I'm not a professional cyclist. I'm not a millionaire with no worries in the world. I don't have that much spare time. I'm a med-school student. My main goal is to learn about diseases and their cures. I occasionally have time to ride my bike. I sometimes have a spare weekend to cycle. But thats about all spare time I have. The computer monitor started to hurt my eyes. I don't want to sit in front of it anymore. I have to, for my studies though. I'm leaving the blogosphere. It's been a pleasant trip. I have to go back to the real world.

If anyone wants to contact me  feel free to EMAIL ME AT: tayfuryagci@gmail.com

bye

Tom, I had to post that comment. You know I like you, you're a cool guy. But I'm a sensitive person and I just can't bear injustice. I know world is too big a place to modify according to my taste. I just had to. You can delete the comment. After all it's your site.

I'm sorry if I hurt you. Many people who call themselves muslims and many people who think that they know everything about "that evil camel-fucker" don't know but one of the gravest sins a muslim can commit is to break a heart. I'm sorry if I offended you. I truly am.

I picked my bike up from the shop yesterday. My baby now has a Carbon+6061Alu Amoeba Scud handlebar and a lightweight 90 mm Amoeba Vitra stem together with a pair of mint-condition Deore shifters and a Sigma cyclocomputer.

Man that carbon handlebar looks SWEET! I just can't stop looking at it! My bike's now a 27 speeder and I'm spo close to having a decent XC bike. All I need now is a decent wheelset and a good pair of v-brakes. My  present ones SUCK, BIG TIME! Anywho I know just how I can fund the new wheelset and pair of brakes.

I have one of the coolest cellular phones in the world. It's a Palm Treo 650 which is used by Marshall Flinkman (Kevin Weisman) of the series Alias. I'm a huge fan of the show. All I have to do to fund my last upgrades is to trade the Marshall phone with an Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) phone which is a Motorola V3 RAZR. I'll probably have 300 big ones after the trade so I can hook my rig up with a beautiful Mavic Crossland wheelset. Another project of mine will fund my Time atac pedals + 661 SPD shoes dream. Yeah Alias is a cool show. Actually we have lots of ABC shows here and many of them are pretty sweet. Lost, House MD, Alias etc.

Lots to study...

My dad picked up two boxes from the Customs Office today. They were full of cool gear!

First box was from Elden. countless jerseys and a much anticipated vest was in it. by the size of the jerseys I can tell that he used to be the same size with me, before becoming the formerly Fat Cyclist. Thank you so much Elden for starting Project Outfit Tayfur (P.O.T.)! Thanks to you now 2 girls and 5 men have lots of stuff to wear.

The second was from Cathy Boland. The box was especially full of womens' clothes. I already found a few racers to give all those clothes. Thanks a lot!

Let's update some other stuff. My bike's been at the shop for 5 days now. Man, the Shop's owner must be furious! I didn't go to pick my bike up during the week. I couldn't, I didn't have any spare time and I honestly didn't want to ride my bike. Now I'm anxious to get my bike and ride it a couple of miles. It doesn't seem very possible under the thunderstorm we have going on here. I guess I'll have to find a car to go and pick my bike up with. Tomorrow I will (hopefully) be the proud oner of a 27 speed bike. The drivetrain doesn't have 2 things of the same model. The crankset is an LX, fd is Alivio, rd is Deore, chain is KMC, cassette is a used old SRAM PG-950. some patchwork! At least it will be a 27 speed.

Anywho, thanks to everyone participating in the P.O.T!

see you later.

The race was at it's usual place. Ssome 20 kms north of Istanbul, in the forest.

There was lots and lots and lots of mud. I was confident. Last race I completed 4 laps and I thought I could finish this one. I even dreamed of a podium finish! I was DELUSIONAL! I completed one lap and abandoned. Let me tell you something, I don't hate myself because of this. I did the right thing.

It snowed the week before, a lot. So the course was unbelievably muddy. 20 cm mud at some places f**ked the crap out of every component on the bike. There were occasional water-crossings so there wasn't the tiniest bit of grease left on the bike after 1,5 kms!

200 meters after the starting point, THE climb started. 2 kms of sheer pain. I walked about %75. It was gruesome. It made me ask myself why I do this. Sadly there wasn't a good answer to that question today. The race today made me question myself. Why I do this to myself? I want to be a surgeon, my competitors stayed home and studied anatomy today as I rode my bike in all the mud and filth of some forest. Aren't things related to thinking OVER things related to bodily exercises? What is the purpose of this stupidity?


I wanted to go back. I wanted to lie on my face in a puddle of mud. I wanted to kick my bike into the nearby lake. I wanted to beat myself with an iron stick for not training, not losing weight, not doing anything but blogging, hanging around cyclists forums and watch TV. Everything that I was unhappy with in my life came up. That hill opened my eyes.

I completed one lap. Around the worst 4km off-road course, EVER. At teh end of the lap I fell of the bike. I fell so hard that I had no time to use my hands to slow me down. I fell directly onto my torso. It hurt real bad and I heard a "Pfooof" sound. I lay there thinking: "Ok, Tayfur, you ruptured your diaphragm. You'll suffocate and die here. I don't want to die at a stupid MTB race." Then I was able to breathe again. It hurt but I could breathe. I finished the lap in agony. I started the second lap but returned from the bottom of that monster hill.

Now, I know somethings very well:

• I have very good friends. Thanks to Halil and Gürkan especially. they are WAY better racers than me and they support me in every possible way.
• I CAN be a cyclist. I'm not one yet but I can be. I'm lacking in lactate tolerance and aerobic capacity. These problems can be solved by losing 25 kilograms of that excess fat.
• I have a fairly good bike. I should give it some credit. The problem's mostly (like %60) at the rider not the bike.

These were the cycling related things I know well. I have some school related things to talk about too.

• I want to be a Hand Surgeon. This requires 15 years of study after med-school. to achieve my goal of becoming a good hand surgeon I have to leave everything aside and study. And I have to start no further than tomorrow! At least 2 hours of anatomy study plus 90 minutes of other subjects MAY SUFFICE.
• I like studying. This may sound weird because I study very little. This is not because I don't like to study but because I'm having trouble intiating the study sequence.
• I must study.

This became a cliché of mine and it's not a good thing but I'm starting dieting. Here's a list of what I can eat. Giving a list of dont's would be harder.

1. Raw vegetables.
2. Raw fruit.
3. Meat (low in fat and boiled or grilled)
4. Tuna (it's a good thing to eat, nutritious and low calories)
5. Milk, yoghurt, cheese

That's all. I must lose about 20 kilograms in 2,5-3 months. It's doable.I can be a good cyclist at the beginning of the season.
I can get that beautiful 90/100 at the Musculo-skeletal systems exam at 10th march.
I can be a better person.

But please let me rest now. It was a hard day.

The likelihood of a "Tayfur goes to America" thing happening is as much as these:

Caloi doesnt stop with winning the Teton Pass but goes to Europe and takes first place at the Alpine Gauntlet, first place by an hour and a half!

Fatty wins a stage at TdF!

Me becoming an olympian at 2008!

Anywho, thanks man! Couch would be a slice of buckingham Palace after 3 months in a sleeping bag! If I EVER get to doing that tour!

I'm glad you're healing well Tom. A little leakage is always possible after that kind of a surgery, I had a pelvic surgery about 9 years ago and it leaked for about a week. So I know how it feels to be losing water from some weird place on your body!

The race's tomorrow, I didn't really have time to train this time. All I want is to complete 6 laps and nothing else! If I do, I'll be on the podium man!

See you tomorrow night!

I have been flying over and around the blogosphere for seven months. I have had this place for six months. This thing consumes a lot of time. I admit it, it's great fun. There are funny people to chat with, there's always some interesting bike stuff to talk about, there's always jokes and stuff but as I said before I'm wasting way too much time around here. It hurts to write this but I gotta cut this off or it's going to cost me big time. The holidays are over and I have school non-stop until the end of June. I have to study my ass off. I'm not good at it. I have always been a "Shining Example" to others, but also I've always known that I'm not trying even half as hard as I am capable of. I should. I should study, read medical stuff instead of bicycle stuff, I should do better things with my time at these years of my life. Wasting 4 hours every day after school on bike stuff is SHEER STUPIDITIY! The books I have to study are right next to me now and man they're thick! Anatomy, Physiology, Microbiology, Pathology, Sociology, Psychology ... I have neglected my duties as a med-school student for months. And stuff piled up.

I have research to do on some very specific subjects concerning the Turkish Health system.
I have to study THE WHOLE FRIGGIN musculo-skeletal system.
I have to learn parasitology, bacteriology and micology.

And in the mean time I have to keep up with other classes.

I'm scared, really scared. There's so much to do and I REALLY would rather cycle all the day long. But I can't. Life's harder than that and there's more to it than that.

Only for once in my life before I studied hard. I studied for 2 months before an SAT-like exam we have here to apply for college. I remember it felt good to study hard. Everything tasted better. Happines was more or less genuine. I'm going to stop kidding myself and thrust myself to school.

It's childish but I planned what I'm going to do with my time. I want it to be something like this:

XX:XX hour: Come home from school
1 hour rest
2 hours studying
1,5 hours catch up with your reading
1,5 hours train for the next race
XX+6:XX hours go to bed

It would be cool.

My holiday is almost over. It's saturday, school starts on monday. I'm not tired anymore after 3 weeks of doing nothing but sleeping and eating and cycling. I have the energy, I have the screams of "Got get 'em tiger!"s in my head. I have the will-power bars in my jersey-pockets. All I have to do is gun the engine and floor it!

What the GAZEBO does this mean? It means my posts will be less frequent after monday until this summer. But I will use my Treo (I love that phone so much I wanna sell it! Anyone interested in a Palm Treo 650?) to check out Caloi's and T's and Fatty's and other people's blogs and leave comments. You shall not despair!  Well I see I still can smile. It's a good sign.

When I ride, my rhinal secretions go out of control! It's not a joke, even in the driest day of summer if I'm riding it means I'm constanty sniffing and mucus is oozing down my face. It has something to do with exercise starting the symphatetic nervous system. Ok, many people produce excess mucus when riding but mine's a freak show! Here are some anectodes:

I'm going downhill with 40 mph, it's cool, I had long hair at that time and I was at least 15 pounds lighter and I felt very very cool. I go : "Wooo hooooo!" all the way down the hilluntil a BIG drop of mucus comes out of my nose flies off and lands on my ear. THAT is stupid. I get distracted and brake early on a hill where I could easily hit 50 on my roadie. Did I ever mention that I have an illegal-in-races 11 tooth cog at the back of my roadie? 52x11 is COOL.

I'm on my MTB which I just bought a new frame and it feels nice to ride a new bike. It's august, very dry, very hot and I'm producing mucus like a character from that show Carnivale! (again) I'm at the sea-side cruising, coasting mainly but still mucus keeps dripping. Suddenly I'm going side by side with this cute girl, she says she likes my bike (My bike looked a lot like hers, it consisted of various very different bits and parts gathered from here and there; as my bike was back then and it still is) all I can say back is: "Sjhczdcspfsss" When I open my mouth that salty, warm fluid comes in and well it's not a pleasant experience to DRINK your mucus. She laughs and pedals away.

I'm at the race, HR around 195, pedalling uphill with 2x5 and I keep sniffing. It totally screws up my breathing. So I get tired sooner than I should and start walking.

I have the nastiest solution to this "Excess Rhinal Secretions" thing. Maybe other cyclists use this too, I really dont want to know. I blow my nose to my Cannondale DH5 glove and spread the mucus in a nice and thin layer onto my MTB shorts. Beware hand-shake enthusiasts I'm coming!

Ok a few weeks ago Caloi said he really wanted to know what I ride. So here goes:

Kron 16" tri-butted 7005 aluminum frame (made in Taiwan, lightweight with only 1550 grams)
Manitou Axel fork, 85 mm travel with an unbelievable weight of 2480 grams
Shimano LX Crankset (rigid and very light)
Shimano LX BB
Shimano Alivio shifters 3x8 (problem-free components, I think I'll put them on my roadie after I switch to 3x9)
Shimano Alivio front derailleur
Shimano Deore rear derailleur
Shimano Alivio 8 sp cassette (best component ever, no wear after thousands of kilometers)
KMC chain (the cheapest possible, I break chains very very often)
Shimano Alivio front-rear hubs
Shimano Alivio v-brakes (crappy is the name of the game here, I'm looking for Avid ball bearing 5's)
Barradine brake pads (almost worn out after the race, I went out and bought the hardest pads as Fatty said, they turned out real good )
Tektro brake levers (both are bent after a stupid crush which ended with me lying in a puddle of mud in front of a crowded bus stop near a high school, yeah those girls were laughing at ME)
Front-rear no-name spokes
Rigida rear rim (sides are completely worn out, needs replacement, bad)
Arriv front rim (real shitty stuff)
Schwalbe Hardclimber 2,1 in. rear tire (I had to get this cheap crap after a tiny shard of glass tore the damn IRC Notos XC, no kevlar for me from now on!)
IRC Notos XC 1,95 in. front tire (it melted like cheese man! a few hundred kms and the knobs are almost gone! talk about a quality tire, this stuff just can't take abuse)
Schwalbe tubes
Velo saddle (brand new and very comfy)
Zoom seat pin
Zoom stem (did I hear someone say crappy? yes it is)
No-name riser handlebar (solid stuff)
No-name alu pedals (it's funny the best parts on my bke are the no-name ones)
Amoeba grips
Alu bottle cage
Shimano wires
Finish Line teflon lubricant
20/50 W motor oil
One (1) buck worth frame-bag
Cheapest bottle ever
No-name made in china front lamp
Rear lamp the same brand with the one above
Insulation tape used to cover some excess writing on the frame especially on the top-tube (it read Xaos, whatever that means, supposed to be the model of the bike)
Insulation tape used as chain guard on the chain stay (because I'm too cheap to go and buy a decent chain guard for 3 bucks)
Lots of mud from all around Istanbul

I love some of the parts on my bike, I'm neutral about some and I really do hate some of them. Actually all I need is a wheelset and a good front disc-brake. I have some plans on wheels, as soon as funds permit I'm going for a rear wheel.

Yesterday's race was cool. I ACTUALLY raced with a few people. I beat some of them and some f them beat me but that's irrelevant. There was especially a girl and a dude, we were passing each other constantly. At the end I abandoned the race but the dude kept going for one more lap even though he was bonked. (Insert shrug here) :D Here are a few pictures from the race.

The second pic is kind of weird. I had my tuff-downhill-guy face on but the man taking the picture took it a little late.
The third picture is of the overall winner's.
The fourth is my friend Halil he had to abandon because of a rear flat.
The fifth is my friend Ugur he had to abandon because of worn-out disc pads.