On the second day, when the pavement turned to loose gravel, progress started slowing down and the road began to cause more bike damage, most of which would manifest itself on the third day of riding. The biggest annoyance was that the unpaved track of gravel was so dry and dusty that anytime a rig passed I would be choking on clouds of dust for the next hundred meters. All the dust that stuck to my exposed skin did have the advantage, however, of increasing the SPF factor quite a bit.

I ran into this crew on my second day - all seven of them were riding on the motorcycle and sidecar that you see behind them. It was like a VW cramming session. (6-04-05)

Sometimes I think about where I am at at the moment, as compared to where I would be if I was back in the U.S. On this particular moment it was an entertaining comparison - in the U.S. I would have been resting in my bed in the middle of the night - but instead I was in the middle of Kazakhstan in the afternoon, riding my bicycle on a gravel track, watching a stray camel cross my path. So many camels - more than it seemed possible - and way more than I ever saw in the middle east. (6-04-05)

One thing that I thought was amusing was that any time the roads had any kind of bend or grade, it was called the "dangerous section." I suppose that was to catch the attention of napping truck drivers who had tied a brick to the steering wheel on the flat and straight stretches. (6-04-05) *

That second night I again set up on the open plain, and had a really peaceful night of sleep with the best dream of the whole trip – the kind that is so good that the feeling lingers the whole day when you wake up. Man that was a cool dream. (6-04-05)

The third day was a flat nothingness punctuated by bicycle mishaps – not as bad as the day of disaster in Azerbaijan – but still pretty frustrating. I had multiple flats in the morning – the first a thorn puncture, the second a pressure puncture, and the third a repeat of the second due to a poor job that I did on patching puncture number two. Later in the afternoon I lost my second spoke to the deteriorating Kazakh roads, and it took me an hour to extract the remaining piece so that it would not get caught in the cassette. During that hour, something kind of strange happened. The pipeline that was about 500 meters away, without any warning, started making a noise similar to a jet engine, only louder, and was expelling something dark (but not oil) – this roaring and release went on all during my spokework, and at the time I started to get a little bothered that I might be shortening my life a bit by exposure to whatever it was that was roaring into the atmosphere.

In the evening of the third day, my state of showerlessness was becoming problematic. I could feel resistance when I tried to pull my helmet off. An adhesive bond had formed between my head and protective gear by a vile concrete of three day’s worth of sunblock, sweat, sebum and road dust. I began to feel that the continued exposure to the sheer monotony of a barren and unbroken landscape was beginning to become psychologically oppressive. There was literally over one-hundred kilometers this day that was completely uninhabited, with the only signs of life being occasional road traffic and pipelines.

In the evening, I counted 11 of these tarantula-type spiders, which I will call the Yellow-Haired Ustyurt Plateau Tarantula. I heard this might be a camel eating spider. They are supposed to jump up on camels, inject them with some sort of anesthetic, and then begin eating away at the camel, which cannot feel the feeding frenzy. (6-05-05) *

I watched my step as I pushed the bike off the road to set up camp for the third night, careful to avoid any lurking tarantulas. That night was spent in a constant state of low-level fear, mainly of animals. As darkness descended and I was alone in my tent on the hostile Ustyurt Plateau - tired, hungry, and of unsound mind, I heard one of my empty yogurt cups being repeatedly rammed into the ground. I decided to investigate only after concluding that, if upon exiting the tent I were to be locked in a struggle to the death with the mystery creature of the plateau, I would certainly emerge triumphant over any possible yogurt-eating fauna. But just in case, I sent a couple of pulses from the Dazer through the tent wall into the darkened Kazakh void in order to disorient the animal and thereby gain the upper hand in any of my subsequent dealings with it. But when I opened the tent door all I saw was the wind banging the empty yogurt cup on the moonlit ground. Much later in the night I woke up with my heart pounding when I heard a car come to a gravelly stop, then the sharp crack of a door closing. I kept waiting for the sound of footsteps through the scrub toward my tent, but they never came. The next morning when I woke up and realized I had made it safely through the night I felt pretty relieved, and also scoffed a bit at my night time heebie jeebies. (6-05-05) *

Camel remains on the fourth day. Perhaps a victim of the Yellow-Haired Ustyurt Plateau Tarantula. (6-06-05)

On the fourth day without a shower I now smelled like an uncovered New Jersey landfill. I knew that I would make it to Beyneu (near the Uzbekistan border) that day. Finally, the promised land - the town that had been signposted for the last four days and 480 kilometers. I was praying the whole day that it would have a hotel or someplace that I could shower. My spirits sank upon seeing the so-called town – a collection of mudtrails, empty railroad cars and crumbling brick structures with no sign of a hotel or restaurant. On the way in I was stopped by the local militsia, who took forever to take down my information, but he did tell me that there was (1) a bank, (2) a restaurant, and (3) (hooray!) a hotel. So that evening I happily laid my head down at the ultra-clean Hotel Arna, but only after having used their shower/sauna facility for over an hour. I think I saw enough dirt go down the drainpipe to start a small garden – man, it felt good to be clean. At the restaurant I ate two full meals, drank some ice cold coca cola, and felt pretty pleased at having made it through the Kazakhstan void. (6-06-05)

These kids followed me around Beyneu while I was trying to sort out the bank and hotel business. I guess I did not learn my lesson in Syria, because when I pulled out the camera it turned into a mini-rumble to get into the frame. (6-06-05) *