Avaldatud: 30.05.2023
I went to the toilet last night, the dog was lying next to my tent, this morning, see photo No. 1.
He kept a good watch. I heard him barking at other dogs two or three times during the night.
First, I'll make some coffee and then pack up calmly, I thought to myself. By the time I finish drinking coffee, the tent will probably be dry. It was only wet from the inside, due to rising moisture and breathing naturally.
Made coffee, and then it started raining. Packed up the tent all wet again. What a mess!
But oh well. I packed up my motorcycle and off I went. Not very far, unfortunately. There was an error message on the instrument panel, in red! That's not good. Drive to the next workshop. Ha, easier said than done, Google only wanted to offer me German workshops. I found a dealership that was only 50 km away through the Turkish Aprilia website.
So, change of direction to Izmit. Luckily, it was quite fast on a newly developed road that resembled a highway.
In the workshop, they immediately started working on the motorcycle, but not in the way I hoped for, no, it was thoroughly washed first, all the dirt that was painstakingly collected, simply washed away. How stupid is that.
Well, I can understand that the mechanics don't necessarily want to rummage in the mud.
After Berta was dry, the computer was connected and the error was quickly localized. The clutch switch is defective. This means that the switch allows the engine to start with the gear engaged when the clutch is pulled. Since the switch is defective, I can't start with the gear engaged and the clutch pulled. It's not a problem, I can continue driving without any worries, it's just annoying to have the error message on the display.
After all the work was done, I asked for the invoice.
'We only detected the error and didn't do anything, this service is free of charge.' They spent almost an hour with the motorcycle and didn't charge anything. Unimaginable in Germany. Of course, I left a good tip.
Alright, I packed up my motorcycle again, and the tour continued back to the Black Sea coast. I lost my sleeping bag in between, but fortunately noticed it. Somehow, a strap came loose and got caught in the rear wheel and said goodbye with a loud bang.
Nice little roads, partly dry as well, and many, many dogs who felt threatened in their territory and wanted to jump at me. I managed to kick one away, otherwise he would have caught me.
When I arrived at the coast, it was also time for accommodation, today a vacation rental in the absence of a campsite. It wasn't easy to find. I entered the address in the navigation system and suddenly found myself in the middle of a slum, attracting a lot of attention, too many for my taste. Typed the address into my phone, completely different direction but same city, still couldn't find the house. Called the landlord, he then sent me a screenshot of the house, why not do it from the beginning. He himself lives in Istanbul, but his uncle will come soon and bring me the keys. At that time it was 4:30 PM and the Turkish 'my uncle is coming SOON' means around 7:00 PM. I protested and also contacted Booking.com. 20 minutes later, the uncle and the keys were on site. During the waiting time, children used the opportunity to ask me about everything possible. The apartment is quite nice, but there were no fresh towels, the ones hanging in the bathroom were used, and the beds were not freshly made, you could see from the bedsheets that someone had already slept there. Since my English is not good enough and I didn't feel like having endless discussions, I brought my sleeping bag into the apartment. It'll do for now.