(written by Nancy)

Some days riding is easy.  Some days you struggle to get started and the k’s pass by quite slowly.  Today was one of the slow days for me and a bit for Dave as well.  It is always hard to leave a nice hotel under the best conditions…

We enjoyed another fine buffet breakfast at our fancy hotel.  Somehow, I’m not sure how, I managed to have a few “excess” nuts and raisins when I finished eating (actually, Dave filled a bowl with nuts and raisins and shoved it at me).  Knowing that they could not re-stock this “used” food, these excess food items found their way into our breakfast bag.  And, like yesterday,  there was no evil eye from the hotel or food & beverage manager as we departed so I think they either didn’t see me or perhaps they too agree that wasting food is a bad thing.

We finally made it out of the hotel with packed bikes about 8AM.  There were lots of clouds about and a few sprinkles.  We had planned on a 100K plus ride – light rain, plus a headwind, were playing with my mind and I thought perhaps we would have to make it a shorter day.  Here’s where the “fraction” thing comes in.  Once we’d ridden 10k, I tried to cheer myself up with the fact that we’d covered 10%.  Before long it was 20k and 20%, then 25k and 25%.  I got to thinking that it was only 7 more k and we’d have ticked off 33%, and on and on and on.  Dave always says that I’m not great at fractions (he can’t spell so things do even out).  These minor mental gymnastics helped distracted me from the slog for much of the morning  (see Hank – I can do fractions!).  Dave admitted later that he was doing the same thing during the day.

The route was along the E90/D200 all day.  It is what they call a dual carriageway.  That is, two lanes in each direction, separated by guardrails.  It’s not a proper freeway or motorway as most of the cross roads are managed with roundabouts, rather than overpasses.  We had a good shoulder all day and made steady progress.  Inegol is about 400 meters lower than Eskisehir so we got a real treat at the end of the ride and had what seemed to be about a 30k downhill to take us into Inegol.   The headwind slowed us a bit but the downhill made them less of an issue and despite the very grey skies we never really got any rain.  In fact, we reached Inegol around 12:30, which is not too bad considering the post 8AM start.

Before I forget, I need to make a note about Dave’s dinner yesterday.  He posted last night that he was looking forward to trying another Pad Thai noodle dish.  He tried to order it in the restaurant next door but was told that it was “finished”.  It appears that just like in SE Asia, in Turkey people use “finished” as a general term meaning that they never had the dish, or that they had it when they printed the menu but they don’t have it any longer.  We always laugh at this because to us, “finished” implies that they had whatever we ordered that day but had run out.  When you know that you are the first customer of the day, you are pretty sure that they haven’t “finished”.  To be fair, they are trying to speak our language, so we really just grateful for their efforts.  Dave ended up getting Chinese hokien noodles instead– it was pretty tasty.

Upon arrival in Inegol, we had a fresh cheese borek at a borek shop.  This made the hotel search easier (it was my turn today).   We eventually booked into the Kaplan Hotel right on the main drag.  It seems to be in the process of being remodeled with lots of painting and new fit-out.  But they were happy to welcome us.  And it is 100 times better than the other choice across the street – bit of an Adam’s Family show there.

Inegol is a city in the Bursa Province of Turkey.  The city has a population of 170,000 or 280,000 depending if you believe the sign coming into town or the information on the internet  It claims to be a centre of the Turkish furniture industry and we can confirm seeing a number of lumber/furniture plants and furniture stores on the way into town.  Inegol is probably most famous for its meatballs, or köfte, as they are called.  Apparently they were first brought here by a Bosnian immigrant during the Balkan wars in 1912-1913. It is hard to not eat them as every restaurant in town seems to sell them.

We can report that they are indeed quite tasty and worth a try.  While they are called meatballs, they are not round but more like flat little patties.  One day when we actually have a place to cook our own food we’ll try making some ourselves.  Apparently traditionally they don’t contain any spices, just a bit of onion and salt.   Here is a link to some recipes in case you are interested – http://almostturkish.blogspot.com/2008/01/inegl-meatballs-inegl-kftesi.html.  If you are interested in Turkish food, give the meatballs a go and report back…

Tomorrow we have a couple of ride options.  The long option is 88k, all the way to Yalova, the ferry port.  The short option is only 50k to the town of Iznik.  If we take the longer option, we’ll be in Istanbul on Saturday night.  We plan on spending Friday night in Yalova and take the early ferry to Istanbul Saturday morning – that way we avoid a late arrival into Istanbul.  Otherwise, we’ll be in Istanbul on Sunday.  There is rain forecast again but we have had such good luck with rain, there is hope for yet one more day.  I think whichever way we go we will have some nice scenery as we head around Lake Iznik – there are a lot more trees in this area.  I’m hoping that this nicer scenery continues tomorrow so I don’t have to work so hard on all those fractions.  It’s pretty easy when you are riding 100k.  88k might be a bit harder-  what is 33% off 88 anyway? (Dave wrote that last sentence – of course I know what 33% of 88 is).  (junior editor’s note: no she doesn’t J)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.