The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

Much like trying to write in your journal about a day that is over a week ago (something that I am a repeat offender at, in fact i am right now about 7 days behind) it is difficult to write about the last few days before we reached Moscow with sincerity while sitting in a Starbucks thinking about how it has been a week since I last saw my friend Sabaka (my bike).  We have spent a week melting into obscurity here in Moscow, something we needed, a place big enough where finally your language doesn't distinguish you. You can walk down the street here and listen to English almost endlessly even in southern accents "Oh I think Bobby-Sue is still looking for that Mah-Trushka doll or whatever they are called. Have you seen Billy?"
"Oh yeah I think he went to get a drink with Russel, lord only knows why, they could drink on the street like these Russians, everywhere I look there is a beer."
For us it is a little bit of heaven, sure we are no longer the "major celebrities" we were in the Russian Far East, but sometimes the endless bike trip questions get tiresome, here no one even thinks it strange to see a couple of American guys walking around, we are just a couple of tourists, boy is it sweet.  At the hostel we do talk about it, but abstractly, it is something far away from us, more likely we talk about where we have been that day or how creepy Lenin's waxy hands are.
But all this is the easy life, before this about a week ago we were making some hard decisions.

Leaving Kazan was a tough moment, we had a wondrously cheap place to stay, and a beautiful and interesting city, the Mosques matched with the Orthodox Churches on the skyline had us spell bound, Eastern European and Russian city centers can often give that "fairy tale" feel, but Kazan may have taken the prize for us.
We were able to pull ourselves away, as we got out on the road it was apparent what we would be suffering from for the next few days, the pre-Moscow blues, we had them in the final days of the off-road and we were beginning to see we would have them again now.  A feeling of already being in Moscow, and not really wanting to do the riding to make it there was setting in.  I wouldn't call it being sick of riding, it is more that a certain stretch of road in your mind is already done, you have made it to Moscow, you are ready to start thinking about heading out of Russia, the only problem is that you are still 400km from Moscow.  The road itself has of course undergone a new change, they mow the grass on the side of the road, the road seems more or less to be regularly maintained (I even saw two guys washing the reflectors on the side of the road, something i can only classify as a tremendous waste of time and money).  The pavement had improved, I imagine if you are going by car from Vladivostok to Moscow, this the the point that you have been waiting for, granted there is finally what one might call traffic, so you have to be more aware of that, but for the most part it is smooth sailing. 
For those of us on bicycles it is perhaps the most challenging yet. When the local Russian government decided to improve the quality of road as it approached Moscow they obviously had to cut something, they cut the shoulder, our road.  The whole way to Nizhniy Novgorod, 400km, the shoulder was gone replaced by a soft sand (i.e. unriddable) breakdown lane.  Our lane now consisted of the white line.   The traffic was now thundering by, trucks barreling by on both sides of this narrow road, it was so narrow that at times I would look back and see that Levi had a line of cars and trucks behind him waiting for a gap in oncoming traffic to pass him (a little sweet revenge on the cars that usually have no shame or pretensions of passing us at 120km an hour).  But overall it was a three day ride that left us with little pleasure.  At one point Levi got a flat right after a stop, I was only a few meters ahead of him, but I couldn't hear him because of the traffic, to double the problem, he realized he had no good spare tubes and had let his cell phone run out of minutes (our usual way of communicating).  The result was that 30km down the road when I stopped, I waited around for a while until a car came by and informed me that my friend was broken down on the side of the road, I started riding back after I sent a text to him saying it might be time to start hitching since the sun was going down.  Levi meanwhile was already trying to hitch, with little success, despite the number of cars, finally a cop stopped, "uh oh" Levi thought "Am I finally going to get bribed?"
Instead the cop listened to his story, and realizing that the bike wouldn't fit in the cop car, waved over the first truck that he saw, and forced him to drive Levi the 25km to meet me.  The truck driver was more than happy, he had initially feared a normal random stop which usually results in the paying of a bribe, so just having to throw Levi's bike in the back was no problem.  By the final day we were both suffering, Levi was feeling quite ill from all the exhaust  and riding with earplugs for the traffic noise, and we were both tight in the shoulders from trying to ride the white line so perfectly.  We reached the beautiful city of Nizhniy Novgorod still facing another 3 or 4 day ride to Moscow which promised to be probably just as tough, with more traffic and perhaps the same amount of road.  It was wimp out time.  Call it what you like but we call it a smart decision (particularly after I witnessed a girl getting hit by a car downtown later that day, disturbing) we decided to take the train into Moscow and back out to continue our bike trip and avoid an unnecessary risk and discomfort.  It also solved the Pre Moscow blues by starting our vacation 3 days early.  Since then we spent 2 days in Nizhniy Novgorod checking out the beautiful Kremlin and getting our bicycles into working order.  We took the train to Moscow, stuffing our bikes and ourselves into a sleeper carriage was an amazing feat but we did do it.  The only thing that we have accomplished since then besides catching up on our sleep is planning our exit from Russia (apparently you can only exit by bicycle at certain border points, so we had to look one up) and talking about how exciting the next stretch of the trip should be, riding Moscow to Prague with little stopping, we need another long ride, we are sick of stopping at cities every few days, we are just going to get out and watch the pavement move and the countries change before our eyes, hopefully we will get a shoulder.
oh and next stop Ukraine, wish us luck at the border.
ellski

When Levi, Nate and I  were planning the walk across Spain about 3 years ago, according to Levi I one day said "yeah we will get this one done and it will be in a the box, we won't have to worry about it" which since then has taken on a rather Al Gore "lock box" style parody.  We always picture our different adventures (they are only ones that Levi and I have done together) in the box bragging to each other, The Camino is always drunk and bragging how "you've never met anyone better" and Mexico is always throwing itself around to crazy reggaeton music covered in sunburns because it was too cheap to buy sunscreen.  This trip so far hasn't had anything to go into the "box" yet, we hadn't conquered anything, just three quarters of Russia, but we all know you can't throw three quarters of Russia into the "box", it will be eaten alive by the Camino "What you weren't tough enough to ride the whole thing? I told you you'd never met anyone better!"
We woke up early on the 24th of August, knowing that we were finally going to put one in the box, Asia, a big one.  It was kind of like starting the bike trip over again, sure the odometer wasn't at straight zeros, but we were well rested and once again unsure of what to expect, would Europe be full of drive up windows, round abouts and fancy wine bars? Or would things basically stay the same, after all things had been getting more and more filled with life as we have been going west, I just imagine that the roads might get a bit smoother, the cafes a bit closer and rotaries more traditional (we have seen some of the world's most impressive rotary designs here in Russia, there have been several figure eight death traps, many with stop lights and intersections worked into them, as a cyclist it is terrifying I can't even imagine what it is like in a car).  We rode out with the Yekaterinburg Cycle Club and even a couple of television stations trying to catch some action shots, as we excitedly spun our legs towards Europe, I even took out the video camera as we rode and of course the ego's showed themselves to be alive and well even after 4 months of subtle setbacks in Asia. When we reached the marker, just 17 k out of the city your first thought was that the Russians had literally just drawn a line where they figured it would be easiest to put a cafe and souvenir shop, it wasn't at the top of some great mountain as we imagined, it is just a spot in the forest, although on closer inspection it turns out that it is a watershed boundary.  We stopped at the boundary and posed for the cameras, said good by to Asia, and our cycling companions, and turned and looked into Europe,  "Funny, they have birch trees and mosquitos here too!, wonder if this side of Russia has a drinking problem too?"

In a way things did change too, we cruised in a way that was just liberating the first day, some days on the bike you just feel like even if you stopped pedalling the bike would keep going for miles, the days to Perm where days like that, just cruising out of the remnants of the Ural mountains.  There was something about coming out of the Urals that was very European, perhaps it was just that we hadn't been in a mountain range in several months, but crusing though the villages you could believe that you were in Germany or Czech Republic, it was the first time that I allowed myself to think about the prospect of riding through Europe, it took over my thoughts instantly. I think the Perm region will forever be the closest thing to truckers we ever came to, we found a trucker magazine that listed all the truck stops in the area,  (mind you from Yekaterinburg to Perm there were 4 times as many as there were listed from Novosibirsk to Yekat a distance twice as long) and we became truck stop critics, we would ride from one stop to the next looking for the perfect place to "park our rigs" for the night, then we would roll in dirty as sin, grab a steak and some eggs and talk to the other truckers about the roads and the women.  Eventually as the truckers head to their cozy beds in the cab we, the mini truckers, head out into the backyard to pitch our homes.  The tent has really become one of my favorite places, basically because it is mine, after 6 months of travel there are only two things that are the same in our lives, the bike and the tent, everything else is in constant flux, the tent is my bedroom, and boy is it messy.

We arrived in Perm feeling good, we had not gone too far, only 3 days, and not too many k a day, 120, so we planned on staying only a day, just doing a talk at the American Corner and leaving the next day.  As soon as we walked into the dorms where we were staying and discovered that they were only 8 dollars a night and downtown, we knew it was going to be tough to pull ourselves away with just one day. 
Three days later we found ourselves heading back out onto the road, we indeed couldn't tear our selves away from Perm, staying two extra days, one taking a very nice bike tour of the city, the next spending most of the day shopping for suits (yeah you heard me correctly, how did you want us to show up in Moscow? In Spandex?).  We were now even more rested and ready to go, looking at 4 quick 150km days to Kazan, where we would not only be in Tartarstan, our first stan, but we would also reach the Volga, a river Napolean dreamed of and Hitler had nightmares about.  Reaching the Volga is certainly something that we had always dreamed, and now it was just 4 quick little days away.  Once again we cruised with our new top gear, almost fooling ourselves into believing that bike trips can be easy, doing 150km in a cool 6 hours, with times like that you can spend most of your day in a cafe just sipping instant coffee. That night we were sleeping soundly in our tents in a truck stop parking lot, suddenly something happened that I bet a lot of you at home had been counting on happening, I was awoken by the clickity clack of what for a second I mistook for perhaps a passing horse or cow, but that was just the groggyness and 4 months in deserted Siberia talking, but shortly there were voices to match and I realized it was a group of girls, they came up to the tent and started knocking, "Vwee hochiteye secks?" (do you want sex?) it turned out that these nice prostitutes came all the way to the corner of the muddy parking lot to make sure that the tired cyclists weren't interested in a wild night. We thanked them for their consideration, but politely declined their offer, funny as it would have looked to see one of these girls climbing into the tent.
We looked at the Russian truck stop a little bit differently in the morning, the long line of parked trucks looked slightly less innocent, none the less I still like sleeping at the truck stops, at least for now. 
We cruised again, things were becoming routine in such a positive way we were both brimming with enthusiasm as we knew with each day we were getting closer to Moscow, our next big goal, and that if things kept up like this the rest of the trip would be a breeze.  It was the next day, the exact moment that we entered the next state (it appears that road construction and maintanance is a state run operation, which seems to have no federal guidelines) that we hit, yes you guessed it the next section of offroad. There was no screaming and yelling, just silence and disbelief, the European offroad.  Getting back into the offroad mentality takes a little bit of time, your focus has to change places, now you must be looking for the best line through the rocks, or soft sand (this section had so much soft sand it often resembled a beach ride on the cape more than a federal highway through Russia, we did quite a bit of walking), your ears get used to tuning out the clanging of your bike as it hits rock after rock, pothole after pothole, and your breathing becomes less about in and out, and more about out as dust clouds go by and in at moments of good air, you become like a snorkeler.  And it wasn't without it's toll, by the end of the first day we had to stop to fix Levi's rack, another broken screw, and at the beginning of the second day (as soon as the off road hit we gave up on making it to Kazaan in 4 days and added a 5th "I don't care if I'm late day") my rack suffered a similar fate although we didn't have to pause for it.  It was also on the second day that Levi and I began to suffer from something that I think a lot of you didn't even know existed, we were suffering from bike-lag.


Bike-Lag: A rare but frustrating illness similar to Jet-Lag, a direct result of passing through too many time zones in a matter of days. For bicyclists it is extremely rare due to the general size of time zones, but in certain areas like the Ural Mountains it is possible to ride through 2 time zones in 2 days and another just a week earlier.  The symptoms are generally wild disbelief during sunset, frequent distress at looking at the clock, mild insanity, and mild fever.

We had crossed finally into the Moscow time zone, leaving only Eastern Europe, Central Europe and Portugal left to change our clocks, but we had crossed so many so recently that we were having trouble adjusting, the sun is now setting at 8 at night, which might seem normal to you, but for us it has been setting at 11 for 5 months, suddenly you cross the Urals and a couple of time zones and you have dropped 3 hours.  Suddenly the sun reached it's high water mark at noon, not 4 in the afternoon, 5 is no longer the hottest hour of the day, it is time to start thinking about wherre to camp.  One good thing about it is that finally the television is correct, Russia runs everything on Moscow time, the trains schedules are in Moscow time even in Vladivostock, as are all the television stations (they really took the idea of a Centralized state too far), so if you see an add for a show at 10 at night you then have to figure out what time ten at night in Moscow is in the area you live, I guess all Russians must keep a calculator right next to the remote control.

The second day of off road also brought another first, as we swerved and skidded through miles of beach sand we suddenly came around a corner to findd ourself at a dead end, we had hit our first bridgeless river, we had to sit down and wait, just like the small line of cars (it turned out that there were several reasons why no one came on this road) for the ferry departure time.  Eventually us, a few cars and a truck carrying some sheep made our way to the other side, which signalled the end of the off road, for now.

Finally a day late and a couple bolts lighter we rolled into Kazan, the capital of Tartarstan.  The first thing you notice about Tartarstan is that it is a Autonomous Republic which is of the Muslim faith, there are Mosques everywhere, creating a very interesting city center here in Kazan, a blend of Russian Churches and Muslim Mosques dominate the skyline.  According to one guy I talked to it is home to the world's smallest metro system, 4 stops, I used it today, it is quite grand (as all soviet metros are), quite simple, and quite deserted, I imagine most people prefer to walk the short distance it covers.  It is perhaps the oldest city we have spent anytime in, being the capitol of a large Tartar kingdom before the Russia defeated and overtook them during Ivan The Terribles reign.  We spent our first evening splitting our time between delicious Kebab stands direct from their Turkish roots, and Macdonalds where a caffeine starved individual like myself can get a real cup of coffee with milk for just a dollar fifty, then heading back to the room for some good old fashioned hand washing of clothes because the only laundromat we found could wash our clothes no sooner than ten days from now.   Next stop Moscow, hopefully they have a laundromat.
ellski