Easier than yesterday - that about sums it up. The terrain is flatter, the hills shorter and more gradual, and although we ride slightly farther than the previous two days, we are much less exhausted once we stop some 25km out of Istanbul. Yes, we really are that close! Why stop there? Why not just barge forward, finish the whole thing, roll across into Asia and call it a day? One simple reason: having resolved to finish this trip at our typical 100 km per day pace, we've decided it would be appropriate indeed to finish exactly six months after, way back in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, we first started to seriously put things in bags for the flight over. Six months minus a day just wouldn't cut it...
...so we ride out of Tekirdag relatively early, over some rolling hills, out to an even flatter stretch - and then hit Silivri about midday with enough hunger to pull off the road and set up on an old 16th-century bridge recently restored for the use of strolling pedestrians. We head out on the bridge a bit for a view of the small sea created by Turkey between the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, that ancient trade route, and pop open our Tupperware for yesterday's leftovers. That completed, we break with tradition to eat dessert after lunch in a local pastry shop - some kind of pistachio-nut-honey contraption and a chocolate-nut cake square, both of which we split half-and-half between us. Everything is shared, neither of us owns anything to ourselves except maybe our clothing, and even the non-gender-specific parts thereof are occasionally shared as need dictates. Water is shared: if one runs out of water, the other passes their bottle over mid-ride until we run out or find another fountain to fill up at. Pastry and food are definitely shared, particularly those foods sampled from local restaurants: we each pick something, eat our half, and swap plates, ensuring that we get to experience as many delicacies as possible. This is the best way, we think - and yet it is a way of life foreign to Americans, who view personal space and privacy and individual success as sacrosanct, not to be shared with less worthy peers. A kind of Objectivism writ large, the ultimate repudiation of the traditional lifestyle that governs much of the rest of the world. This is not a value judgment on either, for both ends of this spectrum have their peculiar benefits and flaws.
Another 20km or so to the town where we stop - hit Migros for snack and evening meal foodstuffs, drink beers on the waterfront over more speculation about our nascent D&D scenario, then the search for a suitable campsite somewhere in city limits. We head out along the waterfront stretch, passing several slews of cafés and tea joints and restaurants before the whole touristy mess finally thins out. There is a park, but it seems to be a hangout for drunks and youth - far enough off the main main stretch to be hidden from suspicious officials, but not so far that it is truly out of the way - so we pass on by, keep going around the point, and soon locate an abandoned structure with enough lawn space out front to pitch safely. This part of the waterfront is apparently a favourite spot for locals to fish, chat, and cook on all manner of gas stoves with their family. When in Rome, so they say...
...so we pull out our own stove and whip up the last camping meal of the trip. To be fair, we have enough petrol left over that we'll have to use it in Istanbul sometime - but this is the last time we cook on the road. We make orzo salad, making use of a package of orzo that has been sitting in the bottom of our pantry pannier for a few days, and eat it by the waterfront before dragging our bikes uphill to the building, pulling out the tent, and setting up for one last night under the cloud-covered stars. One last campsite, one last abandoned building, one last stop before Istanbul. What does it all mean? What have we learned? These last few entries are full of questions, notably short on answers - but maybe there are no answers, no grand revelations from the journey; rather, there is a conviction that it is useless to make life plans, an understanding that it is better to get anything and everything you can out of each day than it is to spend your short time here in anticipation of what might never be, in fawning adoration of the American dream, in the race for better cars or watches or whatever the hell it is the vast majority of the working world spends its 9-to-5 slaving away for. If you want something to happen, make it happen - and all that good jazz, the old clichés reprinted in a thousand thousand self-help books sold at $20 a pop in the big chain bookstores back home. Patience, dedication, motivation, a desire to learn anything you can, keen powers of observation - and killer cyclist legs: these are the things you gain slowly, painstakingly from a trip like this, but you must work for every bit of it and never give up...
...which is what we have been telling just about everyone we run into, all the hordes of people who say they could never accomplish something like this. Of course you can; you just have to do it, keep some modicum of common sense about you to prevent from dying, and keep going. Always keep going. That is how we got here, how we managed to (nearly! not in Istanbul yet...) complete this fantastic journey and do it within the time frame set for us by work and Thanksgiving and anything else we feel compelled to rush home for. This is it. Tonight, we sleep; tomorrow, the final stretch into Istanbul.
This is it. We're almost there. One more day, one last day. Tomorrow.