Day 123 (Iran): just before Kohrud - some field between Qa’em Shahr and Sari

daily distance: 114km
total distance: 7304km
riding time: 5-6h

A sort of good night with a bit too much snoring halfway through. The kind of snoring which makes you want to go over to the guy and pinch him or hold his nose shut or something. Pretty atrocious, you see. Kind of tired when we got out of bed at 6am and after some more bumbling around I left at just before 7am for the roughly 50km to Amol.  

The downhill was still exhilerating and all along you can see the construction crews in the various stages of building the new highway. Pretty impressive stuff. The driving was not as horrible as yesterday at this early hour of Friday and so it was easy coasting for the most part.

These pictures show how the scenery changed quite a bit over the course of an hour. From rocky and very sharp-edged rock formations to gently rolling and very wooded territory with rice paddies dotted throughout the ever-wider valley. When I wanted to take a break, something happened on the bike. I could hear a sound as I was biking away from a beautiful spot where I had intended to spend a few minutes, but was approached by an older gentleman. It was slighly uphill to get back on the street and I put a bit of force on the pedals and somehow during that pushing I heard a knack, but couldn’t really place it. I just felt some slippage every now and again.

It took a while to figure out. I couldn’t see anything on the rear derailleur, neither on the front one. The chainrings were fine, so were the cogs in the back. I checked the chain, but couldn’t see anything either. So I got myself into Amol, knowing that something was up and that I had to do something about it. The slippage was tiny, but noticable every so often. Not the kind of thing you want to bike to China with, not even from Iran.

Spent three cool hours in a blazingly-fast internet connection in which it was unnecessary to go through any hoops to access the flickr site (damn the providers in Tehran) and then moved on.

More slippage when I continued. Had to take another look and then I saw it. In one of the chain links, the one where I put the chain together in Ankara, one of the two plates had been bent and thus the pin was no longer where it should be. That was no good news as I either had to shorten the chain by two links or try to put the link back the way it belonged. Easier said than done. I moved into the shade, getting things ready when a couple of guys approached me. Not the moment to do that I thought, but it turned out to be a good thing. One of them owned a hardware store (well, calling it a hole in the wall, the hole being taken up by tools is a better description) and so we went across the square. There was no way to bend the thing back into place, but one of the three wanted to give it a go. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to get the pin back into place I let him go ahead. He of course pushed the pin out entirely, then tried to replace it with a sawed-off drill bit. That was a no-go. Shortening the chain was an alternative, but Dieter from Speedzone had insisted that I take a chain lock with me and so we just replaced the missing link with the chain lock … works like a charm and should hold up alright. If worse comes to worse, I am carrying an extra chain. In the meantime, the guys had pretty much brought out half the tools in the shop, not worrying about anything getting dirty, had also seen to it that I was fed (one of them brought some chicken, rice and drinks over) and in the end gave me an adjustable wrench and a hat because they thought I might need it. Not sure how they got the idea, but hey. Thanks a bunch for helping out guys.

Here is to the Germans among you and the debate about abolishing this sign in Germany. Not that anyone here really cares about street signs …

I was heading out again in the afternoon heat. It is muggy here … and hot. A not-so-pretty combination and in contrast to the other areas of Iran you just don’t dry up ever. My shirt is covered in sweat basically all day long, which makes for some icky riding.

I found some nice spot at night time to pitch my tent, cooked up some pasta and had some more cookies for diner, replenishing the lost energy. And slumbered off into a very peaceful night.