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| After 1.000 K you ride only with your brain |  | After 1.000 K you ride only with your brain
Sinan Sezer © 1999
Are we now the toughest riders in Turkey?
Hell no! But we have Iron Butts soon to be certified.
It means determination, endurance, and confidence. We have them all.
Cemil, Ertugrul, Cihat and me started our ride from my garage in Levent at 5 o'clock on Saturday the 19th of June 1999, We first believed in ourselves and than our fantastic BMW R1100 GS riding machines.
On those empty roads when the sun is just waking up, it took us only 29 minutes to reach Izmit tollgates. This part of the route, we rode at top speed like children trying a new game for the first time. We decided to exercise more strict discipline in the group and put Cemil in the lead and formed scattered formation.
It all went well till Yalova. When we were climbing the ramp to Orhangazi, Cihat's borrowed GS started coughing. We accompanied him till Bursa on low speed and tried to help him repair his asthmatic bike, but it was of no use. He had to wait for the BMW service to open and try his luck with a technician to repair it. We had already spent an hour in helping him, therefore we excused ourselves and 3 of us continued the ride.
Karacabey, Bandirma, Canakkale were just nameplates on the road. We passed Troy paying our respects to Achilles and Agamemnon, we climbed and descended the beautiful curves of Kazdagi Mountains in no time. When we reached Ayvalik and stopped at a petrol station for tanking for proof of passage, we were fresh and content.
After Ayvalik, Izmir was a prize served on a silver spoon. We made our second call to our controller Paolo from Izmir, reported that everything was fine and we were an hour behind our schedule but no problem. Cihat in the mean time, not being able to repair his bike, had returned to Istanbul and wishing us luck from the other end of the line. The highway to Selçuk was a piece of cake that we ate at high speed.
After Selcuk we took the meandering road to Tire once a Lydian major city, now an average Turkish small town. People watched us like they have seen ghosts. Just after Tire we tanked again for proof of passage and ate our sandwiches for staying alive. We drank our Isostars in hope of gaining extra energy.
Tire-Ödemis -Usak lasted forever. The curves were sharp, the road inconsistent but scenery was beautiful. When we were in the vicinity of Usak, we realized that we had passed the city center by 18 kilometers (we had not seen the name plate on the road). We asked the pump guy if we were still in the city boundaries, he said "yes" and we were relieved. We took our invoices for proof of passage and continued our ride.
On the road to Afyon we encountered our first accident possibility. Just around a corner, a road construction and one guy was waving his little red flag to stop us to give way to the traffic coming from the other side.
Thank God and thank to Mick Wheeler! (Advanced Riding techniques trainer) we applied our emergency brakes .Our ABS s started gurgling under our feet, Cemil who was in the front started going slightly right and left due to film of dust on the asphalt.
I realized that he was in control but was still not sure where he would end his slide so I decided in a fraction of a second (the fasted SIPDE applied in the Balkans and Middle East) not to leave it to chance and took the 2 meters wide gap on the right of the hot asphalt loaded truck.
Of course I ended up in the middle of the workers who were looking at me like I was a time traveler missed his target. Ertugrul in the mean time had more time for SIPDE (Scan, Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute) so he saw that although the little red flag was up there was no traffic coming from the other side so he gave himself more distance on the left of the road to slow down and stop.
Our adrenaline level was up and we were awake once again. When we reached Afyon junction we stopped to tank once more. This was the time we realized that our Microsoft Auto Route 98 calculations were actually 150 kilometers off to our disadvantage. We had completed 1300 kilometers but still had 450 to reach Istanbul. We called our controller and gave him our piece of mind!
The dark had already enveloped us we reduced our speed to 100 kilometers/hour and put our powerful driving lights on.
That was the bitter moment of truth that my driving lights were out of order (they were OK when I started): I said Why me God… Why me?
I already have problems with my eye site in the dark why me! But I had no time to wait for a sign from God so I asked Cemil and Ertugrul to drive in the front and light my way home. That is what we did.
We passed from Kütahya, the city of the pottery and ceramic masters, for well over 4 centuries.
We passed from Bilecik the first capital of the Ottomans (Söğüt)
We struggled with the monstrous trucks on the narrow curvy mountain roads of Bozüyük -Adapazari, who all seemed like Godzillas running towards us for a kill.
When we finally reached Adapazari and stopped for tanking and proof of passage our counters already read 1610 Kilometers (1000 miles) and it was exactly midnight. (19 hrs from our start). We looked like zombies. Cemil said "I feel like this is the only thing I have to do in life, ride, ride and ride again”
I laughed at his remark all the way on the high way from Adapazari till Istanbul, the last 150 kilometers. I drove the last part of this great adventure not with my body any more, I did not feel my arms and legs and even my sore butt. But, I left everything to the maestro of my body, my brain.
Ertugrul leading the way, we drove at average 140 kilometers an hour at staggered formation just like a one block of a car and reached my garage at 1.28 minutes in the early hours of the 20th of June 1999. Our counters read 1756 kilometers (1097) miles.
Our controller Paolo signed our documents and I climbed down from my bike, gave a hug to its warm body for not letting me down and went to bed to rest my Iron Butt!.
| Last Updated 2007-02-28 10:12
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