Gule gule turkey

The turkey adventure has concluded for 2/3 rds of us. Brendan is kickin it somewhere in colorado and im sitting on my couch in ak. Ian however decided to stay in turkey for a few extra days with Burak (our istanbul couch surfing host). This decision was made at 2 in the morning after a long night, about 6 hours before our plane was to leave for boston and with about a hundred dollars left in the bank. Stoked to see how that is going to work out. As of the last update, hes bringing 20 people into istanbul to show them the way of urban boarding and seeing a Holy Ghost concert tonight. Sounds rad, definitely a little jealous.

Our last post of pics was up to our first day in palandoken. Our second day we got word of free lift tickets in kartalkaya, so we dipped out early, but not before getting a few shots.

Our first and last rail of the trip. Definitely looking and feeling a little rusty on this thing.

We set this feature up in the most high profile location in front of this big spendy five star hotel. It was a 15 stair into a 10 foot drop right after the rail. We started setting up the feature then realized their were two cars in the way. Not only did the hotel move the cars for us and let us hit the feature until we got our tricks, but they also gave us a tour of their ski resort. On top of that, the tour guide was probably the best looking girl we had seen in turkey.

Once I was able to pull Brendan and Ian from their new found turkish love, we pulled an all nighter to get to kartalkaya for the next day of riding. Kartalkaya was okay. We rode the resort(thanks to burak), got some pow slashes, brendan and ian impressed locals with park trickery, met the most outrageous expat ever that called brendan and i out for checking out his daughters, hung out with timo and his park crew, skipped out on a 50 dollar bill for instant coffee, drank lots of efes, got banned to the dumpster area to sleep in our van, got kicked out of the dorukkaya hotel, got tricks and peaced out.

Mt. Ilgaz. That run down the middle is the one and only run on the mountain.

Though getting kicked out of Dorukkaya was a bummer, it became apparent hours later that it was a blessing in disguise. We showed up in Ilgaz, scoped the area, then instantly found the funnest people in the area and had the best turkish style dance party for about 2 hours before they had to get on the bus and head home. So we were left high and dry at 8, pretty positive we werent going to find anything that could compare. We were wrong, we found the university owned hotel and continued the turkish style circle dancing into the wee hours of the night.

We awoke to blue bird skies and probably the raddest zone we had seen on the whole trip. There were big mountains, bowls, cliffs, trees, everything, all within hiking distance. Unfornately, this was going to be our last day on snow so we stayed close to the mini resort and stacked a bunch of footy.

Again the night went off, with a few rounds of flip cup before another long night of dancing with our new friends.

Friends

Once the music stopped in the disco, we came back to the hotel and the guy on the far right of the picture above played the best set ever, ever. He played all these turkish songs that everyone knew and sang along to. It was hands down the best kumbaya i have every been a part of. So rad.

Party face

After the second epic night in Ilgaz, we woke to rain in the morning so we dipped to istanbul to do the tourist thing for a few hours before brendan had to leave the next morning.

We stayed a Burak's place in Kadikoy. This is from his terrace.

Marilyn

Bird chasing

The must see tourist site of istanbul, the blue mosque.

Peoples love for tv is universal.

The trip was awesome. It will be a tough one to beat. We were lucky enough to met such great people that really showed us a great time and treated us really well (minus Dorukkaya management). Thanks everyone and to the few of you that are coming to alaska this summer or if you want to make a trip, stay in touch. We would be super stoked to be able to return the favor.

We should have some more pics and some sort of video up within the next few weeks.