Monday, July 27, 2009

20 July 2009 East of Tygda, Eastern Russia




















I did trip planning this morning and will get a late start. Happy Birthday, Marlene. I’m charging my laptop as I type. I am planning on getting out of this horrible road construction. I’m working my way toward the town of Shimanovsk. The map shows plenty of gas available on the way there. I was loading my motorcycle and kind of looking to see if anything was rattling loose. I found that a crossbar between the saddle bags is broken. The weld failed and I know why. It was a cold weld and with all the vibration and shaking it broke off from its mating piece. I made a mental note to inform the people I bought the saddle bags from that they need better quality control. It’s something I think I can live with till I can get somewhere where it can be repaired. It’s a pretty simple fix if you have a welder and a grinder. My welding instructor from Vocational School, Gary, warned us students that MIG welding can give you a beautiful weld with lack of fusion with the base metal and that is exactly what happened here. It’s very obvious.

Well I’m back. I had great plans today of riding out of the road construction and starting full time on broken or good blacktop. Well that was not the case. I only rode 100 miles/161 kilometers today at 20 mph/40 kph all day. I have 155 miles/220 kilometers yet to ride to get out of the road construction area. I’m finding out more and more as I travel this road that just because the map says its blacktop doesn’t mean its blacktop. Also a gas pump on the map does not mean the gas station is on the highway. More than likely the gas station can be up to 10 miles/16 kilometers off the highway. That was the case again today. I bought gas when I left Never (pronounced KneeVer) and I’m glad I did. I filled my tank, let go of the lever to stop the gas and it kept feeding. I finally whistled at the lady that the pump wouldn’t shut off and out of the office comes running another woman who shut the pump off. I pumped out about 1 quart/1 liter of gas on the ground. I paid for the gas on the ground and left. I came into Never on blacktop and left on gravel. All day was 10 miles/16 kilometers of blacktop 30 miles/48 kilometers of gravel or worse. I drove 100 miles/161 kilometers to Magdagach and it was time for gas again. The gas sign shows up 4 miles/6 kilometers into the city of Tygda. No big deal and off I go. It had rained today so the road was soft mud to muddy, with potholes full of water: big potholes full of water, and deep. The mud was kind of greasy and treacherous. So I was driving along avoiding all the potholes as best I could and I arrived at this large pothole the width of the road so I had to drive thru it. I looked at it and saw car tracks driving thru it so took off holding to the right shoulder and entered the pothole. The next thing I know, my front wheel goes whoosh, drops in about 2 feet/66 cms of water and I went “Oh my God!” When the front wheel started coming up out of the pothole my elbow went down giving it more gas and I shot out of the pothole with the rear wheel just barely in it. I gave her some more gas and was able to get completely out of the pothole. Talk about the rectal pucker factor. You couldn’t have driven a stick pin into it with a sledge hammer. One leg was wet from the knee down and my boot was full of water. The other leg was dry. The water was almost up to the exhaust pipe coming out of the head. That bloody scared the poop out me. Once I settled down I continued on fording more potholes full of water and mud. When you leave Highway M55 the roads deteriorate immensely. I made it into town ok. I had to ask for some directions from a woman and she told me where the gas station was. The gas station lady was very friendly. She didn’t holler at me like most of the people working behind the mirrored glass. You can’t see thru the glass to see who is taking your money but they can see you. The person behind the glass is just a voice thru a speaker. I asked some young guys as I was leaving if there was a shorter way out of town and they said take the air strip. It was a shorter way with a lot less mud. The air strip looked like something from the cold war days that could land propeller driven aircraft similar to a C-130. It looks like there may have been a radar site near the town. I don’t know, just an observation. I’m back on the muddy road again and have to ford the large pothole again. I haven’t forgotten my prior experience with it. I pulled up to the pothole again and looked into it. How am I going to get across it without dumping my motorcycle? Then I had an idea. I got out the spare stick I have been carrying for months and checked the water depth on the other side of the pothole and it was about 4 inches/10 cms deep. I jumped on my bike, held my breath and drove thru it without a problem. Of course I asked for some Divine help. When I got on the other side I took some pictures and was about to leave when this small truck shows up. The guys wanted to know more about my motorcycle, what my plans are and where I am going. They asked me if I wanted to go drink vodka with them and I said no. One of the girls gave me some wildflowers. She also spoke some English and told me I was the first American she ever met. Everyone wished me luck. I shook hands with everybody and departed. If only I could speak more Russian I would have had a few more laughs with them. It was back to the blacktop which in a few short miles/kilometers turned back to gravel. It was after seven p.m. so I started looking for a place to camp. I found an excellent place with an easy driveway about 400 yards/400 meters off the highway. It was, or maybe still is, an old gravel pit used in building the road. I found a spot I could drive in a stake, and set up my tent. It also has this makeshift table that is just the thing for me to type and work on my blog entries. The mosquitoes are absolutely driving me nuts so it’s time to head indoors away from my blood thirsty friends.

You’re probably wondering what the terrain is like as I drive this highway. I’m usually driving over low forest-covered mountains similar to the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee and Kentucky, or flat land like the plain states of North and South Dakota. The mountains predominantly have pine trees similar to the pine trees that are found in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Some of the other pine trees look a lot like tamarack trees, like the ones down in the swamp on Gorrichs, Pillars, and Hessefortes road, one mile north of the Reinhold farm in Medford. Most of these pine trees are planted or growing very near to the next tree or trees. The tree trunks are 4 or 5 inches/10 or 13 cms in diameter and 22 feet/7 meters tall. Just bean poles. This is true of the pine and white birch trees. The flat land is as flat as a pancake with white birch trees growing around streams or low-lying areas because of the availability of water. You will see them occasionally in some of the pictures in my blog. Another thing I’ve noticed as I drive Highway M55 is the huge acreage of burned-off pine forests. I will walk out on a limb and say about a ¼ to 1/3 of the pine forest I have driven by are burned off. Judging from the growth of the vegetation and new tree growth in these areas, I would say it happened within the last ten years. I can’t say whether they were started by careless smokers or by lightning. Another thing, I don’t think Russia has any formalized forest fire fighting equipment in place. At least nothing that’s visible. So forest fires may burn till they go out themselves or until a village or town is threatened and then everyone jumps in with whatever they have to fight the fires.

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