27 July 2009 Vladivostock Russia

I got up and went to breakfast and then packed my motorcycle. I went back to the restaurant to purchase two 500ml bottles of water. Wow, it was loud in there! Two women were having a disagreement about something. I paid for my bottles of water and left. I went outside and there were three or four guys looking at my motorcycle. I told them I was an American and all the specifics on the motorcycle. They really liked my motorcycle. One particular gentleman was a Korean who could speak some English. He asked me a quite a few questions and translated it for the rest of the guys standing around. He gave me a 10 Russian ruble note with his name on it written in English and the town that he lives in, Ussurijsk. I gave him a dollar bill with my name, date, my home town and blog address. He asked if he could have my pen and I said yes. That pen was an old Carboloy pen from work that I have been carrying around for the last 9 or 10 years. It worked really good working with Matilda. I could type on the screen with it and not scratch it. Igor gave me his Russian pen, an even trade for my American pen. He left very happy with his dollar bill and American pen. I finished loading my motorcycle, said goodbye to the security guys and started driving toward Vladivostock. I tricked Matilda into showing me M60 almost all the way into Vladivostok. I stopped to buy a tank of gas on the outskirts of Vladivostok and attempted to program Matilda to find Hotel Hyundai. I didn’t know if she could find a route or not. Eureka, she planned out a route right to the Hyundai Hotel. Thank God for small favors. The gas station attendant gave me instructions on how to find the Hyundai Hotel which I partially understood. I started driving toward the hotel and missed so many turns Matilda hung up and wouldn’t work. I had to stop and reboot her. I finally got close and asked a gentleman if he knew where the Hotel Hyundai was. He said he never heard of it. I finally drove around some more and finally found it. I was happy about that. I went inside and asked for a room. They had one and I purchased a 500 mega bit WiFi card for the hotel. My God this place is expensive, the most I’ve paid in all of Russia and Europe. I have plenty of e-mail business I need to take care of so I must stay here. I’ll check my e-mails and take the rest of the day off. I unloaded my bike and took everything upstairs.