01 Nov 1985, Posted by Scott An Chora in Travelogue, No Comments.

11/01 Crete, Greece

A bunch of us from the night before had agreed to gather for a late breakfast and had earmarked today as a moped day.  We all kinda wandered up at the same time around lunch.  Brad and his sweetheart, Elspeth and Dave were all I managed to convince that it would be a worthwhile experience.  Elspeth had never been on a moped before but wasn’t shy about taking on new challenges.  During her learning phase either Dave or I would tag along side.  Of course we didn’t want to lose her in a nearby ditch, but still babying her was like swimming upstream with an anchor dragging.  We wanted to push those mopeds to their limits so when we had the opportunity we dumped Elspeth on Brad and his date.  Let’s hope, “What seems but idle slow strengthens and supports the rest”.  The first rest stop we had earmarked on our map sold bottles of wine.  We grabbed ourselves a table and waited for the other three to catch up.  Once we were all rested, or more truthfully when the first bottle was empty, we refilled our tanks and headed back onto the open road.  Everybody we passed on the road was extremely friendly, trading gestures and always sharing a smile.  We stopped from time to time to talk with the locals or to take pictures.  We stood up on the bikes pegs with the throttles full and passed the bottle of wine between us.  We then came upon a beautiful little bay lined by shops on one side and boats on the other.  We located another bottle of wine and waited for the rest to catch up giving our bikes some time to cool down.  I liked to imagine what life would be like if I had settled into one of those small quaint villages.  What kind of person would I have become?  I toyed with the idea, could I?  Again, we had full tanks and a wandered lustfully for our next discovery.

It was then we entered the twilight zone.  Dave and I were out in front of the other three.  We had earmarked a destination some distance away where we would meet just before dark to watch the sunset.  That way we could wander about for awhile.  We had taken a left and proceeded about six miles or so when that road came to an end.  There was something odd, misplaced, unnoticed by the conscience mind, yet my eye wandered about hoping to pin point the uneasiness.  There stood an elderly man.  His face was uncommon and weathered but his eyes had a familiarity to them.  Yet I was sure I had never seen him before.  If I did I would have remembered that face.  He held up a trinket in his right hand as a gesture to invite us into his world.  It was a necklace of dark red stones.  I looked past that necklace and surveyed the other items he had spread across his table.  Each item was different and unique in contrast to other peddlers who normally have groups of similar items.  I supposed we both shook our heads as if we were saying, what no beer?  It was hot outside and all he had were trinkets.  That dead end reinforced any doubt that we had taken the wrong turn and we knew we would have to make up the distance back to keep to our appointment with the others.  We traded gestures, giving thanks but expressed no interest in his jewelry.  As the image of that peddler faded behind us his gestures began to engrain themselves in my mind.  What was he doing there?  Was he just waiting for us?  There couldn’t have been any other lost idiots that day making that wrong turn in the middle of nowhere.  We joked and wondered what would have happened if we had bought something from him.  Perhaps that was the real fork in the road.

We grabbed something to eat, another bottle of wine and we were entertained by a small local girl inviting us in a game of hide and seek.  Beautiful landscapes surrounded us, orange and olive trees reaching out from golden hills, with a back drop of sky and sea.  Without focusing it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.  Each time we would make it to the top of another hill, it appeared as if the ships in the distance were sailing through the sky.  Eventually Brad and his side kick had caught up with us but there was no Elspeth.  They explained that they needed some time alone.  So I headed back to ensure she was catching up to us and hadn’t gotten herself lost.  I found her attempting to push her stalled bike up the road so I traded bikes and pointed her in the right direction, “Don’t worry I’ll catch up to you”.  When I reached Dave we raced toward the imaginary finish line and headed toward the showers.  I would have won the race on my original bike, no excuses the beer on me tonight.

The first thing I discovered upon returning to my room was that somebody had swiped my money belt.  It was well hidden, but once they found it they must have hit the door running because my money belt only contained an assortment of colored pencils.  It was the principle that rubbed me the wrong way.  I also was told that Brad had followed his young lady friend into Italy and Tony decided to head back into Athens to look up one of the girls he met over dinner.  As for me, there were new faces and I was starting to grow conformable here.  I had a lot of friends, the food is good and the bar tenders not only liked me but were helpful when needed.  We spent the next morning on the red beach where five of us decided to charter a taxi the next day to the other side of the island.  We were told that there was a black beach of volcanic sand that was worth the journey.