My bike finally says "Enough!" And I find a bus #12/13

27 September
The morning I left grandma's house in Lahodekhi, I pedaled down to the middle of town and my bicycle finally decided to revolt against the miles of steep uphill grinds, bumpy rocky roads, and broken pavement. My pedal fell off! It is impossible to stop and do anything in Georgia without someone or many someone coming over to help. So as soon I bent down to look, I was surrounded by helpful hands putting my pedal back on. As soon as it was reattached, a slow pedal around the square unthreaded it. The ball bearings allowing my pedal to rotate had failed and as a result the platform of the pedal refused to stay on my bike. Throwing my hands on the air, I opted for plan B, a marshruka ride for me and my bike back to Tbilisi. Like a game of Tetris, we managed to fit my bike and gear into the van. For the bargain price of $3 for the 140 mile trip, I was on my way back to Tbilisi and the country's only bike shop.

After finding a hostel for the night, I pushed my bike to the shop where I learned their mechanic was out of town for a wedding and, "maybe he'll be back tomorrow, but you know how the head feels the day after a wedding celebration!" So instead I took myself out for a delicious dinner of dumplings, which I ate the correct way this time.

I decided to spend the next day going south via bus to Davit Gareji Monastery, a 6th century Monastery that covers the ridge bordering southern Georgia and Azerbaijan. The monk, Davit Gareji is famous for having a woman accuse him of impregnating her. He said that if she was falsely accusing him, she would give birth to a stone, and she did. Since the area is much more arid, the surrounding slabs of rock have grooves chiseled into them to funnel all water into basins carved out of the rocks.

Hiking up to the top of the ridge you can find dozens of caves carved into the rock. Some are covered in fresco's while others are simple niches in the rock. From the highest church, you can see all the way from the snow covered Caucasus mountains in the North to the arid plains of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the south.

The area was in constant use until the 1921 Bolshevik takeover when the monastery was closed to the public and used as a military training ground and firing range until 1997 when public protests finally restored the area to an active Monastery and tourist destination.

The landscape changed so dramatically just by heading a little ways south. Water became very scarce, grass turned into thorns, and without many trees the wind would suddenly pick up and blow like mad. I was very happy with my choice to bike through the mountains on this trip instead of the lowlands.

 All throughout the countryside there are huge dogs breed to protect the cattle and sheep against wolves and other predators. It is common to clip the dogs ears, I guess to make them look more fierce? But most of the dogs I met were just friendly and hungry.