Epilogue

Bycicle wrap.

In the end I was left with only one task: to get the bike back home. I rode to the airport in the afternoon and I had plenty of time until the flight next morning at five. Event at Ljubljana airport sowed a grain of worry. What if they refuse to take the bike on the plane? At the airport I saw a post office. More for fun then seriously I asked whether I could send the bike by mail. The clerks calculated that it would cost $ 300, although they admitted that they haven't had such a case yet. Of course, I had a plan B. In fact, it was the plan A. I brought two rolls of food-wrapping foil, 30 m and 20 m. I intended to wrap the bike with it, which has been my standard job for years. My 4 mm Allen key broke right at the start, which made it slightly more difficult to disassemble the bike, but I still managed to create a beautiful "wrap" which was envied even by the official luggage wrappers at the airport. The professional product impressed also the staff at check-in. They didn't have arguments about the packaging, and even the starting fares of 60 Euros was lowered to 35 because I had no other luggage beside the bike. It was a happy end of a pleasant journey. 

Monastery Khor Virap with Ararat (5165 m) in the hazy background. 

But my journey also got a more modern note. Now, when the number of people killed in terrorist attacks is on the news daily (and if not, the media void is filled with an accident of some bus in Pakistan), I felt like a fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. In the temporal waves that were left behind my bike, some strange things occurred. Four days after I landed at Istanbul airport, there was a terrorist attack. Two weeks later a military coup. A week after I left Yerevan, mentioned the last time more then 40 years ago in the Soviet Union because of its famous radio, the city finally underwent the world's media fame with a report on some hostages in a police station. Journey therefore gained a broader, metaphysical dimension. I think I know what was the reason: the metaphysical supernatural forces, for the existence of which I have now accumulated substantial evidence material, were trying to make up for the overcast weather that prevented me to make beautiful shots of the Great and Little Ararat in the background of the Armenian monastery of Khor Virap.