Some days you get the bear…

I’ve got another secret mission coming up folks…and this time it’s magnificent Turkey.   I’ll bet you’ve never thought of Turkey as a cool place to visit, but I’ll tell you what..it’s one of the most beautiful and exotic places I’ve ever visited.

I’ve been traveling to Turkey for about 20 years now, mostly on business and sometimes for pleasure.   My very first trip there was exactly 20 years ago and I was traveling with my former boss and good friend Don Dominic.   That guy is amazing, and he has what might just be the best sense of humor ever.    I never missed a chance to travel with Don…no matter where we went, the jokes were awesome and old Don had a repertoire that just never ended.

Okay, so back to that old saying….some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you…

Don and I had flown into Istanbul after the long flight from LAX to Zurich, spending a night in Switzerland, and then flying on to Istanbul the next morning.   There’s a 10-hour time difference between So Cal and Istanbul, and we were both zonked out from the time change.  We checked into the Kalyon Hotel right on the Straights of Bosphorus, but I woke up at 3:00 a.m. wide awake the next morning knowing I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again.

Knowing the hotel would have coffee in the lobby (and folks, trust me on this…it doesn’t get any better than Turkish coffee), I went downstairs.  To my surprise, Don was already down there sipping some of that fine Turkish brew.

As soon as the sun came up Don and I went for a walk along the Straights of Bosphorus into downtown Istanbul.   How any of you can say you’ve ever done that?   This was cool stuff, folks.   The Imams were singing from the minarets, the sun was rising over the Straights and illuminating the Blue Mosque, and we were alive and out in the world.      You know me as Joe, but that morning I was Indiana Jones, and I was loving it.

As we were walking, this guy walked right past us going in the other direction with a bear on a leash.

Yep, you read that right.  A bear.  On a leash.  On the sidewalk.  In Istanbul.

We passed by this dude and his bear and I turned to Don.  He looked at me and we both realized what we had just seen.   When we turned around, the dude put up this stick and the bear, no stranger to this routine, stood up and posed.   Wow.   I had thought to bring my camera with me.  No one was going to believe this story without a photo, and here I was with a camera, snapping away for literally all I was worth (more on that in a second…).

I snapped a bunch of quick photos (I had a Minolta X-700 with a 50mm 1.4 in those days), we smiled, thanked the guy, and turned to leave.

Then the guy held out his hand.

Oh yeah…I get it now.  The guy’s in this as a business.    Well, what the heck.   How often to you get to take pictures of your boss with a bear?  It’s worth a couple of bucks, I thought…

I had just changed a $50 traveler’s check into Turkish lire the night before, so I had about a gazillion lire.   I started counting out some of it, and the guy just reached into my wallet and grabbed it all.   Okay, I thought…it’s just Monopoly money.

Don and I walked another 10 feet and I realized what had just occurred.   I started to say to Don “you know, I…”

Don response was immediate:  “I know, you just paid $50 for that photo.”

“Hmmm,” I said, “should I go back?”

Don just smiled.

“Joe, you don’t argue with a man with a bear…”