September 10th
127km (99m vertical)
I felt sluggish today, although it wasn't especially tough. Poor Nicole was feeling really sick, and struggled. A small boy threw a stone at her as she cycled past, a big dog chased her down the street, and she found a thorn stuck under her glove, Not her lucky day.
We are riding through fields of corn, wheat, and apple trees that remind me of home. There was even a huge, soviet-looking power plant, with plenty of electrical towers to remind me of Niagara Falls...which produces a lot of hydroelectric power.
The next 3 days are going to be tough - 80km, 145km and 175km! Since we're bush camping (i.e. we can stop anywhere) it seems silly to have such an uneven schedule. The tour company assures us that they had tailwinds on the 175km day last year. Seems sily to plan a route counting on tailwinds, but my fingers are crossed. It will be almost impossible with a headwind. We also cross a border each day for three days - from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan, back to Uzbekistan, and then into Kyrgyzstan - which will slow us down.
The rapid-fire border crossings are courtesy of Stalin, who divided central Asia into oddly shaped regions in order to exert control over them. Ethnic groups were divided and separated from their historical centers of influence. For example, the city of Osh is the heartland of Uzbekistan, where the purest dialect of Uzbek is spoken...but it is part of Kyrgyzstan. (There was ethnic conflict here between these groups in 1990.) The jigsaw of regional boundaries also intentionally cut across major roads, railways, and waterways. The main road and railway from Samarkand to Tashkent, the two largest cities in Uzbekistan, ran through Kazakhstan. What a mess.
A big factory in the middle of the fields:
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