April 7, 2014
Another day, another high mountain pass: Another day, another canine friend
Another day, another high mountain pass. This one was a real long and steep climb that dragged on for most of the day. It was made easier by more beautiful scenery and the occasional roadside conversation. The highlight of these being when I was called over for coffee by a group of men working at a tree nursery, where they were growing saplings to be planted in an area that was to be reforested. As a former tree-planter in Canada myself it was interesting to see where the little baby trees that I had been planting had come from. Armenia. Who knew?
Only one of the men spoke any real English, although the others tried. One said to me "Sit down please" even though there was nowhere to sit down, only because it was one of only two phrases that he knew. The other one made me laugh even more - "Come to the blackboard" he said in earnest. There was certainly no blackboard either, although it was nice to know his school lessons hadn't been completely in vain.
| Heart | 3 | Comment | 0 | Link |
After many hours of toil I finally made it to another snowy summit. Once again there was no summit sign but there was a very friendly dog that appeared to live at the top where there was a little rest area and water spring. I fed him and he reminded me of Beachball, the dog that I had encountered in the snow in Turkey and so I christened this new dog 'Beachball Too.'
To get around the problem of the lack of summit sign I wrote the word 'Summit' in the snow and posed with it. Sometimes I amaze myself with my resourcefulness. Then I decided to try again writing '29.Armenia' and posing with that in order to get my country sign photo. It worked much better this time. Then I thought it would be nice if Beachball Too was also in this photo, so I asked him to pose behind me while I took the photo. He didn't appear to understand, so I tried throwing food in the right place so that he would be in the shot. It was very difficult to get him to face the right way. I can explain all of this much better by just showing you the pictures. Here they are:
Today's ride: 74 km (46 miles)
Total: 16,100 km (9,998 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 5 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |