I haven't figured out why yet, but there's some serious air pollution around this part of Greece. Thessaloniki has a bad smog problem from the traffic, but I was seeing (or not seeing) reduced visibility as far as 150km NW of there, and its still hazy where I am now, over 170 km from Thessaloniki and right on the coast with its sea breezes. I can barely even see a large island with a 6000 ft peak only 20km offshore. There's some agricultural burning around, but nothing that would account for this level of haze. I mean its as bad as some of the days of summer burning in Missoula - Thessaloniki made my eyes swollen and itchy at times. The only other thing I can think of is that this is drifting down from Istanbul (which is supposed to be seriously bad), but that's over 300km from here! Dunno...

I ended up picking up some nice jeans, new shoes, a sweater, and a wool jacket in Thessaloniki to wear while hanging out in the evenings - man, I'm the best dressed biker around! ('Course I'm the ONLY biker around, but that's not the point!) Now I just need to find some excuses to wear them. In the little towns I sometimes stay in around here, if I went out with the jacket on I'd feel like I was wearing a tux in Charlie's. But at least I'm impressing all the 13 yr olds in the Internet cafes. Now I get some respect! Now they call me "Mister" before they bust out laughing at my Greek!

I left Thessaloniki 3 days ago and was about 20km out of town when I noticed 2 other bike tourists riding down the road towards me. One of 'em gave me a smiling "Good morning" in a distinctly British accent as they passed, which was strange because 1) they didn't look British and 2) it was already 3PM! Maybe they'd gotten up late or something. Anyway, I turned around to chat with them a bit - turns out they were Azerbaijani Iranians, traveling from northern Iran to Brussels! We had Rafie, a budding travel author, and his brother Shafie, a mechanic and instructor in an obscure Iranian version of a type of karate. Rafie spoke pretty good English that he'd taught himself over 15 years with books, radio transmissions, and the occasional European tourist run-in, while Shafie spoke about 3 words. And their bikes! Oh, man. Decent mountain bikes with standard equipment, but they'd hand-built their own aluminum racks and panniers (from army-issue rucksacks) modeled after pictures in magazines! They'd even made new stems out of gas pipe that put the handlebars about 8" above and 6" BEHIND the headset (not including the 2 sets of bar-ends, one set adorned with horns) for a damned upright riding position. But it all worked, and with a mechanic on the team who was obviously used to improvising, they weren't having any serious problems.

Between the two of them, they had $280 for the entire trip and were making do by free-camping and scavenging food from trees and fields, such as walnuts, pears, oranges, potatoes, etc, supplemented with occasional store purchases. But as Rafie kept on saying about each item "they're actually very nourishous!" No stove - they built a wood fire every night. Minimal washing - its actually getting pretty cold in the evenings and nights. Man, talk about doing it the hard way! While we were sitting there talking and they were playing me a tune on their homemade Azerbaijani guitar and tambourine, for some reason I suddenly remembered (don't even ask me what triggered THAT memory) that I'd left my passport in the hotel back in Thessaloniki! Crap! Well, at least it gave me an excuse to ride back with them for a while. Going uphill, we slowed down to almost a walking pace, and I realized that with their limited diets, they were practically bonking every day and had to REALLY conserve their energy if they'd had a poor meal the night before. And I think dinner was their only big meal of each day!

As we approached Thessaloniki, I could see they were getting concerned about where they'd be able to camp, as it was close to sunset by then. So I say to 'em "you'd make my day if you'd be my guests in the city, since I'm mostly the reason you're behind schedule". So Rafie says "Now I must ask you to be quite frank, Mark", which I took as meaning he didn't really understand me, since his English was obviously learned more from formal British news broadcasts than from average conversations. I explained to him that I'd like to get them a hotel room and take them out to dinner, which he accepted. Shafie had no say in the matter, it seemed, as Rafie translated about one sentence in 10 for him, leaving him mostly in the dark about what was going on. So we ended up spending the evening and next morning together, having a bang-up feed and wandering the city. At one point, Rafie and I left Shafie waiting at an outdoor cafe while we ran an errand - I was concerned about leaving him, but Rafie was comfortable with it. By the time we returned, he was gone! Now here's a guy who only speaks Farsi, probably doesn't remember (or ever learned) the name of the hotel we're in, doesn't know his way around, and is now gone. Luckily he'd only walked down the street for an exploration and came right back. Can you imagine being in his shoes and getting lost in a strange city! Shafie seemed like the sharper one of the two, though. He kept on, according to Rafie's translations, making jokes about us and American / Iranian relations, and was it possible that Bill Clinton might abscond with the Iranian funds frozen in the US? I really enjoyed their company and was sad to part ways with them the next morning. Hopefully we'll keep in touch, although Rafie's computer skills are pretty limited.

So things are still going pretty well here. Apart from the fact that I keep on running into demonstrations everywhere (an Olympics-related one in Athens, a police one 20 yds from my hotel in Thessaloniki, and a communist party march here in Kavala - all peaceful, thankfully), its been mostly uneventful. While I'll be sad to leave Greece, I'm looking forward to Turkey and the changes it'll surely bring.

Kalinichta!