miles, and didn’t seem to be designed so much as just evolved from a donkey path to major expressway, so gas stations and houses sat right on the roads which resulted in cars and trucks constantly merging in and peeling off at freeway speeds.

Blessedly, we found a secondary road that actually appeared to connect to the next town on the GPS which turned out to be a service road for the sprawling oil refinery that dominated the shore in the area. When we finally left the highway, we were both out of breath, completely jacked up on adrenaline and cursing the traffic, the city and the country. It was the worst bit of riding of the entire trip so far, easily twice as bad as the closest contender: our day long stint on Highway 1 in Vietnam.

Our spirits improved immediately once we were on the quieter road. While the traffic wasn’t any friendlier but there was less of it. We had to travel through the oil refinery and the appending industrial slum, which was stinky and boring. We were beginning to doubt our choice of coming to Greece.

Scenic oil refinery resort area

We finally escaped the industrial maze and headed along the old highway 8 which was much more relaxing, though riding and scenery were pretty dull. We were in the small town of Neraki when my tire went flat again. Seriously, 3 in flats in one day? Luckily we were right in front of a gas station where the attendant was friendly and helpful. He had a small garage where he changed tires and it was immaculately clean, on an OCD level. The wrenches were all lined up perfectly in ascending order above his bench and the concrete floor was so immaculate you could eat off it. The mechanic let Chandler borrow a wrench to really tighten both of our cassettes. Back on the road again, the scenery changed and the riding was lovely. We spotted a small bike shop and picked up a chain for a perfectly reasonable price. The mechanic filled up our water bottles and sent us off with a wave. We were in a good mood now. Do we seem a little manic depressant?

Are we having fun yet?

After awhile the road left the town and went straight along the coast. We had the sea to one side and big hills on the other blocking us from the main highway. The traffic started giving us more room and people started waving and returning our smiles. There were a couple of spectacular sections of road reminiscent of Highway 1 in California near Big Sur.

Much better road

Land Ho!

We realized we were exhausted so we started to scout for campsites, which is always a challenge in steep terrain. Chandler noticed a road leading up to a radio antenna which are sometimes good low key places to find a place to camp. He rode up the hill to investigate. It was even better than he had thought! The antenna was right next to the unused small gauge rail line and the fence along the track was in a pretty bad state so it was easy to follow the tracks a few hundred feet or so down to a small clearing totally hidden away out of sight, perfect for camping and setting up hammocks. We even had a glimpse of the ocean through the trees. After a very trying day, we were more than happy to stop, relax and make dinner.

Riding the rails

June 8 – 9, 2013

We jumped up at first light to pack up our sleeping pads and get out of the smoke. The ferry arrived early and we were happy to be off the boat. We rode pretty quickly through the narrow streets of Piraeus, the port area near Athens, stopping to buy some goat cheese at a market and some pastries at a bakery. After devouring spinach and cheese pies, followed by a cinnamon flavored baklava roll, we headed towards the center of town. We did make a quick pit stop at a hardware store to find a nut for part of Jenny’s saddle which had rattled off. The owner gave us the nut and a spare free of charge. We were loving it here so far!

Riding off the ferry

Baklava

We made it to the hostel that we had in mind and checked into a room for 35 Euros. I asked for a room with a balcony and they moved us over for no additional fee. The room had a shared bathroom, but it also had a spectacular view of the south side of the Acropolis including some of the Parthenon. We lounged in the room, taking in the view, coming up with a plan for the next day. We had been on the move, not under our own power for a while so we needed to reset, and figure out what the heck we were going to do for the next few months!

Not a bad view from the balcony

The next day we spent a good chunk of the morning up at the Acropolis, which was very busy, but the ruins were really impressive, so we barely noticed the swarms of tour groups. The overall site is called the Acropolis, which is a dramatic site set on a tall plateau with clear views of the whole city. There are several important buildings and other structures such as a large amphitheater that made up the compound, so we spent a while wandering. There were a fair amount of interpretive signs, so we were able to get the basic idea of what we were looking at. The Parthenon, which is the central rectangular pillared building, is an imposing structure up close. There was a bunch of scaffolding up which unfortunately obscured one end. They were apparently in some stage of either disassembling or reassembling the columns, in order to stabilize the structure. We wandered back down the north side of the Acropolis, which was almost completely deserted, and rested for a while in the shade of the cave of Zeus.

Parthenon

Some lovely ladies and just a fraction of the city

The Theatre of Dionysos

Statues

Mosaic

Other than the ruin sites, Athens didn’t really charm us. It is not a very attractive city. From the plateau of the Acropolis, we could see a dense sea of modern buildings in every direction, riding up the sides of the steep hills ringing the town spilling continuously all the way down to the sea. Down in the streets, it was a dingy place with knocked out windows on abandoned storefronts covered in graffiti. I saw the first people of the entire trip taking hard drugs as I walked down a street near the tourist center.

There was a central market area selling produce, meats fish and other things, which was worth a walk through, but without a place to cook, we didn’t buy anything. The rest of the retail in the area was mostly tourist shops, newsstands and everything for 1 Euro type shops hawking chincy stuff like flyswatters and plastic toys.

We were in the “flea market” area so we wandered around there some. A few people were selling some genuinely interesting things like records, religious icons, sewing machines, antique surgical instruments, etc. On the main drag there were more desperate people selling old worn out clothes, broken sun glasses, battered film cameras and computer keyboards. There was a surprising amount of pornography available, with people leafing through their options out on the street. Even though we were properly in the tourist area of Athens, it felt dirty, desperate, a little dangerous and more than anything, dull. There was a lot of colorful graffiti and art around but the shops and restaurants were mostly swank touristy things that were really expensive and generic. The whole place felt really built up for tourism, but there wasn’t much actually going on and that resulted in an empty feeling.

Lots of stuff for sale

We spent a lot of our time sitting on our balcony munching on olives and drinking cold beer. We found out the hard way that much of Greece shuts down on Sunday. We walked for about 5 miles in a big spiral trying to find somewhere to even buy a loaf of bread, with no luck. We ended up getting the most delicious falafel and kebab sandwiches at a small food shop in a Muslim neighborhood. While we were eating a whole bunch of Athens police were searching a car parked outside the restaurant, then came in and searched everyone for drugs, but they left us alone. The owner was clearly embarrassed, but at this point it takes a little more than that to faze us. We ordered more wraps to go and headed back to our oasis.

We pored over Google maps and a few other cycling blogs before settling on a plan to ride basically due west towards Patras. The route followed the north coast of the Peloponnese and appeared to be one of the most popular cycling routes out of Athens. There was a national highway and a smaller secondary road, the latter is usually a great option for cyclists, since the secondary roads are usually only used by local traffic. With a plan in mind we were excited to get out of the city and see the country.

June 7, 2013

We woke up with the sun and hurried to pack up camp. There was a lot of traffic on the side road we had camped off of and we were both a little nervous about getting caught. However, once completely packed, we lingered in the ruins graveyard to make breakfast.

Ruins graveyard

After breakfast, we made our way to town looking for wifi. We ended up at a small café and ordered coffee. Our options were Nescafe or “Greek coffee”. We gave the Greek stuff a try and it ended up being a two ounce glass of burnt tasting coffee sludge. While the coffee left much to be desired, we were able to use the internet and do a bit of research about the island. There were some interesting museums on the island, but they were not in the main town so we would have to ride out to see them and probably spend the night out there. We were interested in hanging out for a little while, but since any riding we did on Lesvos wouldn’t translate to any progress along our overall route, we decided to head to the mainland.

We got ferry tickets to Athens at a local travel agency for the same price as online, still pretty expensive, but at least we were headed somewhere. We stopped at the discount grocer “Lidl” and experienced a certain socioeconomic regime within the Greek population. The prices were way better than we saw in town, but the place reminded us of a combination of a Walmart and a local “supermarket”.

The rest of the afternoon we dedicated to the beach. We rolled around in the ocean, practiced floating skills (filling the lungs makes a huge difference), showered and lounged in the hammock. A number of people stopped by to chat, but they were from Bulgaria or Poland on vacation.

View from the beach

Floating

We boarded the ship around 5pm, and the crew tied our bikes off to the wall of the upper car deck. We were assigned deck seats which meant we could find a place to sleep anywhere. We snagged a nice looking place under an outside stairwell on the fan deck. We hung out for a while as we sailed towards Athens. At each port, the ferry picked up more people even though it was very late at night at this point.

The problem with our spot on the fan deck was that even though it was outside there wasn’t enough air circulation for it to ventilate properly and being the small sliver of the boat that was not enclosed, it became the designated smoking area. An alarming number of people chose to spend the entire night chain smoking. I have never seen so many people smoking so much in my life. The woman next to us went through at least two packs during the 11 hours of the crossing. At 3:00 in the morning there were more than 100 people smoking off the back of the boat. We resorted to moving all the ash trays to tables away from us, but people still came and sat right next to us, ashing on the ground or even accidentally on our inflatable sleeping pad. We considered moving inside, but all the good spots were already occupied so we would have been in the middle of floor next to the café. Without many options we stayed put and dealt with it.