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We woke up the next morning feeling like kings, there was a knock at the door, the cleaning lady told us our breakfast was ready, couldn't be happier.  We looked outside, it was raining and really windy "doesn't look to hardcore to me" we said "I can handle it, I just met a friend of Fyodor Konikhov, we've got rain gear, whats the big deal."
"sir the local TV is here for an interview."
Like Idiot Kings.
"Now where did you get the idea for this trip?"
"well we were in college" (translation: we were drunk) "and we loved creating hypothetical outrageous trips and this one just kind of stuck" (it was the stupidest one)
"And why did you choose Russia?"
"It is a fascinating country with a unique and very interesting history." (we were in college, it was dreams of vodka and singing babushkas)
"There is a saying in our country "Russia has two problems Idiots and Roads" have you had any problems with either?"
"No everyone has been really nice, very generous and the roads haven't been to bad." (ARE YOU KIDDING?!? Have you seen the size of my seat? does it look compatible with the table size potholes you have in this country? I spend 8 hours a day on that thing, it seems to me the only idiots in this country are the ones riding their bikes across it instead of sitting on a park bench drinking a 2 liter of 8 percent beer)
Interview done, egos overinflated we put on our gear slowly for the cameras and headed out into the cold. 

    It took about an hour for us to realize we had made a mistake, apparently we've fooled everyone so well that they actually think we are hardcore bicycle tourers, because no one even mentioned that we were heading out into a hail hurricane.  For the first hour or so with icy wind whipping you in the face and hail stinging your cheeks you tend to say "this can't last too much longer" but eventually, actually right after you have made it too far to turn back, you realize that it is going to be an all day kind of storm, where most people, including Russians are curled up by the stove.  We were out there, in classic Levi and Ellery style just screaming and yelling at the wind, challenging it, cursing our sponsors and people who have helped us along the way (why would anyone help another human being do this to himself). Finally we things got worse, just as we were really making some headway the road switched from asphalt to gravel, normally we would care less but now was not the time for our speed to drop 2k an hour. Then we caught a break, we had essentially been testing our rain gear all day, now something finally failed, our gloves it turned out were only waterproof on the top part of the glove, so when the handlebars got soaked so did your hands (brilliant design). We had to make a stop, and improvise, I finished the ride with a pair of wool socks on my hands and two big dry sacks over them, one hand baby blue and one hand neon orange.  Finally we made our 80 kilometers, cold and wind burnt but with the exception of the hands fairly dry, our gear held out.  We found a hotel on the side of the road, ate about 4 bowls of borsch and went to bed.  The hero feeling lay dormant for a while.
We took the next day off to recover our muscles and because it was supposed to continue raining (of course it didn't).  We stayed at another hotel, which was more like a hostel, filled with long term Russian residents, most of whom were geologists helping to build a oil pipeline from Irkutsk to the Pacific Ocean.  They spent their days out in the swamps and forests walking in a straight line testing the ground and their nights making the hotel smell incredibly of cigarettes and beer.  We tried unsuccessfully to save money by eating at a supermarket, which in most countries seems to be a good way of saving money, but here in the Russian Far East we tend to spend a lot less if we go out to a cafe. (We did make ourselves a delicious roast chicken cheese and hot sauce sandwich, which is unavailable in most cafes along our route)

We took off the next morning again with high hopes, only to have them dashed by a ferocious headwind, which again morphed us into something like enraged sailors, screaming and yelling things at the wind that I you could not pay me to repeat publicly.  We had hoped to go rather far that day but instead made it about half our distance stopping in the first town of any size to try a little experiment.  We had read a travelogue of a man who had ridden his bicycle across Russia in winter (unbelievable) and he had talked about how the first thing he did when he got into a Russian town was seek out the Mayor, and usually he wound up drinking vodka in a private banya with him for the entire evening.  We thought this sounded like a good thing for us to try, and it happened to be a great excuse to get out of the wind early.  As we were heading into the town, I did have one great little moment, seeing a man pass out in the middle of the road before my eyes I went up to him "are you okay?"
"yes"
"are you sure?" he opened his eyes for a moment
"yes of course" as if he was just settling in for his afternoon nap on the side of I-95.  (this also was one of the few Russian conversations where I understood everything)
We arrived outside the what we assumed was the town hall, and stood there looking at the town for a minute. It was a great town, one of the ones built out of nothing in the Soviet era, it was 43 years old, just to house the biggest coal power plant in the Far East (it supplied power to the entire state including Vladivostok and some of the surrounding areas too including Khabarovsk, it was a big power plant).  We had hardly been looking around for 3 minutes before a man in a suit came out and hustled us directly into the building, made us leave the bikes in the hall, and brought us to his office.  It was the Mayor, Yuri.  Moments later the tea was being laid out, an interpreter was brought in. We asked for a place to stay, it became immediately apparent that the town of Luchegorsk was pulling all the stops out for us, putting us in a hotel for the night.  Then suddenly the head of the local Duma (like a congress) was there, sandwiches were coming out, and then Yuri brought out the 5 star 25 year old Russian Congac and the toasting began... 3 hours later, 2 bottles of congac were gone, the office was tipsy to say the least, the sandwiches were just crumbs and everyone had so many photos on their cameras, their memory cards were full. We finally managed to escape to the hotel.  So that is what it is like if you go to the mayor. No wonder the roads are so shitty.

We left the next morning and once again battled the wind all day, I guess the t-shirts were right, nothing is more frustrating than wind, because it not only saps your strength, but it also howls in your ears all day so you can't even talk to each other without screaming.  We road all day through the country side, less mountains and birch trees, instead long stretches of farmland an the occasional small town or wildfire.  Hundreds of little streams each named for the town immediately before or after it.  It was Friday, not the best day to be travelling in Russia, its a boozing day, and if you pay attention as you ride, you can actually sniff out the cars that are having a little too much fun "That car smelled like beer!?!".  And around 7 o clock things get really wild, that is usually when we get the strangest stops, drunk guys who don't have cameras, just saw us on television and want us to take their picture, or they just want to talk to us. Nice but weird considering as cyclists drunk drivers are our sworn enemies.  On this day we were particularly lucky to meet Stas and his friend whose name I never really knew.  They stopped us as we were just a few miles outside of the town of Lermontovka where we intended to spend the night.  They did have their own camera, although they insisted on also getting a shot for the website, something that in retrospect was a great idea, five minutes and they were pulling away. About 100 yards down the road they pulled over the car again, waiting for us to catch up.  When we pulled up, Stas promptly came out of the car and gave me a big handful of Russian Sala, or basically raw bacon (with actually a bit more fat, and eaten raw), which ironically we had had with the Mayor just the night before, this time though wrapped in a dirty piece of paper, giving it that "hey i'm just choc full o bacteria" look.  Thankfully they did not force either of us to eat it on the spot, instead shoving it into one of our bags destined for the nearest trash recepticle. Then again, more photos, the men stumbled back into the car and we could only hope that they didn't live in Lermontovka.  We climbed the hill and began our hunt for the local cafe, stopping first by a group of friendly looking guys playing with a dog, no sooner had we stopped then Stas and his henchman pulled up, inviting us to their house nearby.

One of the great advantages of not speaking Russian is that even when you do understand but aren't sure you want to comply you can just act like you have no idea what they are talking about.  Stas kept obviously asking us to his house for food and a good nights rest (one of our main objections was the fear of having to eat that mystery raw meat), and we kept responding by saying in our poorest Russian "where is the cafe?" eventually we compromised, they showed us where the cafe was and we ate dinner together.  Or should I say we ate and they drank, they ordered about 10 courses for each of us while they set to work on a bottle of vodka.  We even got them to ask the cafe owner if it was possible for us to spend the night on her floor, she agreed and mentioned that we were actually the third group of cross Russia riders to stay on her floor, a Canadian and a Frenchman had beaten us to her delicious cafe and stayed the night way to full to move.  We however still had Stas with us and things were quickly escalating, and again the Russian generosity kicked in.  We of course were unable to pay a dime for huge meal, but we knew that the moment we sat down, but as the night progressed, Stas decided that Levi was cold and wanted to give him his jacket. Things like this are always happening in Russia whether the person has been drinking or not, so we often try and nip these things in the bud (we love gifts but cannot really carry them).  Levi ran to his bag and pulled out his jacket to show Stas, who pulled it close to his face to focus on it and proclaimed "this is womans coat, prostitutes coat!!!" promptly threw it on the ground and put his worn camoflauge coat around Levi's shoulders "this is mans coat!!!"  (it probably could have fit 3 Levis in it).  That was when we realized it was time to go to sleep, we headed into the back room to pretend to go immediately to sleep, only to spend 2 hours being woken up by Stas every few minutes, before his friend could pull him back into the cafe.  Our only revenge was at one point I had to use the bathroom which was of course an outhouse (most of the countryside is), Stas of course had to accompany me to protect me from God knows what, but of course was not able to make it the whole way without falling directly on his face, much to my amusement.

The beauty of visiting a cafe that has already housed bicyclists is that the owner really knows how to cook for bikers, we had a tremendous breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage all Russian style, we left even fuller than after dinner.  We struggled again against the wind, something that I guess I will stop writing about because it is going to happen so often, and made it to Vyazimskiy where we stopped at a Motel, we had seen a few along the way and had always been tempted by them so we figured one day away from Khabarovsk would be perfect (we had now done about 700k).  I'm not exactly sure what the reputation of a motel is in America, but I more than likely won't be stopping in one to find out again. Granted it was a weekend night which makes everything worse, but the second we walked in we wanted to get out, it was full of men celebrating heavily the weekend, all of whom either had seen us on TV or just loved Americans (either is a possibility), after the night with Stas, we wanted to run.  Thankfully the woman behind the desk was able to keep the party boys at bey while we checked in and got ourselves behind a locked door.  The next morning we awoke to a pool of vomit in front of our door. Lesson #10 never get the room next to the pool table.
We cruised, the wind died down, our legs knew that Khabarovsk meant 4 days of rest and our minds just wanted to push it, we barely even stopped at cafes, instead stopping for roadside hamburgers and deep fried something.  Great bike food.  We arrived in Khabarovsk like kings, the hero feeling was back, we were met outside the city by a friend of ours in Americas aunt (Lena) and the head of the American Corner (Mariana) (a offshoot of the American Consulate in Russia, basically a English language library, one in each major city, they also have featured speakers each week, this week we were the speakers).  They took us to Lena's after school program which is really cool, a combination of theater and historical re-enactments, where we were, as is a Russian tradition, completely over-fed. Then finally we were taken to our hosts house, Alex, where we slept while listening to the wind.
ellski

 
 

We left Ussiriysk after a day spent unsuccessfully but almost completely in the internet cafe trying to upload videos, and having adolescent Russian boys stare and sneer at us because we were slowing down their Warcraft III gaming with our lame adventure.  We got back out on the road a bit sore, but overall pretty good, and excited knowing that we would have our first "where are we going to sleep tonight" night that evening.  However we still had to get bike tubes (slackers),  we rode to the bike shop and by the time we got out of the store our bikes we surrounded, not only with passers by taking cell phone pictures but by the local Ussiriysk television station as well. We did our standard statement, and eventually got a late start out of the city, which coupled with the fact that we were often forced off the road to pose for photos really slowed us down.

By 7 we made it to the town of Lyalichi, or I guess a village is more appropriate, though there was a cafe and store.  We sat down for a huge meal, thinking if we ate big and told people of our problem of nowhere to camp, and that we were looking for a floor or yard something would happen.  However no one was able to help us, so we left the cafe very full as the sun was slowly setting still without a place to stay.  But this is Russia, and if there is one thing that I can say about Russia, if you are looking for hospitality, look no further, we had barely ridden ten feet when we saw a woman on the street directing construction workers on a roof, it turned out that she was rebuilding her store that had burnt down, and she lived across the street "of course you can camp in my yard, or wait better yet you can stay in the house!!". And we learned two key lessons that night, one: never eat your big meal before securing a place to stay, because inevitably the people taking you in will force you to eat again and again.  And secondly, always venture off the road, it turned out that Lyalichi was actually not a village of maybe 200 as we had though, but a town of 2000, hidden away in a forest of birch trees and quite a bit off the "highway" there were dozens of old communist tenements, a couple more stores, a school, and even a discoteque. Strangely enough the family we stayed with (Wife, husband and a 17 year old son who spoke the only three words of english the whole night) actually had two houses in the village, so we were treated to two more huge meals, one at the house with electricity and then a bed time snack by candlelight surrounded by dyed easter eggs and Russian traditional Easter cakes, which are a combination of both Italian Panatone and giant cupcakes (the next day was Russian Easter).  The houses themselves were immaculate, in spite of it being springtime and mud season these houses had neither dirt nor clutter. The one we stayed in was a classic Siberian house, a baby blue wooden house with extremely ornate window framings which is the tradition here (pictures on the website) and even some stained glass on the porch windows.  We spent a wonderful night being fed, driven around the town with Sergei Jr. and  trying somewhat successfully to talk to Sergei Sr. and Lena (we at least managed to find out what had happened to the store, although I guess anyone could have just looked at the remains and made an educated guess).  We woke the next morning ate an Easter egg had a slice of easter cake and hit the road.

 The next day was the first day where we really felt the wind, we were travelling in open plains most of the day and just listening to the wind howl by you all day can really start to bother you.  But we travelled only about 80 k so it wasn't to bad (things would get worse before Khabarovsk).  Every day we stop at cafes for lunch, right now we pass through a town every few hours, after Blagoveschensk they will become much more infrequent, so we take advantage, and weirdly enough it is much more expensive to eat at a supermarket or convienience store than to have a sit down meal in the country here. We stopped around noon and had our standard Borsch and Pelmeni, while watching some Russian men enjoying their Easter sunday, by getting drunk and firing off guns and fireworks in the center of town (can you fire a shotgun off in the center of a town?).  We again had many well wishers along the road, including one group of guys who invited us to stay at their hotel and sauna about 140 k away from where we were at the time, it was a perfect opportunity for us to push it hard (we have been going around 80k a day, which any bicycle tourer of with any experience would laugh at).  We agreed, hoping we could make it and that it didn't rain.  We arrived into the town we were going to that night around 7 and were slightly lost until to little Russian kids on bicycles started riding with us. "where are you going?"
"a hotel"
"oh your going the wrong way, follow us"
and so we were led by these two kids through the town, on the route only little kids would take you on, across railway tracks, through alleys, down one way streets the wrong way, but they got us there quick.  We gave them our card (now we have decided to start carrying candy for such favors) and we found ourselves in the refurbished Soviet era Gostinitsa (hotel).  The price was about 10 dollars per person with only cold water, and 15 dollars per person with hot water, we went with the cold water (I considered going with one hot and one cold, but that might confuse the system).  The shower was unlike anything I had ever seen, kind of like a base of a shower, but raised up about a foot with tile walls another foot up so you had to step into it (it was the depth and width of a fifty gallon drum cut in half, so impractical for showering but certainly not a bathtub) and at about waist height was a faucet).  We both stood looking at the contraption perplexedly for about 40 minutes before someone said "i'm doing it" After our freezing cold showers we headed out to get food, causing quite a stir around town, we went to a minimart, where the opposite of "hide your daughters" occurred, the resident babushka immediately called her grand daughters and extremely awkwardly tried to spark conversation and romance. We only got out of there by once giving our phone numbers.  Levi then proceeded to try his new favorite game with some guys we met in the market "Can I just take one shot with a Russian and walk away".  He lost, and we spent about 45 minutes outside the store with a couple of Russians, trunk open, music blaring until we could escape to work on our bicycles.

We woke up at dawn, hoping to really put on some K before noon, on our mission for sauna and bed.  Thankfully the wind was behind us, it had been blowing in our faces for the last few days but this day it switched, and so we had failry few hills and mainly plains, it was like riding a motorcycle.  We flew. There were tons of wild fires burning, which we cannot tell if they are man made or cigarette made, but no one seems to care either way, many of them seem rather dangerous, big raging fires spewing tons of smoke on the side of a highway seems not very good to me, but I could be wrong.  By the final leg of the day we were just outside the city when we were stopped once again, this time by a friend of the great Siberian adventurer Fyodor Kulnikhov, who was actually one of the riders in Mark Jenkins book Off The Map.  We actually spend a lot of our time talking about him on the road,  (much like the Camino de Santiago, we spend most of the day talking nonsense) fearing that he will drop what he is currently doing (leading a herd of camels across the Gobi Desert)  and start chasing us down from Vladivostok just to teach us what hardcore is, ( he has sailed around the world I believe twice, been to the north pole I believe also twice, and by now has probably scaled every mountain in Russia and is now stuck doing deserts just to pad his stats). Anyway this friend immediately called the local press and got us a back up place to stay for the night, in case our man Sergio fell through.  But as soon as we called Sergio, we knew we wouldn't be staying in the back up, he came to meet us at the Lesozabodsk sign and escorted us right to the Hotel, a really nice hotel too, he gave us a room and said, "ten minutes Banya".  Luckily our friend Konstantin had given us banya hats before we left, and just like that we were in the banya for a sweat, which after 140km was fantastic, unlike some of the previous banya experiences I have had which were ridiculous, this was a business style banya, very classy, very relaxed.  We got all the treatment, the beatings, the cold pool, even a regular pool with massaging jets, we came out tired but limber. We walked up stairs to the bar, which made me really begin to wonder, he sat us right into the VIP section (opposite the stripper pole, no stripper thogh) brought a ton of food out for us to eat, and after a few minutes a reporter came to interview us in our towels and banya hats.  Then as just things were getting wild, (the men at the table next to us had sent us a bottle of vodka as a gift) Segei realizing we were tired led us to bed, perhaps only someone who has been to Russia can understand what a favor he granted us, not only feeding us, banyaing us, hoteling us, but most importantly giving us an excuse out of what would obviously be a long night with some very friendly Russians.  We went to bed feeling like kings, not knowing what the morning would have in store...
e

 
 

I think I was somewhere between 10 and 14 when I realized that people actually rode there bikes across whole continents.  It seemed (and still does seem) absurd that anyone would do such a thing, I immediately wanted in, I wanted to cross the only continent that seemed plausible as soon as I was out of highschool. So my best friend Nate Maloney (now Tarvers) and I headed out by bus to Montana in the pouring rain. (We found a ride called The Great Divide, which was all off road and through the Rockies, although not across a continent it seemed more hardcore). It was on this ride that I found out that 90lbs of gear might be too much for one person to carry up mountain passes, and the boyscouts were straight wrong when they said "always be prepared". And although we didn't make it all the way from Montana to Mexico (we made it to southern Utah so shut up!) I did get my first taste of traveling town to town and torturing self via something most people do for pleasure. We did another trip, this time walking across Spain with Levi and again I fell in love with slow strenuous travel...
"AHHH F#!#@, another flat tire are you kidding me?!!!"
"I know the shirt says 10,000 miles against the wind, but is the wind actually going to be blowing in my face like this the whole time? Even a side wind would be better!"
5 minutes later...
"AHHH Jesus a man could get killed with this huge heavy bike getting hit with a side wind, at least give me a head wind!!!"
Our idol and inspiration Mark Jenkins described it perfectly in Off The Map: Bicycling Across Siberia. "The hero feeling is actually pretty weak, all it takes is a sore knee or bad gas to make you feel horrible" (or something like that, I know the bad gas was in there.)
Luckily for us even on the morning of the 15th when we walked out of the dorms for the last time and were immediately lashed with icy strong wind, our hero feeling was given a boost. Adreniline pumping we made our way down to the starting point. Even on the way we managed to break something, Levi's water backpack exploded "I usually like to start a ten thousand mile bike trip soaking wet in 32 degree weather!". But just as that hero feeling was slipping for a second we turned the corner and were beseiged by press. Apparently nothing happens in Vladivostok, or Russia for that matter because there were 5 different television stations and every newspaper in town there to see off the Idiots. We had to dip our bikes in the pacific about 5 times, the last time I managed to soak my foot, perfect. It wasn't the first time we had had to fake something about the trip, the day before, the 2 of the TV stations came to our dorm rooms, and insisted on going to the school and interviewing our Russian teachers, when they couldn't be found they had another teacher who we had never met pose as our teacher, teaching us in the classroom then they interviewed her. After the whole thing was over she said "so what are you guys doing?" I'm sure the clip I posted of the interview on the website looks great for most of us, but for those of you who speak russian don't believe a word of it.
And so after much fanfare we headed out, thank god for Tom Armbruster, the Consulate General, otherwise we would have looked real bad. That "hero feeling" melted after the first few hills and after the cameras stopped rolling.
 
Overall the first day went fairly smoothly, we didn't go too far, it was cold windy, and after seeing so many cameras we rather wanted to stay in a hotel where we could see the footage. We left Tom, the police escort and the camera crews after about 30k, it was a great moment, we were finally on our own and able to go at our speed and not have to pose or feel self conscious, (I took a rest break midway up the next hill)  We went maybe another 30k of hills and wind before settling in at the very same hotel by the airport where we stayed our first night in Vladivostok. there was something fitting about spending 6 weeks in Vladivostok, only to return to the same hotel and watch oneself on about 5 channels. Pretty funny, oh and I got the first flat tire as we rolled into the hotel.  The country side is Russia, there are beautiful little colorful dachas with mini gardens and stray dogs  in fields of birch trees. Then you turn the corner and there is a half mile of smokestacks and abandoned Ladas (Russian Cars), another half mile brings you into the center of a small Russian town with an amazing little oniondome church, tons of little kiosks, and some rather Festive-to-early men taking advantage of Russias lenient street drinking laws and cheap alcohol. Amazing.
 
Yesterday things got out of control, everyone was honking and waving, half because they wanted to get us off the road and half because they saw us on the news the night before. Some people even slowed down rolled down their windows and held conversations with us, on even offered me a redbull at about 30 miles an hour. We posed for photos when we stopped, (levi got two flat tires, ominous sign, get the glue out) we even signed autographs, for now at least we are safe, the Russians have taken us under their wings, we spend most of our time, including all day today trying to keep up with the website and housing offers.  It was a long day to Ussiriysk, the place where we had hoped to make it the first day (again the hero feeling melting) but it is better to ease into 100-130k a day and what are we in a hurry for, we though we would be riding on May 1 today is the 17th of April.  Ussiriysk is the last city we will see for 700k and so we are staying an extra day (that at least is the excuse my legs came up with), it is the first time we get to see a lot of the famous Russian wooden houses, interspersed with communist housing towering over them, beside the kind of peicemeal shacks you expect to see in Africa (must be hell to heat), it is a fantastic combination that makes the town fascinating to look at, even though we haven't found the church yet.
 
The generosity of Russian people is mind blowing, a couple at the very end of the day as we were crawling along led us to a Russian drive through restaurant, bought us an amazing meal (this drive through, although resembling a Russian wendy's was full of homemade delicious food) and took us to a hotel. Too Kind. They even took us this morning to this internet cafe, where we were unsuccessful in uploading any pics or videos onto the website other than the ones from the articles I posted under press. Next they are taking us to a bike shop for some more tubes.
gotta run
ellski

 
 

It seems like a long time since I last wrote an email, it is now nearly t-shirt weather here in Vladivostok, and our lovely Oblomov like existence has been erased, somehow the secret got out that there were two Americans in Vladivostok.  Now we have about a dozen people around us who would like to practice their English, which has landed us in the middle of another culture clash, as our South Korean friends seem unable to grasp that everytime a Russian girl approaches us, they are not interested in sleeping with us (we think), instead they run up to us and and excitedly say to us "so you got another one!!" as if Russian women were fish.

Soo You got another one!?!?

We have moved out of our previous Russian classes into a special mini-group, i.e. Levi and I, where we talk just about bicycles, Sibirski Tigre, and what we will eat out on the trail.  The woman in charge of the foreign students here even gave us a slingshot so we can hunt duck (at least that was the only thing she felt we were capable of hunting, I agree). Recently we went out to get bear spray in case of trouble out on the road, apparently here in Russia they don't have bear specific papper spray, but fear not, when we asked the man behind the counter he laughed and said that we won't see any bears where we are going, only ducks (again the slingshot).
 
As you know we are doing this trip trying to be as enviornmentally friendly as possible, so we are always keeping an ear open to any enviormental issues, and besides the cars (according to the gossip I have gathered 1.2 million cars for 600,000 people, a very american suburb sounding statistic) we recently checked out for the second time the wikipedia site about Vladivostok. Now right before this we had been driven around by a very nice guy named Andrei, he was 26 and had a small child.  He could not stop telling us how much he wanted to get out of Vladivostok and emigrate to Canada, "It is so polluted here, I do not want my son to grow up in a place like this where you cannot even swim in the ocean.". We of course were skeptical when he pointed out the dirt on the cars in the street saying "look at this pollution, I cannot even wash my car for in 2 hours it looks the same!" "Well I think most anywhere in winter that is the case." we chimed in like idiots.  Then we saw the wikipedia on Vladivostok and some other sources as well, yes I had told you that it was a unesco disaster zone, but what does that mean, how bad can it be. Not only does it highlight our campus and surrounding area as the worst in the city it claims "Two thirds of Vladivostok's suburbs are so pollutedthat living in them is classified as a health hazard,".   We have been living in an area where arsenic, mercury and lead are more common than soil as far as i can tell. Apparently because of Vladivostok's location in a basin, and because of it's lack of precipitation (i.e. everything that saves it from the harshest elements of the Russian climate) also make it so the pollutents don't seep into the ground like any healthy overpolluted city, but instead they are just sitting around attatching themselves to my lungs and the sides of the cars (sorry Andrei).  So the sea that surrounds us on 3 sides gets away scott free? No my friends Vladivostok is not that kind, I believe all 80 surrounding factories have kindly created "unfiltered" outfall pipes so the ocean can get a good toxic "buzz". And of course the sewer system runs straight into the bay.  We promptly stopped even boiling the water, (does lead and arsenic boil out) and moved straight to bottled even for pasta making.


I decided a bit before this trip to quit drinking (I hope the emails don't suffer too much from lack of craziness).  I thought that a 10,000 mile bike trip wasn't quite hardcore enough for me, I wanted also to try and dry out in the worlds most notorious party country notorious.  So I imagine you are thinking, it must be tough with all that hardcore Russian drinking around him, he already said they are surrounded by Russians wanting to learn English, they must want to get the Americans drunk. In what I can say is the strangest Russian experience of my life, we have yet to meet a Russian who drinks alcohol, not one. Everyone we meet, we usually at least offer to take out to a bar or something and inevitably the answer comes back "oh I don't use alcohol". Everytime. We have probably 15 Russian friends, none of them drink, where on earth can you possibly go and meet that many people and all of them say I don't drink, short of an AA meeting. Perhaps when the Soviets sent all the dissedents east to Siberia, they sent all the sober people too, after all there was little more suspicious at a Politburo dinner than the phrase "oh I don't drink".  Or a bit more likely they looked around the streets and said, "I don't want to wind up like that". Amusingly enough there is still all the wild street drinking and carousing, the otherday the bus made an emergency stop so some of the guys on board could go grab some more beers at a kiosk, it was a public bus.  We also stumbled into a rather disturbing scene one day looking for a coffee, it was simply a Russian cafeteria, or so it said on the outside. Inside it was a preverted version of a teen center, about 150 middle school age kids, fresh from school with backpacks, chain smoking and drinking fruity mixed drinks.  It was horrifying, I'd never seen such agressive chainsmoking, despite a woman who went around collecting ashtrays regularly, everyone (particularly the girls) had a full ashtray in front of them, the girls lit one long skinny pink cigarrette after another while helping themselves to the bottle of vodka on the table and mixing it with juice (the russian custon of buying bottles instead of drinks apparently starts at a very young age).  I guess the ones we meet are the survivors.

Me with a couple of our tea-only Russian friends

You will be glad to hear that things are progressing rather well in the Russian connections department, we done a few interviews here in Vladivostok, which hopefully will bring us a little attention for our cause and for our safety.  We also have gotten to know the people at the American Consulate in Vladivostok, including the Consulate General.  They are helping us get connections and hopefully interviews (maybe even couches) all through Siberia.  The Consulate General himself, Tom Armbruster, is going to ride out of Vladivostok with us to help us raise publicity.  Besides that we have also had two interviews with magazines that we can never read (Must Learn Russian!!), however the "Oh my cousin lives in Irkutsk!" connections have not been forthcoming, I guess we will be in the tents after all.
ellski

 
 

 We are settling in here in Vladivostok, and if you've read anything about Levi and myself's previous travel you would not now us now. The party pilgrims who were kicked out of a Paris hotel at 4 in the morning, are certainly not the nice American cyclists who keep to themselves in the dormitory of a Vladivostok Language school.  Perhaps we are still suffering the side effects of a trip halfway around the world, or perhaps it is that we are still recovering from the month long planning marathon. I think that it is more the strange concept of being in Vladivostok for a month before our trip really starts, it is like we are in hybernation, we have single rooms far down the halls from each other which we each share with the bike of our dreams.   We are here simply to train and learn Russian, we spend most of our time reading books on Gulags and the prehistoric Siberian Mosquito, which is not only impressive in it's size but also it's numbers, often smothering small creatures to death in swarms. Sounds like fun. In fact until this past saturday night we had yet to see Vladivostok at night except out our windows.
 
Besides 5 hours of reading a day,  we sit around tinkering with the bikes, the gear and staring at the map, making comments like "so you think there will be a lot of truckstop clubs here?"  Occasionally we go out in search of some last minute purchases, like bear spray and gas for our cook stove.  Our searches for campstores has taken us into the heart of the communist tenements which may sound unpleasant, but there is something about the 5-8 story high housing complexes crammed next to eachother that has an appeal, each worn down on the outside, but if you manage to get inside, each apartment is really quite nice, in Soviet times they might have been overcrowded, more than one family to an apartment, but now I am always suprised at how cozy and welcoming they are (and I always forget to take off my shoes, at the entry way, oops).  In each of these developments there is usually a couple of little playgrounds and a small convenience store, so if you wished you wouldn't have to go out hardly at all. 

 Saturday, on one of these excursions at an outdoors store we met a Russian guy (Denis, a Russian hippie complete with dreadlocks) who had hitchhiked from, get this, Vladivostok to Portugal, not Porto but Lisbon.  We immediately got his phone number and made an appointment for tea the next day.  Hitchhiking apparently is surging in popularity in Russia, taking the country by storm, with clubs popping up everywhere. Levi read somewhere that they even have hitchiking races all through out Russia now (first one to the Bering Straight wins!).  Denis was able to answer the one great question about this bike trip we still had (besides "will we make it"), there is a part of the road from Chita to Blagoveschensk that with every Russian asked the story changes.  "No there is no road there" one said.  "No you cannot pass through there, that part of Siberia is not for travelling, trust me I grew up there." said another ironically in Moscow. "there is no road straight through but you can pass through". A map showed several small roads, but not quite connecting the whole way.  A Russian government press release said the road across Russia would be paved by 2010, but didn't say that the road yet existed. Finally we had a man who had seen the road in the last year. "Oh boys that was my favorite part of the whole journey, all gravel." he then started to shaking all over mimicking what our bodies would be feeling for 2 entire weeks "I would bring facemasks for the dust boys."  Question answered, relief filled us, for so long we had wondered how lost, starved or wet we might get pushing our bikes through bogs or meandering small paths along the Chinese border, instead we just needed a comfy seat and some facemasks.  He then started giving us a detailed description of the various sections of the roads through Russia, "Here is Altai region, mountains very beautiful, here between Krasnoyosk and Omsk, biggest swamp in Russia huge mosquitos, very scary" He held out his hands to show they were as big as softballs, probably suck a pint of blood from you each, luckily I imagine that when they land on you it feels like a crow has landed on you and if you are lucky you can kill them with one quick smack from a baseball bat.  "This area Ural mountains, you will be happy to climb, anything to get out of the swamp." Perfect.
   Classes have started for us finally, we are in a class with 3 South Koreans, who are here as business majors, the Russians and the Koreans apparently have very good business connections and Russian is seen as a great language to pick up. However it is tough for them, the sounds are totally different, and considering that one of our Russian classes is totally devoted to pronunciation, it can't be fun (indeed who does like saying different combinations of 6 letters for an hour and a half each day, do, da, dya, zya-zo, zo-zye-fyu, you get the idea) I have an impossible time with this language I can't imagine what the Chinese and Koreans go through.  Classes only last till one at which point Levi and I race up to the cafeteria acquire some questionable 25 cent bowls of Borscht and some great rolls that either contain cabbage, potatoe, "meat", "fish" or cheese. I am usually hopeful for the cheese one, Levi's stomach is still recovering from the fish one.   Then we  race down to the "computer lab"  where there are 5 computers 2 of which invariably are missing either a mouse or a keyboard and the others are usually occupied, so we always bring books, usually reading about 100 pages before one of the computers frees up.
 The weather here has been very mild, at least for what we thought we would be walking in to.  There is snow on the ground and Saturday night there was quite a blizzard, we went flying down the hills here, Levi and I both fell once and the Korean students we were with may be a little black and blue come sunday.  But besides that the weather has reached into the 40's on several occasions (today it is a shocking 48), it is sunny most days and more than anything we spend most of our time dodging puddles from melting snow.   Levi and I are now thinking that we will be riding starting on April 15th, give or take (we refuse to start on a rainy day, sounds wimpy I know but why suffer when you can just squeeze in another day of 25 cent borscht). The thought that we might get an early start is thrilling, everyday we look out the window and the bay has melted a little more, and the ice fisherman are pushed a little closer to shore, soon they will be surfcasting.
ellski