The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

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

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