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 Born Again In Yekaterinaburg 08/23/2009
It was one of those things that only sounds good while sitting in a nice hotel room after eating a big breakfast at the buffet. 950km in 6 days. It was just the kind of thing that after a really tough stretch from Novosibirsk to Omsk that the Idiots wanted mentally but dreaded physically. We needed a mental boost after completely losing it on the last section, but probably our bodies in fact I think no ones bodies need 6 100 mile days in a row, but we are idiots and always err on the side that most people wouldn't (hence finding ones self in the middle of Asia on a bicycle) But there was no getting out of this one, that was the real idiocy of it, we had to make it there because we had to speak on the 7th day. But we got out there hungry, the wind was behind us, the road was flat and we knew that once this section was over we would be in Europe (Yekaterinburg is nestled in the middle of the Urals and just outside the west side of the city is the land boundary between Europe and Asia). The wind was behind us just as weather.com promised (never had a forecast actually be correct), and we got out there and rode as if the nothing could stop us. We beat our getting out of a city curse, managing not to get lost or delayed along the way. After facing so many headwinds on the trip, it was great to feel the wind at our back, if you chose you didn't even really have to pedal, but we had a schedule to keep. We did 140km the first day and felt good and optimistic. The road from Omsk to Yekaterinburg seemed in some small ways much improved from the last stretch, there were truck stops again, our favorite stopping grounds, the road itself didn't have the extensive potholes that were so numerous before that you wondered if the air force used the road from Novosibirsk to Omsk as target practice. When it comes to the 200km days the eating borders on the grotesque, no one should be eating like this, but the hunger is intense. 5 ice cream bars is not over doing it on a day when you are riding 126 miles a day, it is just a good way of cooling down, ordering 3 orders of the Russian equivalent of tortellini isn't over doing it on a day you are riding 126 miles it is just a good way of getting protein and carbs, it is so over the top sometimes you stand back as the cooks bring out the food and say I can't believe I will eat this and probably still be hungry. I think that the days travelled from Omsk to Yekaterinburg will be forever hanging in the back of Levi and I's minds as the most intense of the trip and the reward (getting to the verge of Europe) the most sweet, I doubt we will have to work so hard to get out of Russia or to get to Porto as we have to get to Europe. The days were long and the nights were short, at one point in the middle of the consecutive 200km days I broke out something I had long put away, as being unnecessary, my wristwatch. I started timing our breaks, trying to give us more time to sleep at the end of the day, there are few things more annoying than a timed break, but getting that extra hour at the end of the day is pretty sweet. We forced ourselves out of bed daily at 5 am when it was still dark and pedalled until there was no light left in the sky, around 10. By the 4th day we were exhausted, but were only 250km from Yekaterinburg, so in theory we only had to go 130km each of the next two days, but we all know that that isn't how Idiots work, we rode about 50km and happened to pull into a very nice cafe and hotel, suddenly a wave of exhaustion hit us both. We decided to go right to bed at noon, and do another 200+ day the next day, just one more big one to get us out of Asia. The hotel itself appeared to be a former military barracks turned hotel, there was a guard tower and quite a bit of fencing surrounding the obviously soviet structure, but we didn't mind we parked our bikes next to the large road work vehicles (road workers are the main clientele of the Russian Roadside Hotel), and passed out in the small stuffy room even with the sun baking the sheets. We did the final 200 climbing into the Urals to find Yekaterinburg, it turned out that the Urals around Yekat are nothing more than rolling hills, which was a nice surprise. It was a marvelous moment to climb the first rolling hill and look back at that long tough stretch of plateau that extended all the way to Novosibirsk, "whew, good to get that out of the way". Our way into the city was guided, luckily by a fellow cyclist we met on the road, Dmitri, he took us right to our doorstep at the Ural Polytechnic University dormitory. Yekaterinburg is certainly deserving of being the gateway to Europe, it is far more open and spacious than some of the previous cities we have been to, with many parks and modern buildings, few of the heavy solid Soviet apartment building. It is the sight of the death of the last Tsar and his family in 1918, the sight of their deaths and the location of their burials have both become sights of churches. The Church On The Blood downtown marks the spot of the house where the last Romanovs were killed (Boris Yeltsin had the house destroyed in the seventies), and surrounding the mine shafts where the bodies were found in the 90's there is now a series of seven small churches, one representing each person killed, and a small mmonastery. Our time in Yekaterinburg has been enlightening, we came in tired and rather grumpy, but by the end of our stay here we find ourselves revitalized for the second half of the trip. The first day of our stay we tried to do a American Corner talk, it was our first talk since Blagoveshchensk, and we bombed, or at least we were not as positive and funny as we would like. It was the first time we got to talk about the off road section, the bad roads, the wind, the mosquitoes, the food poisoning, the immense nothingness, and we still wanted to cover some other things like : the drinking, the cold, the wild fires. By the end of us blabbing, one man stood up and asked in complete sincerity, "well with how you describe the far east, wouldn't it be better if we tore up the road and made eastern Russia a nature reserve?" another man said "I am so disappointed in my country that it has disappointed you." Disappointed are you kidding? It's been way better than we could have imagined, we love it, we just needed to vent to someone (we only get to talk to other people about every 3 weeks), it just happened to be the entire population of English speaking Russians in Yekaterinburg, an unfortunate choice. In the end no one seemed to mind too much our whine fest, most thought the stories were quite funny, even if Russia did happen to be the but of the joke most of the time, we even were presented some t-shirts. The next day Chris from the American Consulate took us all around Yekaterinburg, including out to the mine/Monastery where the Romanov's bodies were found, although a solemn location it was very beautiful and had some of the most wonderful wooden churches we have seen yet. Chris was also very generous in giving us two big jars of peanut butter from his private stash, there is no better gift to a cycle tourer in Asia than a big jar of Extra Crunchy Jiffy. We met up with a cycling club as well, and talked gear and kilometers, finally ending our day by getting some nutritional supplements from two nice girls, Olga and Olga, to help us on our next stretch. By the end of this stay we have rather regained our sense of adventure, which somewhere out there between Novosibirsk and Omsk had been scared off by all the screaming and yelling at the swamp and wind. I think we are ready to cross that arbitrary line in the sand and start riding in Europe. ellski Oh and I almost forgot, I bet you want some numbers, they are incomplete as we still have about 30km to go so probably just add 1 to each column. THE CONTINENT OF ASIA: Kilometers travelled: 7813 Kilometers without pavement:2000 Days on the bike: 76 Days Althaus was stuck in bed because of food poisoning: 10 Flat Tires: 60 Times lost: 0 (oh yeah!!) Number of times the frames broke: 4 Countries Visited: 1, still not even done with it yet Outhouses visited: 2000 Outhouses that were too bad to use:700 Number of times a man screamed out Otkuda (where?) from a moving vehicle: 1,450,387 Number of wild marijuana passed growing on the side of the road: 1.5 billion (estimate) Number of wild marijuana plants growing out of outhouses: more than you want to think about Number of birch trees passed: infinite Number of mental break-downs: would have to know how many wind gusts there were in the last month Autographs signed: too numerous to remember, ahh being a celebrity in the Russia Far East, the good ole days. Omsk'ed 08/23/2009
 Author's Note: We recently did a talk at an American Corner to a group of english speaking Russians, and although on the whole it did go well, many people felt that it came off anti-Russia, or at least didn't make Russia sound to appealing. This is in no way my objective or at all how I feel about Russia and it scares me to think that this might be how people are interpreting my blogs. I will continue to write about the silly incidents and absurd aspects of travelling through Russia as I would travelling through the US that is just my way of writing, but hopefully you will understand that these are isolated incidents and that we overall have had an amazing time here and the Russian people have been more generous and welcoming and the landscape has been more beautiful and interesting than we possible could have imagined while we poured over maps 8 months ago. Thank you Russia, and no offence meant. Ellski We left Novosibirsk with a little tinge of dread, not only leaving our comfy penthouse suite, but heading out into a part of Russia that in some ways we were dreading, the plains. It had always rather held our interest, from Novosibirsk to the Ural Mountains you cross a huge steppe, and at the end you are in Europe. Looking at in my room back home Levi and I saw a larger version of the US Midwest and drifted into revery about the truck stops and wide open spaces, riding into a city called Omsk, and the speed with which we would dispense with the plains. "Omsk! That's going to be a wild night, maybe more than one, god I can't wait to get to Omsk." Levi had said on more than one occasion. But slowly along our trip we had gotten a different impression of what it might be like, Denis in Vladivostok said "It's just a huge swamp, millions of huge mosquitoes", Baikal, Alexei, pointing at the stretch from Novosibirsk to Yekaterinaburg, said "Here it is going to get really remote again, worse than the off road" and of course there was always the stern warning we had gotten at the beginning of the trip from Mark Jenkins, telling us that the headwinds he experienced, especially on the flats were nearly catastrophic for their trip. So standing at the edge of Novosibirsk looking at a limitless horizon on a windy and rainy day we found ourselves once again saying "God, I can't wait to get to Omsk!" It wasn't perhaps so bad the first day, we went slower than usual, but the wind was more of a cross than a full on headwind, and it came kind of in waves, it would gust and then almost retreat into a tailwind, like an under toe on the beach, so you would be pulled for a few seconds, get your momentum up for just a few seconds before you got pounded by the next gust. By the end of the day we really felt pretty good about our chances of accomplishing our new and ambitious route plan, we wanted to spend the next month travelling big distances without stopping much, riding north instead of south, heading to Moscow and then on to St. Petersburg before turning west and heading through Europe. It would require a month of hard riding to avoid the bad weather, being on a very strict schedule of long days and short nights, but it was very feasible, and the first day of facing the plains left us thinking it was in fact possible. We camped that night and indeed found more bugs than before, but nothing too bad, we still had not gotten out our bug nets, and in fact they were facing deportation in the next package to home. The next day the wind was almost behind us, and we rode for a personal best 220km, but even with a slight advantage from the wind, cracks were beginning to show, especially after a month of very scheduled riding. I had for months been thinking, and we had been joking, about the concept that we were too young and inexperienced to be bike tourers, we are once again the youngest guys out here and overall bike touring seems to be for mostly newly weds and retirees (two groups you might not think perfectly matched for cycle touring but it is true). For us we get up exhausted and think of only one thing, getting through the day as quickly as possible so that we can get back to bed and get some rest again, we live for our days off and are striving to get to a point where we can just slow down and ride less km. But when you meet other riders out here, they are invariably older and they just spend the entire day on the bicycle, 10 or so hours, just cruising along, going at a much slower rate than us, but never taking days off, in the end they have inevitably gone twice as far in half the time as us. It's an old man (and woman)'s game patience is the name of the game. Although in our defence, our main goal is to see the country of Russia, the one we are most interested in, they are going through it as fast as possible in an attempt to make it to Mongolia, the country that everyone else on a bicycle in the world seems to be most interested in. At one point during our trip to Omsk we were actually made fun of by a 60+ year old Frenchman when we told him how far and how long we had come. It is this lack of zen that often caused problems on Team Idiot on the flats, the whole trip so far has not tested your mental stamina in the way one day out in the flats did, even on the off road where you went through fewer towns and went at a much slower pace so that you might only see one or two towns or settlements a day at least had hills and mountains to focus your attention and enthusiasm on. Here on the flats you just keep your legs moving and watch the horizon for something to strive for, going through a town every few hours. Song lyrics race through your head again and again, the same little snippet over and over to the rhythm of your legs turning, slowly the lyrics change inevitably into some sort of verbal attack on the wind or the flats. Levi is a master at this art, be it because he suffers even more frustration because he wasn't a cyclist before and is more unused to the frustration of the wind slowing you down and howling in your ear or because he is losing his mind, he never fails to have a new one when break time comes. There are some wonderful things about the flats as well though, there is something magical about riding through the endless fields sunflowers or golden wheat that one comes across every few hours, often they are filled with hundreds of crows that give you a feeling of a living Van Gogh painting, you can stare off at the limitless sunflowers for hours just wondering how far off they go. By the end of the 220km ride we were exhausted, we had planned to ride only about 180, but we really wanted a hotel as the weather looked threatening and it is better to just get a hotel room, that way in the morning you don't have to hang around trying to dry the tents. Unfortunately by the 180km marker there wasn't a hotel just waiting for us, so we trudged on another 40km, watching the ominous sky. It was one of those moments right out of a comedy, we finally made it to the hotel, I could barely climb the stairs my legs were so sore, but I went in and ordered a room for 2. "Nyet" was the curt reply I received "why?" I asked, thinking "could this place really be filled? I'm in the middle of nowhere and there are about 2 cars in the parking lot." "No foreigners" Perfect. We wound up negotiating to sleep in the parking lot, and luckily it didn't rain. However the next morning we could barely move, and as it turned out, it was the first headwind day. It didn't take long, it was lunch break when it happened, " Aw ##$@# this, I am not going to get up every day at 6am for the next month and ride 150km until 9 at night, this is my bike trip and I am going to relax and just chill out and ride." And just like that it was over, we are going north still, to Moscow, because quite frankly the photo of us with the bikes in front of the Kremlin is simply to tempting, then we will meander through Europe at our own speed, going where we please. Things calmed down after that moment, we decided not to worry about these things, we had, after all, finally caught back up and then some with where we wanted to be at this time on the trip, and really things had been going splendidly, our flats had decreased to almost non-existent, the way it should be, we were strong enough to go 200km if need be and go 160 for days on end, but we didn't need to according to the numbers, we now can (and will) just ride about 140km a day and make our way to Moscow, snap a picture and continue on into Europe. It sounded to heavenly to even imagine. We went only a few more kilometers that day before we found another roadside hotel and said, "yeah we're worth it, let's stay in another hotel tonight" "Nyet" was the response again, we are beginning to consider Russian brides just so that we can stay in the hotels again, but luckily the attendant directed us down the street to another hotel that does accept foreigners (or more accurately doesn't ask too many questions) We were woken up the next morning by the howl of the wind, but we didn't let that bother the new zen Idiots, had a leisurely breakfast and packed up, hopped on the bikes and did a leisurely 80km (okay I'm exaggerating a bit, when the wind is blowing that hard it is difficult to describe anyone' attitude as zen, but there was a more casual attitude towards the shouting at the wind, less desperation) It was at some point during that day that we met the 60+ year old Frenchmen who started every sentence with "foooooh!" and proceeded to make fun of us "Foooh! very slow. Fooooh! maybe too much gear. Fooooh I must be off now I go to Australia, Fooooh" I guess no one told him there isn't a road. Finally the next day we cruised into Omsk, we have noticed that with every Russian city we ride into there are about three things that happen about 100 to 150km outside of them without fail, it becomes incredibly remote, the road gets so bad you can hardly ride on it, and the traffic becomes unbearable, Omsk was no exception, in fact in terms of remoteness it took the cake, when we reached the sign there wasn't a house to be seen, as far as I could see we were still out on the flats. Omsk held special significance for me not only because it was a strangely named four letter city in the middle of the map in my room, but also because it was here that Dostoevsky was imprisoned for 4 years. My obsession with Dostoevsky is what partially drives this trip and so it was a great treat to finally make it to a city of significance in his life. Our first impressions of Omsk, were very positive, the outskirts seemed to have a very mixed population, not just Russians, but people seeming to hail from all over the former Soviet Union which was interesting to see. It is also a major industrial city, where many of the factories from Western Russia were evacuated to during WWII, which is a very strange thing to see, factories rather forced into any open spaces in the region. We found ourselves overcome with the west in Omsk, we stayed in the Hotel Omsk (creative name) which featured an all you can eat Russian breakfast buffet (not really sure if it was all you can eat, but no one seemed to mind when we did). On our way down to meet Maria, a girl who had kindly offered to show us around the city after seeing our site, we discovered a TGI Fridays in downtown Omsk, which conveniently had the cheapest business lunch in town, we couldn't resist. We spent the afternoon relaxing and walking around Omsk with Maria, she took us to the Dostoevsky Museum and showed us around the city of Omsk which we really took to. We spent 3 full days in Omsk, avoiding any sort of work at all (I am writing this blog from Yekaterinburg), letting ourselves heal mentally and physically. Of course by the third day we were feeling pretty good again, strong and happy, we knew that the wind, at least according to weather.com, would be behind us for the next 6 or so days. We did have to set a date to give a talk at the American Corner in Yekaterinaburg before we left Omsk, so when the director told us we could either give the talk in 7 days or 11, we looked at each other as only two complete idiots can and said "well with the wind behind us we can probably do 950km in 6 days, it'll be a challenge." "yeah and I like a challenge" "Maybe we can even do it in 5 if we do just straight 200's" we texted the director back, "we'll be there in 6 days" it's almost as if we learned nothing ellski   I am sitting right now in what can only be described as a penthouse suite in Russian terms, on the eleventh floor of a Novosibirsk high rise, surrounded by the finest Chinese veneer that money can buy. We each have our own bed and there is even a computer hooked up to the internet on a desk by the window, it is magnificent, I get to write my emails and look out over the third largest city in Russia. But I guess this is jumping ahead in the story, according to your reading I am still in Krasnayarsk, well consider this my first dabbling in the dreaded flashback writing. If there is one thing the Idiots don't know how to do it is leave a city we have tried and failed many a time to get "a big start" at the beginning of a new push, but have yet to achieve it, we rarely even get a normal day out of a city, usually we do about half of what we would do normally, when I look back through my journal, numbers like 40km, 70km, 25 km repeatedly stand out next to the phrase "Well we left Blank today, but..." Krasnayarsk was no different The city itself was a maze that took us an hour to figure out how to solve, then there were the two flat tires Levi suffered in the first 2 hours, this sadly required a patch break, because the team mechanic (!?!) forgot to patch tubes while we were in Krasnayarsk, luckily thanks to our new found speed we found our selves at a cafe having done 90km a few hours later. "Should we push another 30km today or leave it be, as is we have 3 perfect 150km days ahead of us to Kemerovo, then we rest one day there and push on too Novosibirsk with another two 150km days, I like the challenge I think." "yeah lets do it, the terrain has been pretty good, nice and flat so we should be able to do it no problem." That was that, enough said, we walked into the cafe and ate ourselves silly. We awoke early in the morning to find a change, we had been debating it for days, could it really be that summer is winding down here already? The dews were getting heavier, the trees didn't seem to have that deep lush green look and indeed some of them seemed to be fading. It seems that in seasonal time here it is late August, which would makes sense, in Off The Map there is talk of a frost on August 11th something we found unfathomable two weeks ago but now seems quite logical. Fear not, it isn't going to start snowing and drop to Siberian winter temperatures, it still gets to about 85 or so every day, the mornings are just cooling off again, time to break out the "morning layer" again. We rode along trying to process and either prove or disprove that the season was turning all day to no avail, indeed it might be just in our head, perhaps the last 3 weeks was an intense heat wave and this is what summer is really like here, or perhaps this is a cold spell, this is Russia, anything is possible. The terrain stayed flat and we flew along alternating fields of wild flowers now seeming to fade, wheat which seemed ages from being harvestable and birch trees which seemed to be getting ready to change colors. As we pulled into a cafe at the end of the day (we did our 150 no problem) we met 3 other cyclist coming from Moscow, they were Russian, so we were unable to get quite as much out of them as we would like, however we did learn that on one day on the flats they got a strong tailwind and cruised an unbelievable 260 km which is something like 160 miles, incredible. I don't see us catching a westerly wind of that magnitude on this trip but if we do I'm shooting for 300. We were slow in getting ready the next day and slow in doing everything really, but we managed even with 3 flats to make it about 140km to a big town with a hotel, Mariinsk, about 160 km from Kemerovo. We figured hey we will stay in the hotel get an early start and do a cool casual 100 miles tomorrow. I even texted Natasha and Nikita, a couple that had contacted us on our website and told them we would reach there city around 7 (we would be staying in their apartment). It seemed perfect. The next morning things fell apart from the start, it was one of those hotels where there was only one bathroom and everyone else lives there on a semi permanent basis, the line is terrible, we couldn't get out until 9 o clock, but no worries, we knew we still had plenty of time. A few hours later Levi had the first dazzling crash of the trip while trying to turn around to fast to look at some flowers, we took a few minute breather, again knowing that really things were going fine, our pace was fast and the roads flat and good from here to Europe, the day before I had rather confidently but honestly said "Right now I think we are strong enough that I am not afraid of big winds, mountains or rain, I think that we can power through them and make good time if we have to." I stand by those words, still. All day there was a fair head wind, which of course made sense to us after I had made such a remark there was certainly going to be some backlash. By around 4 we were just lounging, knowing we had about 4 hours left of riding but not too concerned, Natasha and Nikita would understand. It was right about then that I got a call from Natasha asking us where we were, I told her and said that I thought we would be in Kemerovo around 8, "But you said 7 yesterday, I though you told me 7." Natasha was pissed. So we got on our bikes and started racing towards the city, still a cool 90 km away. Much like the surprise Fall a few days ago we were not prepared at all for what was happening to us, we started climbing, not just a little bit of climbing either, the kind of climbing one associates with a mountain range. "Are we going back into the mountains? Is this possible?" We couldn't believe it, finally I texted Natasha, "Is there a mountain range here that we didn't know about." She responded "Yes there are a lot of mountains, will I see you soon?" We continued to race, pushing ourselves trying to make good time, slowly the rainclouds were forming overhead. The thunderstorm didn't start until we were about 20 km outside the city, but it didn't matter, it was so intense that everything was soaked almost instantly, but in a way it was quite refreshing, if laughable. We continued to fly as fast as we could, but when there are mountains, it is not a speed sensation you get, it is not like when you are on the flat, there you can get your bike moving fast enough to pretend for a minute that it isn't stacked high with 50 lbs of gear and that you are a real cyclist, on mountains you are a workhorse, pulling a mammoth weight up the hill only to fly too quickly down to the bottom of the next climb. Really it was quite a scene, us pushing our hardest against the mountains, lightning and thunder clapping down all around us, the traffic getting heavier as we neared the small "mountain city" of Kemerovo. We finally made it to the city gate and of course no one was mad, we had raced for nothing (although if we had taken our time we would have spent even more time in the rain), they met us with bicycles and shared in our drenched adventure back to their apartment (along the way I took my first fall of the trip, not much to right home about, but none the less a tumble). When we finally got the bikes up to the apartment we were beaten men, we could barely move, not only had we pushed big numbers for the last few days, now the mountain sprint had left us breathless, we gobbled down some borscht and pizza and went to bed. We slept late the next morning in our double bed (!?!), which was a great extravagance for us. Natasha and Nikita seemed to have the day all planned for us, which can often be a good or bad thing. We had breakfast while Nikita looked over our bikes (he was very into cycling mechanics apparently). He immediately deemed them unridable and said we should go to the local bike shop. Anytime you have someone who speaks fluent Russian and has a knowledge of bikes you just tend to agree to whatever they say, it is better to have things replaced here with Nikita talking than later with me trying to explain what I want by pointing. So soon we were back on the bikes (groan) and riding presumably to the bike shop. One of our biggest problems with home stays is food, everyone feeds us well, gives us great home cooked meals and really if I wasn't riding a bicycle 200k a day I would be over fed, but after a dinner and a breakfast at home Levi and I were already conspiring ways to escape to a super market and gorge ourselves. As we got out onto the street Natasha told us we would be going to a museum, we agreed of course but only after a sideways glance towards each other. The museum turned out was on the top of a huge hill, making our legs relive the terrors of the day before and our stomachs question if this was the proper way to the supermarket. The museum itself was fascinating, Kemerovo is just opposite Kuzbass where just after the creation of the Soviet Union there was an experiment to make an independent and advanced workers colony. Bill Haywood a prominent American socialist and others were involved with Lenin's blessing. It was an amazing museum, showing that up until Lenin's death workers from all over the world came here to Kuzbass to help build a better society (it turned out that all the mountains we were passing were filled with coal, the engine that drove the project). There was running water and electricity long here long before anywhere else in Siberia (still lacking from what I have seen). Upon Lenin's death, Stalin's paranoia and persecution of foreigners caused the downfall of the colony, most of the workers returned back to the United States or whichever country they had originated from. All this I was able to absorb while lying to my stomach, telling him we were just in a really long line at the supermarket. Finally at the end of the coal mine could be seen, "Ok guys let's go drop the bikes off at the shop." said Natasha. "And get a pizza each?" Levi and myself chorused in our minds. We got to the bike shop and Nikita was there to meet us. We got rid of our bikes, no more riding today, phew now let's eat. "Okay guys, now we want to take you to a national park for a little hiking, then we will all go home and eat, the park is about 1 hour each way." "Let me talk to her I'll set her straight!!!" My stomach bellowed. "A hike!?!" My legs screamed. We managed to convince them to stop for a snack along the way, Levi and I jumped out of the car like two convicts making a jail break, running to the closest kiosk and buying a loaf of bread to supplement whatever snacks they insisted on buying for us (again they were perfect hosts, we are just absurdly hungry guests). We managed to tide ourselves over for what turned out to be a simple walk through the forest to some very old and interesting cave drawings along the Tom river. We got back to the bike shop, collected our bikes, which seemingly had nothing done to them, and returned home for dinner. We ate a very delicious meal, but again Levi and I began to conspire to get out and gobble down some extra nourishment. We used the excuse of coffee, luckily she took us to what resembled an American style 50's diner and we had what most would consider an unnecessary second meal. The next morning we left Natasha and Nikita, they were excellent hosts, the Kuzbass museum and the cave drawings were not to be missed now that I looked back on it. We simply have an unending hunger which turns us into grumpy edgy old men if not fulfilled every few hours. It was 260 kilometers to Novosibirsk, a cool 2 days ride, where we could relax and do just 130 each day or as we were hoping do most of it the first day out of Kemerovo and relax and have an extra half day in Novosibirsk the next day. It was of course not to be, we got lost leaving Kemerovo in a way that I had not experienced since my parents and I travelled together. It took us three tries to leave the city, we continued following a circuit of signs saying Novosibirsk, but always brought us back to the same spot, it may not seem so bad, but when you look down at your odometer and realize you have done 50km already and haven't gotten anywhere your hopes for that half day in Novosibirsk fade, you know that tomorrow is going to be bad. Indeed by the time the sun was falling in front of us we had just knocked the 60th kilometer off the 260 and we were standing in front of a roadside hotel. We decided to push tomorrow and break our record of 194, see if we couldn't get to 200 km, cycling procrastinators. And we did it, we flew, averaging 25 km and hour, knowing that a three day rest awaited us in the the mighty industrial city of Novosibirsk. There were no surprise mountain ranges, just rolling hills which were slowly tapering off as we now are approaching the plateau, the Russian Steppe. At the end of the day as we stood outside the apartment building our odometers read 202, suddenly 271 seems in sight, now we just need a tailwind. ellski  Riding The Good Life 07/26/2009
 Turns out those boys can move. We left woke up in a double bed one morning looked into eachothers eyes and said "Let's get as far away from here as possible!". I think for maybe the first time on this trip the passion for killing kilometers hit us both at the same time, and suddenly we found ourselves flying through the twisting streets of Irkutsk past the old wooden houses and churches only stopping to take a photo in Levi's case and to buy a Russian flag for the bike in my case. For so long our legs have been held back, first with weakness from Vladivostok to Blagoveshchensk, then with the slow, steady and bumpy ride from Blago to Chita, and finally with the frustration and mountain filled ride from Chita to Irkutsk, they spun with no end of strength and speed as we escaped into the rolling fields of purple and yellow wild flowers. It finally has become the bike trip we have been dreaming of, we'd been riding hoping to reach "the good life" and we have finally reached it. Our lives are straight out of "The Sportsman's Notebook" by Ivan Turgenev, it was the first book I ever read by a Russian author, and is probably what sparked this unhealthy obsession with Russia. It is simple group of short stories about a hunter and his dog roaming the Russian country side from village to village and having simple but wonderful encounters with villagers. Granted this has been our trip all along, but it has been a bit sweeter of late, we don't have a dog, but in every village, right next to the shish kebab stand there is usually a sweet stray dog willing to play the part, particularly when I pull out my bag of dog biscuits (yeah, I carry dog biscuits, so what!? nobody else is going to feed these little guys, I even got the mint ones to help their breath). Usually we stop now at a small shop and ask if we can use their Chai-nik or electric kettle and we turn their store into a mini ramen noodle making factory (it certainly takes more than one ramen noodle packet to fill the 120km void in our stomachs) then we sit, eating outside the store in the shade with our new temp-pet, waiting until the first villager becomes curious enough to stop starring at us and get up off his haunches and start the well rehearsed dialogue. The sun is out here from about 5 am til 10 pm, which makes about 4-6 unbearably hot, and we have taking once again to mimicking Turgenev's hunter, pulling over the bikes into a field or under a tree for some shade and a nice afternoon nap, I never planned on being a nap guy on this trip, it doesn't really fit in with the cycling image, but it gets quite stifling every day. After a quick afternoon nap there is usually a quick gas station ice cream break and back onto the road, racing along, with the sun slowly passing over our left shoulder to directly in front of us, blinding us for those last few hills, but we don't care because by then the temperature is positively cool and refreshing, we reach our final cafe as the sun is starting it's elongated setting process and just as Turgenev's hunter usually finds his way into a peasants cabin for the night.
The Return Of The Kings 07/14/2009
I don't know where it happened, perhaps it was right after completing that marathon 9 hour Internet session in Ulan-Ude to get the website up to date, or perhaps it was when we procrastinated the whole next day sitting around eating ice cream and pizza in the city center and only hopping on our bikes at 5 in the evening, but more than likely it was just at that moment when we got out of the city and started to move our legs, winding through a river valley realizing we could go fast. The egos returned, not the egos of before either, not the "I've never met anyone better" and "oh do I have to sign another autograph?", no these are different, after so many set backs they don't talk (so) big, it's all about making it to Porto now and flying from Irkutsk to Omsk to do it. The big talk about meeting Vladimir Putin and getting on Russian MTV has taken a back burner to how many kilometers we can choke down in a month and how many rest days we really need. "Do we really need two days in Novosibirsk? What about Krasnayarsk, what is there?". Sure they talk big, but only in kilometers per day and continents per year, not interviews per city and website hits per month. They are humbled after the Chita to Ulan-Ude debacle and hungry to ride.  The second day out was perhaps one of the most momentous, Baikal, the worlds largest and deepest lake appeared for the first time by our side. The lake is huge no doubt about it, surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains even in summer (the ice on the lake sometimes doesn't even melt fully until June). For us it was a milestone, finally reaching a place that we had talked and dreamed about for so long, where we could relax and take a swim, buy souvenirs for our Idiot deprived families, and take in a bit of touristy life that we missed not being on Cape Cod and Coastal Maine in the summer. After about 40km of riding and taking in the lake we began to notice that perhaps this was not going to be quite as we imagined it, Baikal would not be the tourist trap we had rather hoped for, if anything as we cruised the Russian Federal Highway along side it, the towns became strangely more deserted and without cafes. We had bypassed several cafes and convenience stores along the way, hoping to have that first luch on the shores of the lake, but now that we were by the side of the lake we saw no cafes or stores, just old women sitting by the side of the road selling suspicious looking smoked Omul, the fish of Baikal. We were starving when we met our first bicycle tourers from Europe coming down the road. "hello?" "ah hello, we are French, and you are?" "American" "ah very good" I exhaled in relief. They were two, going from Paris to Kiev by bicycle and then taking the train to Irkutsk, and riding south to Mongolia and on into India. We talked for a while, comparing notes on what was ahead, where the mountains were and where for the love of god the next cafe is (we tried to play it cool, like we weren't starving "you didn't happen notice where the last cafe was?"). Unlike with everyone else, the meetings with cyclists are short, unless there is a cafe to stop in nearby both parties realize that they are burning valuable daylight, and inevitably the bugs will discover 4 sweaty bikers standing in the hot sun, we chatted for a while and then both went our separate ways. The bugs by the way still haven't reached their full peak, we have been lucky and seen relatively few mosquitoes, but that hasn't stopped the horse flies from ending our cookie breaks, these huge quarter size horseflies now follow us in swarms, I have taken to swinging a hand behind me like a cow tail every few minutes to dissuade them from biting my bottom. On hills and mountains we now have a new inspiration, try and keep it fast to avoid those evil horseflies, no breaks mid way, they will catch you and you will be consumed. About 20km later just as we were approaching Babushkin, the town that I imagined was run exclusively by babushkas and we were going to get our stomachs overfilled with free food and our cheeks pinched until they were red, we ran into another traveller. A Swiss woman who had been travelling alone through most of the world for the last 3 years, she was now racing down to Mongolia to Ulaan Batar, and was hoping to be back in Switzerland in the next 9 months. It turned out that Babushkin was not filled with overly kind old ladies, it was just a small village, one cafe and nothing else not even a decent convenience store, just located on this huge beautiful lake, otherwise it could have been Anyvillage, Russia and Levi and I would have certainly passed by. We again met a group of motorcyclists from Germany who were of course heading to Mongolia. "What the hell is in Mongolia??" "Geese, you would think after riding even a motorcycle about 4000km of 6000, you would say hey let's finish this Russia thing" We have never gotten a answer why so many people ride there bikes from Europe to Ulan Bataar and immediately turn around like there is no more to see. Very strange. To each there own.  We headed down to the beach of Baikal for the first time that day, although there was a lot of trash it overall was slightly cleaner than the typical patch of Russian Highway, which shows at least they are trying to keep it clean (it is rather terrifying to think that the world's largest lake, holding 1/5th of the world's fresh water is located in Russia and is rather a bit too close to China). Here as we looked from small picnic to picnic (the Russians love a picnic) for a place to sit we saw a pair of familiar faces, Alexei and Tanya. They had stopped us on the way to Babushkin and invited us to eat with them on the beach, but we had just assumed we wouldn't see them, however once we got out on to "the beach" we realized it wouldn't be that hard to spot them amongs the half dozen people enjoying the shore of Baikal. We had a fantastic night with them, they were from St. Petersburg, and were on their way home from Vladivostok with a new used car (apparently Vladivostok plays the part of Russia's giant used car dealer). It turned out that it was also Alexei's birthday, something that we would normally avoid like the plague, a Russian man on his birthday can be very dangerous, but these two were very relaxed and fun, we spent a wonderful afternoon and evening with them. We of course did our first dip into the lake then too, "you know it is really cold, be careful" Alexei warned. Kings don't listen to something like that "oh these Russians and their "it's cold" they never stop, I think it is just a mindset, I swim in the ocean in Maine I can handle it" said one of our heros. "Oh my god, I didn't know water could get that cold without freezing, good god!!!" one of our hero's said a few moments later. It was cold, it felt like a glass of water where all the ice cubes had just melted, I guess because they had. We had such a great time with Alexei (I think one of the best of the trip so far) talking about our mutual love of St. Petersburg (he had moved there when he was young) and about the road from Vladivostok, and Russia in general, that I gave him my knife as a birthday present. "Oh you have made my year, do you know how much I love knives!!! They are my life, I collect them." The next morning they returned the favor giving me a soccer scarf from Zenit St. Petersburg, a team that just last year I became obsessed with. It was a perfect exchange. That day was just a joy, we were warm with that feeling of perfect happiness, it revitalized our trip in a way, a wonderful picnic on Lake Baikal finally able to give a perfect gift, that was what we imagined we would be able to take from this trip, not that there hadn't been very special and wonderful moments before on this trip, but this one was so spontaneous and unexpected it was wonderful. We continued along Baikal basking in the unexpected treat that the road was fairly flat, we had expected really hilly along Baikal, but the Russians had somehow managed to make a beautiful flat road through the mountains, who would have thought. Over the next two days we cruised along slowly, enjoying every afternoon on the beach and riding in the mornings, along the way we met several more motorcyclists, most going to Mongolia, apparently Central Asia's tourist trap. We also met a man who really inspired the new "go get em" egos, he was from the Czech Republic and he had left about the same time as us. The difference was that he had taken only one day off, and he rode no less than 120km a day on a mountain bike. He had gone 9000km in 2.5 months, incredible, he made our upcoming push look like a relaxing bike ride through the park. He was continuing on to Mongolia(!) and then south to Vietnam for the winter and working his way home slowly through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran etc. And we thought we were hardcore. He was extremely excited, half to see a fellow long distance tourer, but also because he had finally come to the end of his long push, he was now slowing down while he waited for his Mongolian visa to become valid. As the days cruised along and we got closer and closer to Irkutsk we began to realize that Lake Baikal was not going to have the touristy, cheesy area that we had half hoped for, it was simply going to be the standard Russian village just on a gorgeous lake, there didn't even seem to be any real tourists aside from those going to Mongolia. When we came to Baikalsk we were still holding out hope, when I went inside the supermarket (the first one we had seen along Baikal to give you an idea of how remote it is) I found some souvenirs stuffed off to a corner, nothing nearly as corny as I like, not even a cheesy t-shirt but still it gave us hope that perhaps we would see some people here. Instead we were almost immediately captured, walking out of the supermarket a couple of young Russian college students approached us, they were staying in their parents Dacha or summer house for the summer, selling strawberries from the patch for money. After we told them what we were doing they promptly invited us to spend the night at their Dacha, which was on the mountainside overlooking Lake Baikal, we had a great electricity free evening with them, eating strawberries and comparing notes on favorite videos on Russian MTV. By the next town, Sluidianko we had given up hope, there are touristy parts of Lake Baikal, but we were not going to see them on our route to Irkutsk, they lie to the north apparently and we simply have no more time to spend on the lake. Sluidianko though turned out to be just what we had been searching for, well kind of. We had always planned on spending 2 days there, and after several days of spending the night with other people we were ready for a rest and isolation, Sludianko provided that very nicely, there was only one hotel, again the only one we had encountered yet on the lake, it was very cheap and nice, we found finally a beach with some Russian families which was nice and we spent two days just relaxing on the beach, rarely swimming again because it was miserably "refreshing". It was wild to think what the Russian version of a beach vacation might be, but overall I didn't think it was too out of control, at least compared to the village life here. Most people were camped out on the beach with a tent and a grill and of course a good deal of booze, but really it wasn't too different to walking down the beach on Cape Cod in July. Well except for one really disturbing trend, we've all perhaps witnessed a few kids on the beach running off into the beach grass to smoke a stolen cigarette or sip the left over of a beer, bad but very common. Here on the beach though, there were really young kids, some of them no older than 5 huddled over a fire of melting plastic beer bottles and trash (you need to warm up after the dip in the lake, so everyone starts fires, which usually are powered by the neighborhood trash, a different way of cleaning the beach) there they smoke cigarette after cigarette, these kids are young, disturbingly young, unexceptably young, but no one seems to care.  Our final stage in our Tour de Baikal (who doesn't catch a little cycling fever around tour de france time) was the mountain stage, finally bearing down and climbing the mountains that surrounded Baikal. After two days off and 5 days of relaxing riding it was half fun half hell riding so intensely, there were several 10km climbs and even some 14% grade uphills for us to enjoy, but the views and the downhills were spectacular. We rode a tough 130 km but in the end were rewarded by making it into Irkutsk around 7 pm. Irkutsk is a wonderful city, very old, filled with great old wooden houses, with great Russian style hand carved trim and window sills. It is once again a city where the wives of the Decembrists went to be close to their husbands who were in prison. As a result in the period between 1830-1850 or so Irkutsk slowly became a cultural center, one of the wives in particular built theaters and schools. Eventually her balls and circle were even talked about in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The city itself seems to have upgraded since then only in adding more concrete, it is full of one way streets and narrow lanes which on our way in gave us no end of trouble, we managed to roll in exactly during rush hour. We witnessed our first and second car accident in disturbing succession, reminding us that we must be eternally vigilant, these Russian drivers are fine outside the cities, but inside they can become crazed demons. We found a hostel on the internet in Irkutsk, it is the first one that we have seen our entire trip, we were very excited at the prospect, again of meeting some foreigners and maybe getting some free wi-fi internet. We weren't disappointed, "sure we have beds for you tonight, tomorrow we can put you in a homestay and then the third night you will be back here". Sounds good to us, they had wi-fi and a small apartment turned hostel filled with people heading to andd coming from Mongolia, what could be better. And the shower was to die for, we slept like kings that night.  The next day we did our standard city tour, we spent all day running around the city from bike shop to bike shop discovering as usual that they do not have what we are looking for (the roads are still so bad that there are no road bikes here, therefore few road bike parts and accessories, hopefully we will find them as we get closer to Europe), in between I shop for cappuccinos, winding up with about 7 a day before we descend back out to the coffee-less country side. We returned to the hostel in the evening used the internet for a few hours and then told the woman we were ready to go to the home-stay (we have become rather anti-social not really wanting in cities to become involved home-stays) "okay now of course you realize that for such an authentic Russian experience it is going to be a bit more money." "What" we thought, "I do this all the time for free, now I have to pay more, oh well, whatever, it's just one night." When we got to the homestay Alex showed us around. His apartment was a classic example of the Chinese veneer that goes on here, you take a classic soviet style apartment, go to China and get everything you could need, everything from cabinets to bureaus to bathroom tiles is Chinese. The wallpaper has Chinese symbols on it, the bedside tables are covered in cheap Chinese souvenirs, you basically take what was 30 years ago the most notoriously bad and cheaply built building and spruce it up with what is currently the most notoriously bad and cheaply made enhancements. Perfect. My favorite is the doors, every hotel and home that gets the Chinese veneer gets these brand new, not quite fitting doors that are all in the style of executive boardrooms, with frosted glass in strange stylistic shapes and patterns, great I guess for your new fake office, but not so great as a bedroom or bathroom door where we so often see them. When Alex showed us our new Feng Shui bedroom we stopped dead. "So the day has finally arrived eh Levi?" "Yeah, knew it was going to come eventually" The double bed stared back at us laughing and we recalled wincing the hostel manager "Of course it is going to be a bit more expensive" For what? To sleep next to this guy? Do you know it is about 95 degrees out? 2 big sweaty dudes? Perfect. "Good night guys" said Alex as he closed the non fitting door behind us. "And of course this is the one day that we left all our stuff in another building we could just roll out a sleeping mat and rock, paper, scissor for it, oh well I guess it is only for one night. Goood night sweety" "Nighty night honey" The next day we got up EARLY and ran back to the hostel, the second day is usually internet day, and we got to work uploading pictures and writing our blogs. "oh boys there has been a mistake, we do not have room for you tonight, you will have to spend another night at the homestay, but don't worry you will pay the same as if you stay here. "are you kidding? again? I don't come into these cities with much expectations anymore, good internet, cheap accommodations, nice bike shops, a decent cup of coffee, I have given up all hope of these things, but I do at least wish to be more than 8 inches away from my friend here who smells like sweat and bicycle grease no matter how many showers he takes!!!!" I thought "Oh no problem. It's a nice place, very nicely decorated" I said. And so we again spend our night tonight in the Chinese Soviet apartment, snuggled next to each other in 85 degree heat, good thing the sun only disappears for about 5 hours a night. Yeah we are going to fly across this next 3000 miles never looking back. Ellski  The Time of Troubles 07/05/2009
 In 1598 the last of Ivan The Terrible's sons died childless, leaving Russia without a Tsar and leading it into what became known as "The Time Of Troubles". An Assembly was called and the last Tsar's brother in law and advisor, Boris Gudonov, was elected, but he was unpopular and ruled fairly weakly. The vacuum of power created an opportunity for a usurper, the youngest of Ivan The Terrible's sons had been murdered in virtual seclusion many years before under very mysterious circumstances. Suddenly the first of several "False Dimitri's" appeared from Poland, and waiting until Gudinov died, took the throne to joy of most of Russia. The joy was short lived, though, he was quickly outed as a false Dimitri and he and his supporters were murdered (when I took a history class in St. Petersburg, I was told that his body was stuffed in a canon and shot from the Kremlin wall in the direction of Poland, no idea whether it is true, but there is something rather Russian about the idea). And so it went for about 15 years, there was another False Dimitri, actually I think every town probably had one, another war and another setback, until finally in 1613 the nobles put Michael Romanov on the throne, he and his family were able to rule Russia for a cool 300 years, until that next time of troubles... Our Time Of Troubles We enjoyed Chita quite a bit, we had a great guide Maria, it was a small city, perfect for us we could walk around, find the things we needed and be back at the hotel all before dinner. The weather was glorious too, five perfect days of sun. The only downside was that the Internet was frustrating (hence no pictures) and extremely expensive, but hey it's not like you are going to be here for 2 weeks or more, so it was no big deal. We would just head 6 days west to Ulan Ude where we would hopefully get better Internet.  And so Levi was forced to change back into his bike shorts "When I smacked my bike into your frame I thought for sure I had bought us another day here, next time I'll use a hammer." "Yeah you were close, I thought we might stretch two out of it" we quipped. We wouldn't be making such jokes for long. We made it outside of the city, a mere 25km out, when we decided we should enjoy the beautiful day and take it easy, "we've earned it, all that gravelly road!". So we made camp at a cafe, and immediately made friends with the Azerbaijan man running an illegal Shashlik (basically shish kebab) stand. His name was Igor and he was very concerned with our camping spot, "many drunks around here, not safe" and he continuously made the Russian hand signal for drinking, drunk, or alcoholic, which is done by flicking your middle finger against your neck as if you are trying to get a vein (if the person is really drunk this can be a hysterical thing to watch, they can even knock themselves over). He took us back to his Shashlik stand, first asking "do you drink?" (insert hand gesture) no I said, Levi said a little. He nodded approvingly and said he only drank a little too, while promptly ushering Levi off for a vodka shot. It turned out that HE was the man he was warning us about, we spent our dream afternoon being held captive at the shashlik stand listening to this man as he proceeded to get black out and berate his son. "Me I may be 45 but I am really only 20, see I still look at girls, look, there is one, but my son here he is 16, what is wrong with him, he doesn't seem interested at all, my brothers son is younger than him he drinks and smokes, he is wrestler too. Hey son!!! go clean the grill I don't want to look at you. See he is crazy, how can I have a son like this, ME" "The cops here don't worry about them, I pay them 400 rubles a month, besides they don't know about (insert hand gesture)" Eventually we managed to escape into the garage of the cafe for the night, barely without getting into a fight with Igor (he no longer thought it was cool I didn't drink, instead thought that I was the reason we were not going to go out and drink more with him, which to be fair might be true, although I doubt anyone would have wanted to continue "partying" with this guy at this point). We woke up the next morning to discover that it was pouring, really raining hard. We decided that there once again was no reason to push it "we've earned it,things are going well, we will wait for tomorrow" Luckily, apparently rain days also effect the shashlik business because Igor and his son didn't show up. We spent a nice off day in the cafe.  We left the cafe feeling quite energized and flew across the open valley in front of us in spite of the winds. We were now definitely on asphalt again and it felt good, we even felt that we were cheating fate as we stayed in the valley as the mountains grew higher and higher on either side of us (the area surrounding Lake Baikal is extremely mountainous). We finished our ride outside a town called Uloty at a truck stop per usual. It was good to get a big day in and we felt good as we set up our tents. A man, whose name escapes me (I'd say it was Ivan, Sergei or Alecksei, but that is just because those are the only names you ever run into here), he was covered in coal, but very jolly, he worked at the truck stop working the coal stove which was responsible for the heat and the hot water of the restaurant and pay toilets and showers (this was the first place which we had been offering real toilets and showers for a small fee, something that we can only hope will continue). We talked for a while, he told us that all the surrounding mountains that we had seen today were filled with coal and the coal which covered him and his workplace was from only 40 km away. He was also an Obama fiend, very excited about the warming of relations between Moscow and Washington. "Aw fuck your aren't going to believe this." Levi called out while he was locking the bikes up for the night "My rear rack is broken in the exact same place as yours was. Fuck!!" "Well there is a shinomantage (garage) right here, we can just take it tomorrow morning, they will weld it and we will be back on the road by noon." We woke up early in the morning, had a big breakfast, packed everything up and headed over to the garage. The guys were more than willing to help, it was to become an almost annoying trait of Russian people we would meet in the next week, if you tell them that you have a problem, they are going to fix it. No one else will do. So as we saw that these men had a slightly less skillful hand with the welder we tried to no avail to say that we would take the bicycle back to Chita. As one man began trying to weld a bolt to where the wheel goes instead of where the rack goes Levi tried "Oh please sir we are going back to Chita anyway, and we know a man there who knows all about bicycles, we can take it there, he has a bigger welding operation." Nothing worked, we managed to dissuade them from welding the bolt onto the wheel well, and with some guidance we were able to avoid too much damage to the bike itself. Eventually they wheeled out the bike with a perfectly crooked rack on the back, it wouldn't hold weight but at least they didn't weld the wheel to the frame or something. Luckily the truck stop also rented rooms, we rented one, threw all of our stuff inside and hopped on a bus back to Chita with Levi's bike. By now we were becoming well acquainted with Chita, we went right to the garage, they seemed quite excited to see the Idiots again and immediately got a good laugh at the weld job of the previous guys. Soon Levi's bike had a matching weld in the back and we were ready to go. Alex and Victoria not only took us back to our hotel by their car but also took us out to eat before sending us on our way. We were feeling pretty good when we walked back into the hotel room, "boy a lot of people couldn't break their bike, get it welded poorly, catch the one bus back 120km to Chita, get it re welded, have dinner and still make it back to the hotel room in time to get a good rest before the next days ride, I've never met anyone better." It was pretty impressive, only one day wasted. Not bad. The next morning we again had a big breakfast, packed up and got on the bikes. "ah I think I have a brake problem" says Levi "Unbelievable! Okay everything off your bike, I'll take a look" It took about 3 hours of me tweaking and tapping his rear brake before "Well I can't do anything about it as far as I can see, but it seems that if you don't use it, it doesn't hinder you so just use the front break." "No problem" And we headed off, leaving the truck stop around 1 and heading into what appeared to be a rather rough rainstorm, but we didn't care, we had rain gear and we were not going to waste anymore time on this simple six days ride from Chita to Ulan Ude. The thunder cloud was just over-head and we were at that strange point where you are just waiting for the downpour when my phone rang, "Hello Ellery, this is Mariya from Ulan Ude" (the girl we were supposed to stay with when we arrived in 4 days around JUNE 25th) "Oh Hi Mariya, What's going on?" "Well I just though I would call and let you know that it is snowing right now here, and it is a bad storm." "Did you say Snowing?" "Yes" "The stuff that happens in winter?" "Yes snow, I know is strange." A moment later I told Levi. "Snow?!!? Are you kidding? do you know what day it is" "I don't actually but I know it is June" We were still processing the concept of late June snow, when the sky opened up, not only did it start to downpour but the temperature dropped about 20 degrees or so, from a mild day to a day when we could see our breath. (it was actually 20 degrees, the truck stop had a big sign that read the temperature and I had happened to look at it when we left and it had read 19 degrees Celsius and it was 8 when we got back) We raced back to the Truck stop with our tails between our legs and respectfully asked for our old room back (particularly embarrassing because everyone there had told us the weather was terrible . Another day wasted. That afternoon we got a text from our Australian friends, they were in Ulan Ude, "there is about 20 centimeters of snow on the ground here, hot enough for you?!"  The next morning we once again had a big breakfast and packed up and got ready to face the weather. It wasn't too bad, just a freezing wind and a couple passing showers, we went 40 km before we decided to get out of the cold for the day, we couldn't risk the chance of one of us getting sick on top of our mounting delays. We stopped at another great little family run cafe and watched a dog torment some passing cows for a couple of hours, watched Dumb and Dumber (the similarities are striking) in Russian and went to bed under a little lean-to in the back yard. We made it to the parking lot the next morning and were starring at the road with fully packed bikes when I looked down and suddenly noticed that once again my rear rack was snapped off and just a tangle of nuts and bolts. Once again we sat down depressed and crest fallen, "well what do we do now?". We decided to head back to Chita and get everything welded one more time. However before we could do that we had to explain to the cafe owner that we wanted to leave our stuff in his cafe and pick it up in a day or two. "What your bike needs to be fixed? My son can weld it no problem!" and before we knew it or could protest my bike was being wheeled off again to be defiled by a bunch of men who may have never even ridden a bicycle. Surprisingly they did a pretty okay job of it, it is a very solid new (old) bolt that I still have attached to my frame, and it is one with a hook at the end (I think it is like a coat hanger) so I can put streamers on my bike if I so desire. However Levi still had a brake problem which I had since realized was due to the weld on his bike, and he was less excited than I about the coat hanger bicycle rack fix so we took off again to Chita "this will be the last time, we will get everything working well and that will be that, then we will ride!" And that is kind of what happened. We did return to the garage, by now people were getting less excited by the site of us, (one of the guys had acquired a fresh black eye over the weekend and wasn't that anxious to show it off to the Americans) we did get everything welded again, but it took two days, so we spent the night at our old same hotel. This hotel has a group of four Russian babushkas who alternate days there and when the daily babushka opened the door and saw us again she nearly fell to the floor dead, but happy. It took us another day of hitchhiking to get ourselves back to the cafe, so all in all it was a 3 day delay, but at least now we could ride. And we did, we took off early the next morning flying high, our legs were fresh after all the delays and we went like the wind climbing huge mountains and flying through the valleys. The first night we misjudged where a cafe was and had to sprint for our dinner making it a cool 50km in just over 2 hours, finally finding a small cafe on top of a mountain, with a generator for electricity and one flickering light bulb. In any other case I might have said no way, but the family seemed nice and we had no other choice, we didn't have any food with us really, plus the watching the light dim and beem with the struggling generator engine in the background was kind of fun. We ate a big meal and camped in the concrete parking lot. The next day we again flew along, making some of our best time yet, perhaps we were going to make it to Ulan Ude in okay time after all. That afternoon as we relaxed after a hard ride while eating snickers outside a cafe Levi said "phew boy something is going through me, but I'm excited about it, I haven't had anything wrong with me yet." Perfect. The next morning I asked him how it went "oh I made a few trips to the bathroom last night, but feeling pretty good now." "oh so like I do now if I eat dairy?" "yeah seems that way" We sat down for breakfast and suddenly I realized something was moving through me now too, not good, I had had a weak stomach since my first food poisoning adventure and was always nervous at the slightest growl. I had reason to be, I would be in the outhouse frequently from there on out, while Levi watched from the sidelines. After one trip I came back and spiked my toilet paper like a football player does after a touchdown, "well start clapping" "Why?" "Because you are looking at the winner!" "huh?" "You know the who is going to puke first on this trip award! I win" "You puked?" Levi looked crushed, he had obviously been hoping things would pass and we could ride, but vomit isn't a very positive sign. I did try and ride, we made it about 10 km before it was too much for me, we checked into a hotel and I spent a miserable and feverish 24 hours battling a bad cafe meal. Levi spent the day restless and fighting depression "Sometimes I think it is better to be the person who is sick rather than the person who is sitting around bored". After about the 3rd vomit he recanted his opinion. There is no doubt about it, it was a trying period for both of us, the sickness could not have come at a more disappointing time, after so many delays just wanting to get on the road, instead we were asking at the hotel what time we had to get up in the morning to go back to Chita to the hospital. We went back the next day on a sleeper train, which it turns out in this part of the world is basically all there is (because of course if you are going anywhere it is probably far far away) which was good, if surprising, for the invalid. We made our way once again right to the hotel, nearly killed another sweet old Russian grandmother and set about our way trying to get one of our many friends (now) in Chita to accompany us to the hospital. It took us two days before someone was free (it was the weekend), but luckily our friend Maria was able to accompany me on Monday to once again the Infectious Disease Hospital in Chita, lucky for me it is the only place they deal with stomach troubles in these cities apparently. Whereas the first experience I had in a hospital here was horrifying but thorough, this experience was horrifying but deficient, no 400 pound babushka to do things to me I am still not ready to share with the general public, no doctor that was kind and courteous and concerned about my condition, no awkward open door stool samples. Instead it was "please wait on that bench, the doctor will see you shortly" when the doctor came into the office every one of the attendants trembled, she was like a screaming teradactile, screeching at everything and everyone. I was terrified like I have never been before, I looked at the old man who was going ahead of me and he too was visibly shaken, she turned to him and beckoned him with her claws...er I mean pen "are you sick or not come on let's go into the room" he looked at me, I motioned good luck and he went into the lair. I've never heard so much screaming in a doctors office, you would think this guy was being interrogated for a crime not a indigestion problem, suddenly he was expelled with his pants around his ankles to go to another room (through the waiting room). It was my turn, I walked in terrified, she couldn't have been sweeter (she had seen my passport) and less helpful, no we aren't going to test you unless you spend a week here, you have no fever now though correct?, just take these pills and everything will be fine. The only thing they did do to me was take some blood, the old fashioned way, cutting my finger and pulling it out drop by drop until they had an entire vial, now I HATE needled but just for the sake of time wouldn't it be more efficient.. oh wait I forgot where I was for a second. So in the end I walked out of the hospital with the same pills I got in Birobidjan, but who knows maybe they will work.  Ulan Ude It had now been over 2 weeks since we set off on what was supposed to be a 6 day trip, it was like a bad episode of Gilligans Island. It took us 4 more days to reach Ulan Ude, 3 of riding and 1 rest day for the recovering Elman. We had thought that Blagoveshchensk to Chita would be the most difficult part of the trip and that after we reached pavement again we would be smooth sailing across Russia, we learned our lesson almost immediately. I've never been so happy to reach a city, not to mention my excitement about reaching the World's largest Lenin head. Strangely even after all our days off and no riding we reached Ulan Ude and felt like we had really earned a rest. Ulan Ude is the capitol of the Buryat Republic, another Russian autonomous region. The Buryats are the original peoples of the region, and give the whole area a very Asian feel, we spent our days going to Buddhist temples and being surrounded for once with people who aren't Russians. The history of the Buryat and other native peoples of Russia is often likened to what happened to the Native Americans in the US, and certainly there are some similarities, especially to the northern people like the Yakutks, but for us the Buryat Republic has been the nicest place we have been yet (perhaps because of where we have been the last few months). When we entered Ulan Ude we immediately met foreigners, people simply travelling Russia by train!!!! We met a French family travelling by home made RV from France to Mongolia and back, sounds wild and fantastic doesn't it, well let me just tell you what their family consists of, two 6 year old twin boys, one 4 year old girl, one newborn and we think there was actually another kid there too, but we couldn't keep track of them all long enough to count. They said that it was slow going because no matter how early they got up, they could never get everyone ready to go before noon, which considering that "go" just meant sitting in the super RV and looking out the window is terrifying. It made travelling by bike seem like a cake walk, food poisoning or no food poisoning, which i guess was just the kind of thing we needed to see. ellski   Well we made it, we battled the off-road with road bikes and we won. My first inclination is to brag and tell you how hardcore we are and how hardcore it was, but when I begin to think back on some of the tough times and perhaps hardcore is not the way we were acting, I seem to remember quite a few temper tantrums, and I don't think people normally scream at piles of rocks like that, even if they are on a bicycle trip. It is even tough to begin to write about the last three weeks, getting back into civilization even for just a few moments (we have only been in Chita 36 hours) dulls your wild-man side which has taken weeks to be brought forth and was so anxious to write about what it is like to go slightly mad. But I am sure I can conjure him up for some brief appearances. It is also wild just to look back at the different phases, we took to riding three days in a row then a day off in a small town at a "hotel" or guesthouse, it split up the ride into little "pockets of insanity", looking back at the first one, where we may legitimately have been the most frustrated, I think "whew boy was that an easy 3 days". We even looked at some of the videos from that section recently "look at those wimps crying about the road, boy I'd show them a thing or two". Well it's been a long road and I guess here are some of my adventures and impressions on the trip from Blagoveshchensk to Chita.  The Adventure We left Belagorsk trailing our egos in trailers behind us because we could no longer fit them in our own heads, we had spent 4 days in Blagoveshchensk doing TV interviews and getting make up done, now in Belagorsk we had a "fan" who came out to ride with us. Greg had seen us on TV and wrote us through the website. We got out and rode with him for a bit back to the main road, there was TV and autographs, God it was getting tough towing our egos around all the time, they were enormous! We finally got to the main road "HAHA you forgot about me I see!!!!" the wind howled, "Didn't I tell you I was coming with you to Porto?!". "Ah guys this is a bit much for me, the wind is crazy, I'm heading home" Said Greg as he turned his bicycle around. And there it was just me and Levi looking at a 1000 miles to the next city over half of it was to be off-road. Our hope was to really kill it the first few days and get to the off road part as quick as possible. After saying goodbye to Greg we climbed the first hill, looked into the distance and saw that tell tale puff of dust under a car in the distance. "well I guess the off-road comes in sections" "yeah of course, why would I have thought that the Russians would have gotten it together enough to string 300km of actual ridable road together?" And so it began, for the next week we would struggle with the off road, not so much that it was very difficult, you just never knew when it was coming or how many kms it might be. So we devised a new method of getting information, after a month of cars stopping us midway through hills and asking us the same questions, we took revenge, we took to hailing cars and trucks down and asking them how much gravel road was left. Perhaps all of you are chuckling to yourselves having done similar experiments at one time or another in your lives but here are some of the answers we got from the same point in the road all from cars coming towards us, i.e. having just driven this section of road. "excuse me how many kilometers of road without asphalt?" 1. "not much, about 20" 2 "I think about 75" 3. "oh at least 100" 4. "45" 5 "your there, just 3 or for more km" It became more for comic relief that we would take a break and hail a few cars, we would keep track of the answers and try and see what area they might cluster around and figure that would be approximately right, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. We also started asking the guys who were working on the road for an idea of how long it might go on for, but with similar results, mostly when we stopped with those guys it was more to watch the road being built, a process that I must say hurts the brain with its lack of efficiency. One of our favorite techniques is that they put down a hardener and then coat it with tar, I imagine a pretty standard practice before laying down asphalt, but here instead of letting it set and pouring asphalt the next day they have another team of about 20 guys who then collect rocks all along the side of the road and put them down evenly distributed along the road so that no one can drive on it. It is our favorite technique because not only is it ridiculous to watch all day these guys laying down boulders on the road only to have to pick them up a few days later, but also because there is a vehicle which can still ride on this quasi road, a bicycle, that's right we get miles and miles of "prohibited pavement" just dodging rocks like you are in a videogame, we watch as the big trucks struggle with the rocky crappy road on the other side as we glide along just avoiding rocks.  We did our first three day stint with relative ease, at least looking back on it, at the time it was hell, but we had the energy to get frustrated and angry which made for some good videos and some silly times doing impersonations. Our third day of riding brought us to Sivaki, where we intended to spend the night at a hotel, it was here that we discovered that things were not going to be as we thought here out in the middle of Russia. We rolled our bikes (hogs) into what appeared to be a combination of a junk yard a garage and a truck stop, however the highway sign deemed it a Cafe and Campground. We asked around and sure enough we could get food and a bed there at a very reasonable rate, it was to be our first truck stop hotel, where you begin to realize that a hotel is not really what you think. We walked into the little house that was the rooms, it was a typical little russian house set in the middle of the junkyard, obviously the first settlement here before the collecting of junk ladas and old railroad timbers began. We walked in and saw a long row of hospital beds, of which 2 were ours, it was more like a dorm. Later the beds would be filled with a couple of Azerbaijani men who came in in the middle of the night and woke us up to ask us if we were indeed Americans, and after deciding we weren't lying offered us some tea, we politely declined and rolled over. The woman also showed us the stove where we could build a fire if we were cold and the bucket of water where we could wash or drink to our hearts content. This is of course all fine, we had already come to the realization that things like a shower were out of the question most of the time, even in hotels (a few days earlier we had payed 50 dollars for a place where we could only stand in the bathtub and fill a bucket with cold water from the sink and pour it on ourselves, i don't even know why they had the tub), however the toilets were getting more and more impressive. I remember reading in Off the Map and other books people describing bathrooms that would make your skin crawl, describing sights that sounded out of a horror film, more than something that could happen in a bathroom, even if it is just a hole in the floor, what is the worse thing that can happen. I always thought "oh that is too gross to even use, it can't be like that anymore, certainly i won't be using such things, I would just not use it" Slowly I have come to realize that it is a very slippery slope "outhouse living" first you get accustomed to using an outhouse, which if it is a nice one isn't that hard, then you move down the line, you find yourself riding a bike solely along a highway, everyone knows what highway gas stations are like, so slowly you become a little more accustomed to declining standards, you just slowly move down the scale until what you might think is repulsive, Levi and I just say "hey that one isn't too bad". Then in Sivaki, I reached a new level, I walked into the outhouse, it was a "duplex" two holes, I would say stalls but that would imply privacy, just holes, and worst of all one was "occupied" by a trucker who just casually looked up at me and nodded, and continued to smoke his cigarette. Now of course my first instinct was to turn and run out of the building screaming like a little girl. But then the animal took over, I stayed, that is when I knew I was losing a little bit of the civilized Ellery on this trip. The next morning some one walked in on me, I just continued, and considered picking up smoking. We took a day off in Sivaki as part of our new plan to ride three days and no matter what, take the fourth day off. I think judging by the look on the woman's face no one had ever stayed two days at the "hotel" we spent a great day lounging in bed. The next three days were more of the same, hailing truckers to get inaccurate distances, complaining about the road, sleeping beside cafes next to truckers napping in their trucks. Indeed we were becoming truckers, we had our cargo and our destination and we were trying just to make time, we were dirty, complaining and swore like sailors, we were one of them. Although I must say that here in Russia truckers are not like the American version, or at least the stereotype I have in my head, here the truckers generally are the nicest guys on the road, very helpful and usually travelling with their entire families, rarely do you see a lone trucker, if he is going a long way he is usually with one or two more people, family truckers. One night we rolled particularly late into a town and stumbled upon a depressing or uplifting sight, a group of young high school kids all dressed up for a Prom like event, for the first time in my life it was blatantly obvious why they try to discourage highschoolers from drinking at prom. These kids were drunk, very drunk, swarming around the Americans like bees, I took a video, as we posed for a dozen or so photos, 2 guys who hadn't showered in days dirty and gruff, surrounded by about 25 highschoolers who had never seen anything like it, half disturbing, but the first people in a long time here that we had seen that seemed to really be enjoying drinking, everyone else is rather depressingly drunk.  For our second forced break we reached a place that we had both been looking forward to getting to the town called Never, not only was it an indicator that we were basically in Siberia and the middle of the big hump over China (see the map) it was also called Never. Needless to say the crappy puns flew. We were greeted as we rode into town by a huge billboard sign of John Travolta posing with his family on the side of a convenience store, we have no idea why this is there or what it is trying to sell, I came up with the theory that Travolta is a huge Russo-phile and comes to Never every year with his family proceeds to get Russian Style black out drunk and hang out with the village drunks (who as we witnessed have perhaps the best perch of any village yet, they switch between two shaded bus stops in the center of town, overlooking the valley below, in the morning they sit on one side of the road on a bench catching the suns rays then when it gets too hot in the afternoon they switch to the other bus stop which is shaded, all while drinking 5 liter jugs of beer and smoking 12 cent packets of cigarettes) before returning home to hollywood for another stressful year of movie making. It's a beautiful image, I hope it really happens, John Travolta just chatting away in his perfect Russian with the village drunks, buying everyone beer for about 3 weeks, its probably a village holiday, Travolta month. Never was also the home of another great discovery of ours, the transit hotel. We imagined that there had to be some sort of complex that houses all of these asphalt workers (there are hundreds of these guys and almost nothing out there in terms of housing) and in Never we found one, The Hotel Tranzit. In terms of our trip from Blagoveshchensk to Chita this was probably the height of luxury, we got a room with 4 beds (again dorm style), but this time no intruders in the night, so we got a luxurious room to our selves, and there was plumbing, we even got to wash our clothes in hot water. Our next three day push was marked by a couple of notable events, we had a little before never officially hit permanent off road, no more "prohibited pavement", few asphalt crews, (more like guys playing with boulders in the middle of a highway) and we entered Banya country, something I am quite excited about, where every cafe also has a Banya, be it a giant discarded oil drum with a stove stuck in the side of it to create an intense hot room, or a nice old wooden shack where truckers go to "shower". The Banya is no shower, but it does get the toxic mix of bug spray and sunscreen off, which is our main goal at the end of the day. Now at nearly every cafe you could manage if you had the energy to dehydrate yourself further (sometimes you just don't have the energy to stay up another 3 hours, 1 for the Banya, and 2 hours to drink all the water you just lost) you can for a very small sum, usually 3 dollars. It was a good thing that we hit banya country, because we also began to hit the mountains, and with the mountains comes rain. We had been lucky so far on the ride to avoid rain almost completely(except for the hail storm), but it chose a particularly inopportune moment to strike back. We had for weeks been dealing with a very rocky and hard packed gravelly road, however out of Never we found some looser sandier road where we could really fly "boy this road is nice today" I said "Oh yeah very smooth, not too rocky, my back hardly hurts at all today" replied Levi "Was that a raindrop I just felt?" It was. Suddenly our road that had been so majestic turned into a mud pit, the hills became almost impassable mountains of sludge, our smooth tires spun helplessly sending mud all over our selves, gear and bikes as we skidded up the hills, occasionally a truck would buzz by us to give us an added dose of the good stuff. One day in particular, just after a nice long rest break it began to rain, which meant another stop to suit up in the rain gear, "ready to ride?" I asked, "oh yeah I think this rain won't slow us down today" answered Levi. It didn't just as we cruised down the hill a bolt that holds Levi's rear cargo rack on snapped, luckily it was down pouring. We really did luck out though, not only was there a sizable chunk of bolt left in the frame that I was able to wrench out, we were in the middle of a road construction site, I just walked over and asked a foreman (i.e. the least drunk man I could find) of the job if he had any bolts like it, he and I searched in the pouring rain through a gigantic closet of discarded parts, screws and scraps from all time periods probably even Tsarist. That was the last time either of us said anything positive about anything while on the bike, any compliment you gave the road it would take away. We spent a day trying to hide from the rain, in what again was a new development for us, train station hotels, it turns out that sometimes the train stations in small towns have rooms that they rent to travellers, I think they are only supposed to rent them to train travellers, but when the Babushkas see two drenched Americans on bicycles I think they cannot say no. Once again I think we were the first people to ask to stay an extra night. Finally we reached our next rest spot Magocha, we rode in late at night (here the sun is up until 11 or so) on a Sunday, probably one of the worse times to ride into a town, but sometimes you cannot help it. There was something weird about the town almost immediately, although I guess when you ride into a town at dusk and dusk is at 11 o clock it is always going to be an eerie vibe. We stopped to get some food for the night before we were going to head to the train station, our new favorite spot. We of course explained our selves and before you knew it there was a crowd around the bicycles and little kids kept popping their heads into the store looking at us as if "oh okay so there are foreigners here" before darting out. I was in line to by food when Levi got into some sort of a confrontation, with a drunk man who's face looked like it had been the victim of a recent car accident, his son (maybe 5) also looked like he was involved, although he was less bandaged. We each had our own hypothesis as to why it happened, here they are: Levi's: man: "Hello, my name is Sergei" Levi "Oh hi my name is Levi nice to meet you." man: "This is my son" Levi "Oh hello Son" Man: "Hey!! You don't talk that way to my son, you show him respect!!!!" Levi "I am sorry sir I don't understand why are you so angry, please excuse me" Man "You show him respect who the hell do you think you are!" Levi "I don't speak Russian, I don't understand" It went on like this for about 15 minutes with everyone laughing at the situation while Levi and I tried to get out. I was off to the side, buying the food, without being directly involved, indeed looking straight at the ground to avoid any eye contact this was my theory: Man: "Hello my name is Ivan" Levi "Oh My name is Levi nice to meet you" Man "I was involved in a car accident a few days ago with my son, I was black out drunk. Maybe you can pay for his medical bills?" Levi "Oh hello Son" Man "Pay for our bills, you are rich, look at my son he is all beat up, look at this scar!!!" Levi "I am sorry I don't understand" Man "Help Him!!! look at us I barely survived, at least pay for his teeth, he needs teeth" Levi "I don't speak Russian I am sorry" Man "just give me money!!! His teeth are fine, its mine that are F@#$@ and I want to drink away the pain, now gimme money!!" and again it went on for 15 minutes with everyone laughing at us. Hard to say which is more likely. As we were pulling out onto the road again we went by a car with a man shaking his fist at us, "boy do we need a kindly babushka right now" said Levi. Luckily we found one in the train station, we never found out exactly what was wrong with Magocha but again we came up with some carefully thought out hypotheses, the whole town seemed just filled with men out of control, drinking and doing anything but working, even the next day it was an abnormal proportion even by Russian Village standards. We decided "This must be a town where for once the babushkas are not in charge, but the men, all the women seem dispirited and down and the men just seem to be in perpetual party mode, I imagine all across Russia the worst threat that one can scream at ones wife is "Oh yeah well maybe we will move to Magadoch"" This theory was only bolstered by the fact that while we were eating in a cafe, a couple of men getting wasted at the table next to us asked us if we knew what the name Magadoch meant, claiming it would be in our dictionary, they seemed to imply it was something very vulgar or something that would have deterred us from coming here, I just assume it means "run by Russian men" which indeed is almost a vulgar thought and certainly would have deterred us from going there.  Things were getting weirder and weirder, as we left Magadoch, one might have said we needed a reality check, we got one. It was a particularly hot day, and around 5 (when the sun is out until 11 this tends to be the hottest part of the day) we abandoned our bikes on the side of the gravelly road and ducked into a little birch grove to get some shade for an afternoon cookie break and lie down. A while later we heard a car pull up. "Hello? any English speakers down there?" It was a couple, an Australian guy named Alan and his wife Daniella from Germany, they were travelling by Land Rover across Russia, Mongolia, and the -Stans to Germany. It was an incredible moment, the first real English speakers since Vladivostok, and the first fellow adventurers of the trip. We were all spouting off like people who had not spoken to anyone in months. "Did you see the rocks on the road" "Oh yeah we ride on those" "Don't you love how there is nothing in the convenience stores" "Just cookies" "Have you guys found these ravioli like things" "eat them all the time" "What about the drunk drivers" "oh my god it is crazy, there are no police out here" We killed about 2 and a half hours without even thinking (we met up again the next day and again killed 2 hours, just dying for new contacts). We rolled into the cafe again late, delayed but refreshed by our new contacts with someone like us, adventurers and English speakers. As I got off my bike a strange man came up to me and started talking Russian to me, I just waved him off casually with my standard phrases, not really knowing what he was saying, not really caring because I was excited for Levi to pull in so we could talk some more about our fellow adventurers, this guy kept pestering me though saying something. "Uh huh, yes of course, yes I understand" I said in Russian hoping he would leave me alone, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with him, he pulled out a headlamp and was showing it to me, I recognized it as one of the crappy ones you can buy in the Chinese markets here for about 50 cents. "Very nice" I said, finally I try to avoid him by walking up onto the screened in porch of the kafe. I stop dead in my tracks, his Russian words come racing back to me. There on the porch was a bicycle with piece of wood strapped onto the back a small leather bag and a sleeping mat attached. "You're riding across Russia?!?!?!!!!!!" "Yes I've ridden since Ukraine" Levi was just pulling in. "You have GOT to see this!" His bike was a single speed with a coaster brake, freshly spray painted blue (he showed us the can), I now took a closer look at him, he appeared to be wearing almost all of his clothing to stay warm or to keep it near him and he had a bag of dirty laundry tied around his waist which he never seemed to leave far behind. He told us of his trip, he had many difficulties, firstly he was Ukranian and being Ukrainian in Russia is not easy, he seems to have little to no money which I can only imagine how difficult begging as a Ukrainian in Russia is, he said he had been beat up many times and had many problems with the police. But he had come very far, pedalling 100 km a day for three months (yeah that includes some winter months) from Ukraine, later we even have stayed at some cafes he had, and they confirmed the strange Ukrainian with no money riding his bicycle across Russia. We were never really able to figure out why he was doing it, but we did determine that he was only going to Khabarovsk, which is like riding your bike from the Atlantic to Idaho, why not just finish it off. So we met the first English speakers and the first biker in the same day after nearly 2 months of nothing. We bought the Ukranian (Roman was his name) dinner, and gave him some money and cookies, we began for a moment to disbelieve his story the next morning when he left the cookies in the trash (what kind of touring cyclist turns down free cookies), but we did as I said meet other people who had put him up for the night. In the end we labeled him more of a drifter than an adventurer, he lied to us a couple of times trying to get money it seems, but hey I still think overall he is riding his bike from Ukraine to Khabarovsk, he was Ukrainian, he was more than happy to prove that, and he plans to ride back, more power too him, we only hope to stay ahead of him, he was a little too strange to be the third idiot.  A day or two later we had the moment we had been waiting for, just like that there it was at the top of a hill early in the morning, as if it had been no trouble at all to put there, as if you had been on it the whole time, complete with lines and guard rails, asphalt, black and smooth. Even though it wasn't for the last time that we would leave the gravelly road, it was special, that moment when your whole bike stops clanging and shaking and vibrating and there is just the slight hum of your tires where they are supposed to be, on pavement, you look around and you can hear again, birds, cars, wind, even Levi - for weeks we had hardly exchanged words during our daily ordeal except on rest breaks, you could never hear one another over the clanging of metal and the grinding of rocks. And we flew, we breezed over mountains as if we were on a roller coaster, flying down hills, feeling the bikes back in their natural habitat for the first time in weeks. In the afternoon rainstorms threatened our day, but instead we raced them, zipping ahead of them only letting the rain catch us for an instant as we climbed the mountains, sprinting out of it on the downhills. Suddenly our surroundings changed, we climbed one last mountain, dodged one last dark cloud, and we were out, on to a plateau, it was sunny and treeless, farm land. We arrived at Cherneshevsk, 300km from Chita, we had reached the real Siberia at last, I had no mental image of Siberia before, but when I saw Cherneshevsk tucked under a bright green grassy cliff, I knew I couldn't be in the Russian Far East anymore. We passed through the fields (several were by a dump and had bottles and trash scattered so evenly across them they looked like an art installation) and felt like we were in Chita already. We even started talking like we were in Chita. We found a great guest house, really just the same as renting a small Russian house to ourselves, since there was no one else there, and we spent our final rest day talking about how great it was to finally be at the end of the Blago-Chita section. Perhaps we should have been a little less focused on how great it was to be done and focused more on how we had 3 days left to go, few patches for our tubes left and very little energy or motivation to make that final push to Chita. The first day back out on the road Levi had 4 flat tires, suddenly we were left with only 1 tire patch to go and still facing down a section of off road before Chita. Then we fell into an immediate cafe trap, everyday we would pull into a cafe towards the end of the day for a late lunch, we would gorge ourselves and then inevitably it would happen "well we could just get up a little earlier tomorrow and make a big push". Then the next day we would find a good reason to quit early, there was one day in particular where we were dodging thundershowers alternating with 90 degree humid sun blasts, you would get completely soaked from the rain, then spend 5 minutes in the sun, get soaked in sweat, take off all your rain gear and then notice again that you were riding into a thunder cloud, you could never win fighting the bi-polar weather pattern, so eventually you quit early. It took us 4 days to get to Chita as opposed to 3 that we had planned, and it almost took us 5, the 4th day we were so excited to get to Chita that we were flying through the first 80 km only eventually stopping at a cafe to eat, it was there at the Cafe that we realized that it was scalding hot out, we had nearly given ourselves heat stroke, idiots. We took thee hours to cool down and let the sun cool down before attempting the 11km climb to Chita. We made it exhausted but thrilled around 11 at night. Luckily we had a contact here Maria who had already arranged a hotel for us and we were able to go and immediately pass out. It was a very strange sensation the next morning waking up and walking around a city. It didn't seem possible that somehow after 1500 kilometers of complete lack of real cities, towns and villages you could ride into a town, still surrounded by those same strange excuses for towns and villages, that resembled a European town, a regular center square without cows just roaming free eating the moss coming out of the Lenin statue. There are buildings, unique and different from one another, not just the Soviet block style housing and government buildings. And I don't like to harp on the Russian alcohol problem, but after spending so much time in the villages, where few people work and there is such an impossibly high alcoholism rate, it was strange to see so many people working, soberly and diligently. Levi just as we were reaching civilization again said "boy how is it that all the men in this country can look so sketchy?" but just like that we reached Chita and realized it was just that we had been at the edge of reality out there, when you come back into a city or a real town things change again, the Russian men return to normal, the only people left weird are us. We are like country folk in the big city now, Maria drove us around and we squirmed at the high speeds. We paid a fortune for our laundry because it never occurred to us to ask, why would laundry cost a lot even if it is a nice hotel? We went to a Chinese food restaurant and saw people on a dance floor, we couldn't look away, we were mesmerized by watching people doing things with alcohol that weren't just sitting and grumbling (granted if you had seen some of this dancing you wouldn't have been able to look away either, it was bizarre). I had always thought that culture shock was something that I would never suffer from, however that first morning in Chita I think I was suffering from civilization shock, so many stores, so many sober hard working people, so much normal life it was hard to take it all in. Chita is a place that in Tsarist times they sent exiles, including in 1825 many of the Decembrists, a group of the nobles who tried to disrupt the natural succession of the Tsars. They arrived in Chita at a loss of what to do in a backwater provincial town like this, it is weird to think that they thought of it as a place of punishment but for us it is the ultimate reward. From here we continue west to Ulan Ude, home of the world's largest Lenin head, then to the largest and deepest lake in the world, Lake Baikal. Shortly after that we will be in Irkutsk, getting ready for a big, fast push across the Russian plateau. We've lately found Russia a bit more expensive than we would like, so we are hoping to make up for it by making a big push across the Steppe, saving money and time on our way to Porto, just an incredibly intense month of riding fast and eating simple pasta.  Good News! We Reached Blagoveshchensk 05/17/2009
 After giving myself a day to recover in Birobidzhan, we set the "hogs" loose on the road again on the 9th of May, Russian Victory Day. The Russians for some reason or another celebrate the end of WWII a day later than everyone else, I have been given several likely reasons, one because the Soviet troops arrived a day later in Berlin, two because the time difference between Berlin and Moscow, or three the one I made up myself, that Russia just didn't want to follow everyone else and decided to be different. Whatever the reason, Birobidzhan was all glitzed up for the event and we walked around a bit killing time before we got out on the open road. We even met with some veterans of WWII who were very pleased to take some pictures with us and even saluted us and wished us well on our trip (something about them saluting us that seemed quite backwards considering). And So began our push to Blagoveshchensk, it took us 6 days, 2 more than we initially thought, mostly because we had made the foolish assumption that there would be mostly asphalt between Biro and Blago, or at least as much as there was between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. Each day we faced a new 20-40 kilometer section, thank god we had bought new thick tires in Khabarovsk, otherwise I can't imagine how difficult it would have been. I am in the process of developing a new term in cycling (at least I have never encountered it), for years we cyclists have dreaded "soft sand" basically when beach sand works it's way on to the trail, slowing you down quickly and making steering quite difficult. Here on the gravel roads of Russia we have "soft stone" sections of the road where the hard packed rock gives way to rivers of tiny stones that quickly swallow your momentum and your tire, if you are not careful you will find yourself very quickly on the side of the road in a sea of frustration throwing said soft stone into the air just so that you can yell at it at eye level! It is incredibly frustrating because there is a lot of work going on on these road, big trucks owned by paving companies go up and down all day long shooting rocks and dust at you which you are supposed to dodge like some sort sadistic videogame. Then when you reach the section being paved (comically called "road work")it is one of two things, about 50 guys sweeping the dirt off the road while another 10 guys look on smoking cigarettes, with no asphalt or tools of any kind. Or you come upon my favorite, about 4 guys, two standing around a fire (perhaps they are the reason half of this country appears to be on fire at any given time) and one operating a steamroller, the other operating a bulldozer, replicating the same movements a 4 year old does with his tonka trucks, move this pile of sand with the bulldozer then pretend it is asphalt and roll over it with the steamroller. Genius.  That said though, the terrain is getting interesting, mountains are more common, we climb high into the birch forests for whole days and then descend onto the windy plains for days battling the headwind. Towns are less common and stranger, sometimes you go in and it is a complete loss, you have to go 2 k off the main road, everyone is drunk and there is nothing to really eat, other times it is almost a magical experience as you meet wonderful people who help you or take care of you and there is a plentiful store or a very nice cafe. The weather is following a similar unpredictable pattern, sometimes you still pass blocks of melting snow, even as the weather is about 85 degrees, and yet the very next day you are looking at blooming lilacs as you face horrible wind and are freezing all day long bundled up in most of your clothing.
We were on a mission to get to Blago, we rode with little distraction, granted not very fast, I was still recovering, but we were riding consistently everyday, by the sixth day we were ready for Blago, and immediately upon entering the city we knew it was going to be a good off town, as we call our rest cities. We met up with Olga, who showed us to the dormitory room we would be occupying, although in all fairness I should call it a Dorm Suite, it was a beautiful thing for two weary travellers, seeing a room for each of us and a kitchen to make our obnoxiously large pasta meals. "Now boys tomorrow we have talk at the University for you, and unfortunately we have to meet with TV, the wanted to meet you today, but I said NO! they will do everything tomorrow."
A queen!! she condensed all the talking into one day, in Khabarovsk everyday we had a different event to go to, here we just had one day, we wanted to hire her as our agent and translator right away. She then proceeded to tell us a bit about the history of Blagoveshchensk, how the name meant Good News (you're telling us!! and you didn't even ride into it!"). It was founded after the Russians acquired the territory from the Chinese in a treaty during the 1800's. It sits just across the Amur River from China, you can stroll along the river and probably throw stones (i still have a few stuck in my teeth luckily) at China and yell at them for polluting the Amur so badly that it acts more effectively as a border deterent than a 30 foot wall with armed guards (don't get any ideas border states).
The next day as promised we did the television interviews, which are all shockingly similar, they ask the same questions, make us pack up the bikes and ride them around a parking lot (this one was scarily filled with used needles). Then usually they try and get some exclusive footage, this time they wanted us to pretend to cook in our kitchen, jokingly we tossed a bunch of bagged fruit and bread into a pot and covered it. "Oh wait," I declared "we forgot the salt" we grabbed the whole bag and tossed it in, proudly proclaiming "Borsch Americanski!!!" They loved it and needless to say that night we saw us playing cooks on about 3 TV channels, what is this country coming to? (they have also adapted translated in it's entirety "Married With Children", new cast same exact episodes and jokes, so that a person like myself who hasn't seen an episode in 10 years can say oh my god I still know that the Russian Al is about to put his hand down his pants!)  Then after play hour with the television crews (we often take photos and video them as they are taping us). We headed to talk at the Amur State University, it was a lot like the talks we have given at the American Corners before this, we talk for a while, everyone is obsessed and in hysterics about our encounter with Stas (see a previous blog "to hail with it")and eventually someone asks whether we like Russian girls, we say of course, everyone laughs and that is usually about the last question of the session. We had one more treat though in store for "media day". I gues I ha misunderstood Olga when she said there was another TV thing to do, I for some reason thought it was a school based show where we would talk with students. Next thing I know we are in a television station in the middle of the city. Thankfully, it is hard to take anything seriously when you hand everyone you meet a card that says "The Idiots" right on it, because I suddenly found myself sitting on one of those stages they read the 5 o clock news at in my rain pants and a pirate shellfish t-shirt (obvious sponsor plug) that hadn't been washed in weeks wondering if I should brush off the cookie crumbs. Luckily I was suddenly besieged by a babushka who put a smock around my shirt and began doing my MAKEUP!!! Watching 2 guys who are pathetically trying to grow peach fuzz beards, in stained t-shirts being fussed over by a Russian Babushka was quite a sight, luckily Olga snapped some pictures.  Things got even better for us here in Blagoveshchensk, we spent saturday helping a teacher with her research for her PHD, which is dealing with American phonetics. She needed us to gather Data, which I can only say must be ridiculously difficult, Blagoveshchensk does not attract a lot of American tourists, let alone those that stay long enough for Svetlana to track down, apparently she hadn't had any new data in years, we were glad to help, plus we just got to banter on into a microphone about our pet peeves, Russian roads and Russian internet. But the really good news was that the next day we would be going to the public banya here in Blagoveshchensk.
Now we have been to a couple of banyas before, and it has been great, a couple of guys going in for a good hot steam and hanging out, very relaxing and very clean and nice. But nothing beats a public banya, it's where you see the professional banya men, walking in with their duffle bags, stripping down to nothing and pulling out their "banya kits" in little plastic bags, the wool banya hat in a shape that hasn't changed probably since they were created, sandles made of reeds to keep your feet out of the biological disaster that is the water on the floor, and big wool oven mitts to keep your hands cool as you beat yourself or a friend with your home made bundle of birch twigs. It is just a different scene.
We went with Kolya and his son Jena, as we walked in I immediately taken back to St. Petersburg, the last place I went to a public Russian banya and the last time i smelled that pungent mix of chlorine and BO. However unlike the last time I went, where the banya was poorly lit, with men slugging down vodka and pickles in every corner between sessions of scalding themselves in the banya and rolling around in the snow, it was mid afternoon on a sunday, it was family time. I though it was strange for Kolya to bring his son to a place that I so readily associated with binge drinking, but it was mostly just fathers and sons enjoying a good wholesome time of scalding your skin and beating the crap out of each other with dried leaves, running out and jumping into a really cold pool and running back into the scalding heat all while being completely naked, sounds like father son bonding to me.
The Banya itself was certianly the grossest/best one we have been to yet, most of the private banyas don't have the skin itching heat that 2 guys who have ridden 1000 miles and just crossed their first time zone want and deserve, but the public banya with itsa industrial strength heaters gets you shedding layers (of skin) fast. After my first round out, I was stumbling out when Kolya poinbted out the very cold pool (I wasn't quite ready for that) and the warm pool, which was like a big swimming pool. I wandered over to the warm pool, seeing so many people in it I assumed it was the place to be, at first I thought my eyes were decieving me, but as I got closer I knew it was no joke the water was nice murky brown, perhaps they just divert some of the Amur into a swimming pool. From then on it was the shower for me, probably not any better but at least it looked clear. Actually later a guy made me do the traditional get incredibly hot (you turn red) by beating yourself with birch twigs, then run and jump into the cold pool and ten run in and beat yourself some more. The sensation I think is probably similar to an out of shape guy running at a dead sprint for a half mile, your heart is thumping out of your chest, I guess that is how the Russians get their kicks, by simulating heart attacks.
There probably won't be much heard from us for the next few weeks, as we are heading out to the remote section of our trip (according to the map, NOW we hit the offroad) so you'll just have to entertain yourself with videos and photos from this section of which I successfully uploaded many of for your viewing pleasure. In about 3 weeks you'll get inundated with a ton more blogs and photos, and we will be nearing Lake Baikal.
ellski A Day In The Life Of Ellery Althaus 05/17/2009
 The cheap Russian cellphone blasts it's horribly cheesy alarm ring at 6:15. I shut it off and turn over, the alarm isn't for me, it is for "slow man" Levi (in no way a reflection of Levi's riding speed). A woman who was helping us back in Ussiriysk coined the phrase, while she and I waited for Levi to do something. The name has stuck, Levi is meticulous in his daily packing and I am just toss it anywhere and lets get on the bike in mine, he now gets up 20 minutes before I do, so that we are both ready at about the same time. He putts around for a while as I roll over and try and decide how sore my legs are today, sometimes they hardly stretch out and I know it will be a rough day or sometimes they are springy and ready to slaughter some K. I get up as soon as I see Levi nearing the food bag. The road dictates everything in our lives now, we are lucky, this morning it will be a cheap roadside hotel with a cafe where we can get hot food in the morning, sometimes it is just a hotel and we are creating our own concotions with the ever-present water boiler in every Russian room. This morning it is a wild one, we are making a double portion of instant noodles with frozen vegetables, an unbeatable classic. Ever since I got sick there has been a waryness towards anything we haven't made ourselves, and considering we are to avoid the woods at all costs until our vaccine kicks in (ironically the vaccine makes you more susceptible to the disease in the first two weeks, before making you immune) and we are trying to conserve our camp stove fuel, we are stuck in Limbo until Blagoveshchensk. So we eat our Ramen silently or again if we are lucky while watching Russian music videos, which I can only imagine to be the most risque on earth. We stretch, fill up on water, and usually can find one or two more completly meaningless things to slow us down before getting on the bikes between 8-10, I can hear Mark Jenkins and any other serious cyclists wince at those numbers, but it is where we are right now, we are hoping to improve  The first ten minutes on a fully loaded bike, at least for me, are the toughest the soreness is slowly breaking off your body, and your arms are readjusting to steering your "hog". In our case it is also usually the period where one surveys the situation (we of course rarely have any idea as to what the weather is going to be...Idiots) "how is the wind?", "Am I cold? should I shed a layer or put on my jacket" "Is that little pain in my knee going to be here all day or is it just a passing tingle?" "What is that thing on the back of Levi's shirt?" and of course the most popular one "What am I doing out here, where the hell am I?" which is usually followed quickly by "how long until the next cookie break?". It is then an hour and a half of the road, sometimes it is really easy, a calm cool morning on the open flats of Russia can be a real treat, watching the marshland fly by(I use the term loosely). A few small mountains or hills can't hurt either, they warm you up and speed the transformation from sore muscles to numb ones.
But this is not the way it has been lately, instead it has been one of two things, or the two combined. Usually we climb that first hill or turn that first corner and there it is, offroad. From Khabarovsk to Blagoveshchensk there has been one overwhelming sensation, the sense of being jostled to exhaustion by 20-30-40 k of offroad a day, now I know it doesn't sound good from two guys about to do 800 k of offroad, but keep in mind that is one solid section, which we have been told about. There is little more frustrating than planning out your day and turning the corner to hit a massive section of offroad (it is amazing how slow one goes offroad on a road bike). Of course there is one thing that does really get us even worse than our friend the offroad, our pal the wind (both of these daily features of our lives have been personified by us, they are cousins and they love to cause us frustration, the wind has a very high pitched whiny voice and the offroad has a rather gravely voice).
"Hello!!! ah it is my American friends, you have come back again?!!? Okay let's play!!! Perhaps you want head wind?!?And just when you get used to it I will switch to side wind and blow you right off the side of the road hahahaha silly Americans? Still want to come all the way to Porto?? Have you heard what I do on the Plains?"
"Hey fellas, I bet you thought the wind was bad, heheehe, check out what I can do with these big tennisball size rocks, I can actually fling them at you when trucks pass by. Oh whats that a little dust in your eye?? here let me help you I can put some in your lungs instead if you prefer. Have you tried my soft sand? It is particularly good here around China. Oh boy guys I am so excited to see you all the way to Chita, we are going to have some special times on MY 800k, hope you aren't planning on bringing those bikes with you..."
That is just a small insight into the mild daily insanity that goes on when 2 guys are bicycling and high on endorphins and sugar all day.  After the first hour and a half comes the first cookie break, Russia has a couple of glaring flaws one of which is it's obsession with cookies, the local stores contain almost entirely just cookies. I think the problem is really that everyone in these small villages grows there own food and is mostly self sufficient, therefore the stores contain mostly booze and 50-60 different varieties of cookies, oatmeal, jam filled, chocolate dipped, white chocolate dipped, chocolate covered marshmellow graham crackery ones. Riding all morning and walking into one of these stores can be habit forming, we now consume at least one package of cookies a day, often two, and I wouldn't say a third would be out of the question. The first break is my favorite, right around noon, you are really starting to warm up and feel good, you eat a few cookies, pound down some water, this is the first break in the usual morning silence, not that we don't speak earlier, but it isn't the giddy, silly I've been bicycling for hours kind of banter that often leads to tears streaming down ones face because you are laughing so hard. Another hour and a half goes by, now you are on automatic hopefully, unless the conditions are really bad (not really that uncommon). The second stop might be at a convenience store or it might be at a cafe, or perhaps just a shady spot on the side of the road (our new favorite is bus stops, which here, even in the middle of nowhere are little shacks which are great for breaking the winds and a good spot for shade) . It is usually the second stop where the delays start, maybe it is that extra bliny at the end of lunch, or we meet someone who wants to talk, one time we were simply surrounded by drunks who insisted on getting our autographs, then they insisted on giving us there autographs, we only managed to escape this cycle when one of them came out of the village shop with a shocking revelation, "You can buy rubbing alcohol in here for only 40 rubles!!!" "can you drink that?" someone asked. A quick debate ensued, which was ended by the eldest drunk taking the rubbing alcohol and pouring some of it into his half gone 2 liter of beer. They all tasted the new drink and nodded in approval. Problem solved, just dilute it, they completly forgot about us and proceeded to buy the store out of rubbing alcohol then and there, lest someone else in the town get a cut overnight.  Eventually you get going again, after a few more rounds of cookie breaks and mid afternoon doldrums, where the body begins to tire of spinning pedals, that is when things get really bad, we start getting out of control. Jokes start flying back and forth, we start screaming and yelling, distorting songs, yelling about how out of control it is, one of our favorite things to do is mimic the people who stop inevitably every few hours to ask us where are we from, where are we going and where did we start. Unfortunately for the Russian language, these three things are almost impossible to differentiate, where are you from is "otkuda??" where are you going is "Kuda" and where did you start is "Otkuda". Brilliant. Every few minutes someone slows down and starts yelling "kuda!!!!!" or "Otkuda!!!!" in a very demanding way, to which at first we used to try and figure out which of the three they were saying, but after being yelled at about fifty times without any result (they yell it like a military sargent would a command not a question "OTKUDA!!!") now we just reply either Vladivostok, America, or Portugalia, so somewhere out there there are many Russians who think two guys from Portugal are riding from America to Vladivostok or vice versa. Eventually comes the homeward stretch, it is getting late even here maybe 8 or 9 (the sun goes down around 930 now) and your legs begin to resemble jello as they flop up and down on the pedals. Perhaps we are riding to a town big enough for a hotel, or perhaps and more likely it is a small town where we hope to be allowed to camp behind the local cafe, or maybe just a dot on the map that we deem far enough for the day. It is all dictated by the road, and our pals offroad and windy. Sometimes you find yourself stuck on a bluff eating potato chip sandwiches as the sun goes down, othertimes over eating and wowing the cooks in the local cafe before you pull your sleeping bag out and curl up under the table for the night. The only thing that is for certain is that, that first moment is the sweetest, you've ditched your bike shorts pulled out the pajamas (i.e. one of two pairs of underwear you have) and stretched out your toes under the covers or in the sleeping bag. It is heaven, showered or not. You only wish you hadn't ridden till 9 and it wasn't eleven, only 7 hours of this bliss... perhaps we'll sleep til 8. ellski  Sadly they probably think we are Portuguese and riding to America! |
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