24 June 2009 east of Chelyabinsk, Russia

I drove to Chelyabinsk today and attempted to get through this large city by myself. I entered the city around 5:00 p.m. Yep, you guessed it; rush hour traffic. So I tried something Vasilisa from Samara told me to do. I got into traffic and started pushing my way around. People expect that out of you or they start pushing you around. I wasn’t real aggressive, but less cautious than in other cities I have driven through. Today I was going to rely only on Matilda to get me into the city and out. As I drove, she showed me the roads as I encountered them. That’s it. As I drive into this city I’m driving Highway M5. I’m looking for Highway M51. I get downtown and my GPS screen goes blank. Thanks for your help again, Matilda. I changed the screen to another that has arrows pointing in the direction of the different cities. I picked OMSK (OMCK in Russian) which is a future destination of mine and started following the direction of the arrow. If I went in the correct direction the distance in Kilometers would get smaller and vice a versa if went in wrong the direction, the distance in Kilometers would increase. I snaked through Chelyabinsk till I found a major highway out of the city that said I was on M51 driving toward OMSK. I passed thru some major road construction on the way out of the city. I believe they’re building an interchange for several major highways. The bypass was a work of art. One or two signs and the rest follow your nose. If I wouldn’t have had someone to follow I’m not sure I would have gotten back on the main highway. Unbelievable………….. I followed this road about 20/30 kilometers out of city until I found a roadside hotel and stayed the night. Today wasn’t real eventful just driving from point A to point B. I’m coming up on an oil change and I’m hoping my tires, front and back, will make it another 3000 miles. My concern is that they don’t lose the lugs on the tires. I think the lugs work themselves loose from climbing in and out of these six and eight inch ruts in the black top or pavement. Only one or two lugs hold the weight of the motorcycle at a time and after thousands of revolutions they start working themselves loose from the tire cords and eventually fly or tear off. It is now an obsession of mine to keep an eye on this. That’s my theory. I went to bed.