Tuesday, June 16, 2009

12 June 2009 Farmers Field Between Kyjiv and Sumy, Ukraine

I woke up to the sound of rain, oh boy. I stayed in bed a little longer hoping the rain would stop. Nope, not if my life depended on it. I had to come up with a plan on how to load up my bike in the rain and not get rain inside my saddle bags or tour box. I carried everything in my jacket down to the garage that had to put in the saddle bags and tour box. When I arrived all the guys were standing around staring at it. If I had the magnetic personality that motorcycle has, I’d be a chick magnet. It hasn’t happened yet. They looked real curious so I told the whole story with the security guard confirming it. They were impressed and wished me good luck in my travels. When I walked out of the hotel the housekeeping lady chased me down to get the key back for the room. I kept walking and then the security guard chased me down and said, hey, we want the key back. Somehow I got the message across that I still had more of my bags in the room and that I’d give the key back. So I drove my bike to front door of the hotel and loaded it. Then I went back to the hotel room, showed the cleaning lady I cleaned everything out and gave her the key. She was all smiles. I went outside to their patio to cool off. I hiked up and down the stairs four times with my rainsuit on and worked up quite a sweat carrying my bags out. Rainsuits are like a double edged sword. They keep you mostly dry in the rain but if the sun comes out and you perspire in them you have your own personal sauna going on inside. If you drive back into the rain which happens quite frequently you freeze because of the wind and rain cooling you down when you’re damp and sweaty. I finally cooled down enough, put my coat on, zipped up my rainsuit, put my helmet and rain gloves on. I left heading toward Zytomyr and Kyjiv. The first thing I started to notice is the names of these cities are changing from English letters to Cryllic. Navigating is becoming more difficult when you can’t read the name of the cities. This is downright unhandy. I had to make a lot of stops just to decipher the Cryllic or get lost. Some of the problems today included not getting maps wet in the rain, the directions I write on the masking tape on my arm are not useful under my rainsuit and the tape won’t stick to damp outer clothing. I didn’t think the tape would stick to my plastic gas tank but it did. Thank God, now I can watch and read road signs a lot easier with the information in front of me. The road from Zytomyr to Kyjiv was supposed to be a four-lane highway. It is, but it’s under construction so all the way there its two lanes. Keep in mind it hasn’t stopped raining all day. The road is like a bad gravel road full of potholes etc…………full of water. The semi-trucks/lories would bounce in and out of the potholes, kicking up a rooster tail of water 10 or 12 feet high. I was kind of like a small geyser and this went on probably for four or five hours. I was going along about 70 Km/50 mph and met one of these trucks and at the precise moment, he dropped into one of these potholes and covered me with dirty muddy water. I kept my visor on my helmet cracked open about 1/8 of an inch to keep it from fogging up. When the truck splashed me with the muddy water it not only covered me but covered my visor inside and out. I couldn’t see. I quickly lifted my visor and stopped in the next gas station to clean it. Gas stations around the world are not all alike. Some just pump gas/petro and that’s it; no toilets, no toilet paper, no water to wash windows, no towels, no oil, etc. etc. The owner of the gas station saw my situation and finally found a clean rag I could use. Another thing about today is a lot of new blacktop has been put down. With all the road spray my visor also had an oil film on it which wouldn’t clean off with water. As the day wore on it became more difficult to see. 30 miles out of Kiev/Kyjiv the sun came out and I had a whole new perspective on the day. After a steady rain all day I’m wet and clammy inside my rain suit and very tired of being bounced from pothole to pothole. I began looking for another truck stop hotel and never found one. I was ready to get off the highway. I didn’t stop to look at the map before I entered the city and totally got myself lost. I stopped to buy gas and ask for directions out of the city. I get this forlorn look knowing they can’t help because we can’t communicate. This was a very busy gas station and they have service station attendants to pump gas with little time to chitchat. I pushed my bike off to the side out of the way of gas station traffic and went to the toilet. When I came out, here was a guy looking at my motorcycle. He told me he liked my motorcycle and wondered whether I was really was from the state of Minnesota. I told him yes and most of the story about my trip. He said it would be a dream of his to do this same trip. Evan could speak English very well and had spent six months or a year living in the New York City area. I asked him for directions out of Kiev/Kyjiv and said that I wanted to continue on to Sumy, Ukraine. He tried giving me directions but changed his mind and said follow me. That was music to my ears. It’s 5:00/5:30 p.m. on a Friday night and we’re sitting in the middle of rush hour traffic. Evan drives a scooter which can easily get in between cars which is handy for this kind of traffic. I asked him to drive more slowly so he doesn’t lose me. He did, which was great. He led me out the city to where I could find my own way and stopped. He asked if he could take a picture and I agreed and I gave him one of my round the world cards. We parted ways. I followed Evan’s directions but may have misinterpreted what he called a circle road and end up lost again. It was getting late and I was very tired. I needed to get to bed. I drove by a farm road going back into the fields of Ukraine. I hooked a u-turn drove down it till I could hide in a shelter belt. I found the best spot available, put up my tent, and crawled in exhausted. I made sure my motorcycle was out of sight so if someone drove by at late night, the reflectors would not light up. I no more than got my tent set up and it started raining again. It woke up several times during the night and it was still raining.

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