Alright, alright – The pressure of it all!
We carried on east glad to be past the Moscow ring road madness. The traffic was thinning out but there was still an enormous amount of heavy trucks on the road.
Eco concerns don't seem to have hit Russia yet. The general condition of the trucks was pretty shocking to us westerners with black diesel smoke belching out of most of them. At the end of the day on the road you were black and sticky from the fumes and could feel it in your lungs. One scary thing was the trucks tyres. The time for a tyre change on a Russian truck is when the tyre shreds and comes off the rim. The roads are littered with bits of truck tyre and you will regularly see truckers at the side of the road changing wheels over, after the tyre has completely departed. You also quite regularly see trucks in ditches and into the forests where they have come crashing off the road. At the many truck stops there would usually be a place flogging truck tyres. The tyres sold were secondhand and looked to be in worse condition than the ones that would be considered knackered and illegal in Blighty. I'm guessing that a lot of Euro worn out tyres get shipped to Russia and sold on.
On one instance we came up behind a truck that was double trailered/articulated. Whenever there was a bend in the road he would start fish-tailing and once the oscillations started they would just get worse and worse until I thought it was all going to go tits up and he would tip it over. We both saw what was happening and backed off a healthy distance. We stayed back and watched and on every bend the same thing happened and would settle down once on the straight. He didn't seem concerned at all. Getting past was interesting as we had to wait for him to stop swerving over both lanes with a long enough straight that 2 old Airheads could wheeze their way past (ok...go...heads down gun it ...fuck, fuck, fuck! Wide eyed grins at each other on the other side.)
Talking of trucks here's a pic of a local fire engine. We had stopped at a village shop for a drink etc and this turned up. The thing sounded gorgeous with a huge burbly engine.
We took a wrong turn after a village and did a U-turn in the road and came upon this memorial so stopped and had a look.
From what we could make out it was a memorial on the edge of town for a local lad that died on his bike. A bit cheesy in a 'Bat out of Hell' kind of way for our cynical palettes maybe but quite moving all the same.
It was starting to get more remote now and occasionally the road would just turn to dirt track. At first when this happened we assumed we had gone wrong but it was usually not the case and the dirt track could last for 30-40 miles and then turn back to tarmac. It didn't help that the further east we got, the sat nav would just give a nonchalant shrug of it's shoulders and give it "Well I don't bloody know where you are!".
It was also at this point that I realised how sadly lacking my off-road experience was. I was warming up to it nicely I thought and generally getting more cocky whilst thinking "aint so hard now is it!". It was at this point that I came upon a sharp turn in the road/track and approached it with a little more forward motion than I would have liked for my skill level. I am always amazed at the amount of thoughts that can go through your mind in such a short space of time in these circumstances. Mine went something like this:– "Yep, really cooking now...sharp bend...shit, shit, shit...too fast, won't do it...panic, sit back down, I'll never get round, heading to ditch...oh fuck, going sideways...might just make it...Yay, I'm round...Actually I bet that looked pretty cool...how far back is Guy, did he see...bollocks he's not even in sight. Oh well! Legs will start shaking in a mo...yep there they go". All this happened in about 2 seconds.
Hey...nice wheels!
Oh and if anyone is looking at the fish symbol on my panniers and thinking "Hello...is old Melchy a raging bible thumper or a missionary perhaps, carrying out God's work in far flung places?" I thought I would give a close up. Well, it makes me smile!
Carrying on along dirt tracks and came round a corner and we notice that the track seems to run out and is replaced by a river with a rusty old tub to take people across. This caused us much excitement and made us feel like proper ruffty-tuffty adventurers. I know...sad aint it.
Here we are on rusty tub with Guy pulling a face. Brittany Ferries it aint. There wasn't even a buffet.
On we crack. BIG country!
Back on tarmac and we come across this young chap at the side of the road, broken down. His chain had come off and as is the way with young chaps of his age all around the world had no tools to adjust his bright orange rusty chain. We get tools out to get him going again and point and gesticulate to what needs doing with a view to him doing it. We justify this to ourselves by saying "well, he'll never learn otherwise". The truth was neither of us wanted to get our hands shitted up!
This was also where we met Igor. He also saw the commotion at the side of the road and pulled over. Igor was on a Russian 350 combo. Nice chap and we exchanged pleasantries as best we could. We left young fella-me-lad once he was going and pushed on for half an hour, then pulled over for lunch. Who should roll up as we had finished but Igor. We brewed him a coffee and tried to converse some more and ascertained he was going somewhere that was a couple of days away. I asked whether he wanted milk in his coffee and he looked at me like I had asked him if he wanted me to stir his coffee with my old fella. Maybe milky coffee is a bit effeminate in Russia. Black it is then.
cant wait brilliant feel like i'm there with you
