We're on a Road to Nowhere

Pat had the only detailed map amongst us. My 1:70 billion bizzaro projection map was all I could find before I left. It was the same one Tom and I had used on the Mongol Rally. Back then we ultimately resorted to relying on a combination of downloaded GPS files and asking for directions. Pat’s map on the other hand was purchased in Yekaterinburg on his arrival and looked confidently detailed. The route was selected, bikes packed and off we set. The roads were still covered in snow, but even in these remote areas plows and earth movers keep things smooth and passable. Blue skies, sunshine and the open highway - this will be a breeze we thought! Plus, we’re ahead of all the other teams - we might make even finish first. 

An hour and a half later the road petered out. Not only did it peter out, it came to an abrupt end in dense woods with only ‘No Unauthorized Hunting” notices to keep us company. We had found it - the Death Road that Olly had spoken of - or so we thought. Rather than wander on into the wilds, we agreed that we’d head back to the nearby village and find out why we were so far off our course - it seemed more practical than spending three days starving in the belief that we were right and the map was wrong. Backtracking then towards our missed turn and steering due north, not northeasterly, Zaya took the helm. We were making great progress when, at a corner, the team decided to pause for a break. As she came round the bend, Zaya either decelerated too fast or braked too hard and described a perfect 90 degree leftwards arc into a snowbank. As passenger I did the mental arithmetic and decided there was no real danger to us or the bike and enjoyed the slide as we flumed into the ditch like a couple of cartoon characters. Geordie, laughing his head off, saw the whole thing, but sadly had his camera turned off. 

Checking with a local shopkeeper we were sent off towards a village and from there onto a road marked by the tiniest of signs. We should have been a little more suspicious. Ruts appeared and deepened quickly. It was close to freezing now, warm enough to make us open our jackets as we muscled the bikes through the crud. Trucks were bogging down and getting stuck creating obstacles for us. Eventually we made our way through a long track and the rest of the teams, who by now had caught up, followed suit. Getting past the disabled lorries was full on body contact motocross and Zaya perched herself atop of a stack of hay and videoed the excitement. By the time I collected her we were pulling up the back of the phalanx of Ice Runners. And it was real work. With Björn and Rico’s help we muscled our way through, though. As a solo rider and having lost second gear, Geordie was lighter and necessarily faster than the rest of us. Along with Pat and Guy he set a cracking pace. Towards evening we passed the other teams as they set up camp and asked if our partners had gone ahead. They had, so we pushed on into the twilight with its long shadows and deep snow. We bounced and thrashed and when we were almost at the point of giving up we turned a corner, crossed some railroad tracks and were suddenly reunited with big smiles and congratulations all round. 

Nothing remains a secret for very long in Russia. Moreover a bunch of foreigners pitching camp on the edge of town is really an excuse for a party. Night fell and the Milky Way lit up in all its glory. Without cloud cover the temperature dipped towards −20C. Fog rising from our breath was backlit by our headlamps in a scene worthy of a James Cameron sci-fi epic. Then out of the darkness a motorbike rider bearing vodka appeared. When the first bottle was gone Vladamir insisted that we must be hungry, so he rode off and reappeared 20 minutes later with more vodka and pot full of varénikis prepared by his mother. Varénikis are traditional meat or vegetable dumplings and these were warm and swimming melted butter. It was the best meal we'd had since our arrival in Russia. Within the hour two cars full of Russian men turned up with more vodka and trunks full of firewood and the festivities got into full swing. Around 2AM the fire and conversation finally burned out and we bid our farewells and crawled into our sleeping bags. Thank goodness for slow sunrises. 

Camping It Up

The drive was cold. We hit the main highway and headed east. There is nothing remarkable about Russian roads. In general they are well maintained and signposted, with the same twee blue signage that they use all over Europe. Conditions, however, became progressively worse as we rolled on. Snow fell and drifted and then deepened enough that it packed down over the blacktop. As the clouds darkened and closed in the weather grew chillier and I was glad that Eva, our aging Ural motorcycle, had been fitted recently with electric handwarmers. 

For the casual tourist the town of Tavda may seem somewhat pedestrian, for us it was simply a turning point as we headed north towards Uray. The afternoon was coming to a close as we swung through the city center looking for our turn. Nothing. By the time we reached the far side of town we still hadn't found the junction, so we made a U-turn and looked for help. Pulling into a thoroughly modern gas station, Zaya went into the little shop and asked the two middle aged women in bright red uniforms behind the counter if they knew where we could find the road to Kaminski. Neither of them had any idea, but a helpful man, with a thin face and a shaved head, looked at Zaya, still dressed as rabbit, and then me, still dressed as wolf, and said he would show us the way. The other riders pulled up and together we followed the good samaritan's shiny black BMW X5 through Tavda’s twisting backstreets. Eventually he dropped us at a big, faded green steel bridge that spanned a wide riverbed, running ran parallel to a train line. Despite the bridge's size there was no way we would have found the crossing from the main road on our own.  

About a mile on from the bridge we pulled over and agreed to stop for the the night before it got really dark. A small road to our right looked promising, so we punched the bikes through a snow bank and dropped down the embankment towards a stand of evergreens and birches. Eva’s engine kill switch was, ironically, dead, so I reached over and turned her ignition key off. She sputtered and stopped. Ahhh, quiet! Our first campsite. It was time to set up for the night and start a fire. Guy and Pat (brothers from Perth) traipsed off to find firewood, their headlamps on full beam. Their lights were bright enough to land an aircraft and reminded me I needed to put new batteries in mine. When they returned, Pat proved just how well prepared he was when he pulled out a portable flame thrower and started torching the wood. In minutes we sat around the roaring campfire sharing snacks and tea and vodka. We turned in soon afterwards and even though the temperature dipped below −15C we all slept soundly. 

Our impromptu team was without doubt the most diverse. All told there were three Australians, Geordie, riding solo, along with Guy and Pat. Guy distinguished himself by at 18 being the youngest adventurer on the trip. (I was the oldest by four years.) Then we had two Swiss guys with very un-Swiss sounding names: Björn and Rico. Zaya was single handedly representing 50% of the Ice Run’s women and was also the Ice Run's only Mongolian. In addition, she was going to be sworn in as an American any day. Finally, there was me, an English/American hybrid.

Modern business pundits say that diversity in a team makes it stronger and more effective. We had it all, age, gender, ethnic, and cultural differences. The only question was, were we a team?

When Life Hands You Lemmings...

Monday duly rolled around. By now we were getting used to the way the sun meandered over the eastern horizon and brought a cautious start to the working day. It was fully 9:30 before there was enough light to call it morning and we still had lots to do. The first thing was pimping our rides - and ourselves. Nu, Pogodi! (trans. I'll get you!) is to Russians what Tom and Jerry is to Americans, a beloved animated cartoon. It began back in the 1960’s with the familiar premise of a clever rabbit that does its best to outfox a chain-smoking, hard drinking wolf. Zaya grew up on this stuff and decided that not only would our team be called Nu Pogodi, but we would dress the part, too. (This was one of those times that I figured it was better to just go along for the ride.) 

Next it was on our bikes and off to official start of the Ice Run, it seemed like it had taken us a week to get to this point. We looked splendid though, 12 Urals and 23 hardy adventurers arrayed in a straight line fit for a May Day parade. With military precision we immediately got lost, turned around in a petrol station, wound noisily through a housing estate and finally arrived an hour late at the start line and the press briefing.

Fluent in Russian, Zaya, now dressed as Zayats, the Nu, Pogodi! rabbit, complete with ears, gave the local TV station a rundown on what was happening. Well, at least that’s what I thought she was doing. She might have been talking about the advantages of Mongolian airag over Russian vodka for all I knew.  

The mayor gave a speech, shook hands with us, presented each of us a memento of our stay in Irbit, invited us back for the annual motorcycle rally in July, and lastly wished us luck. A quick stop at the supermarket for last minute chocolate bars, then a few photos, and we were finally on our bikes being led out of town towards what was probably going to be the last gas station we'd see for days. We filled up and divided into makeshift teams. Nick and Paddy were the first to set off and led the way by turning right towards Tavda, taking the notorious, uncharted northeastern route - otherwise known as the ‘road of death.’ There is no better way to start an adventure than by leaving common sense behind, following your fellow lemmings and leaping over the cliff towards certain doom. Wahoo!

Flailing About

The phone rang and rang and rang again. Staggering around the bags strewn around our room I groggily picked up the receiver. A Russian accent on the other end spoke in English: This is Sergei, Oleg’s friend. We have Zaya - where should we bring her? I looked at my watch, it was 4AM. Room 206, I said, and opened the door in anticipation. Fortunately, I’d decided not to follow the crowd to the Russian disco earlier in the evening. I expected that it would be incredibly loud, smokey, and potentially dangerous if one of the Ice Runners showed a bit too much interest in one of the local women. Turns out that I was right on all accounts. Our organizers, Olly and Katy, had hatched a plan to get people thoroughly drunk on Saturday so that they would go to bed early on Sunday and get a clean start Monday morning. It seemed to be working a treat. 

Practice driving was the order of the day and we headed to a motocross course outside of Irbit. Understanding the Ural’s unique handling characteristics wasn't intuitive. Motorcycles with sidecars pull to the right on acceleration and push to the left on deceleration. That's because ours were one wheel drive and the sidecar was in effect dead weight. Some versions of the Ural drive both the motorcycle and the sidecar's wheels, making them more versatile than tanks. The cruddy conditions dictated caution at every turn. Lots of room. We needed lots of room to maneuver. Eva's dodgy brakes and the snow and ice taught us that downshifting through the gears was the best method of slowing down. The biggest challenge, though, wasn’t navigating the race course, it was climbing the steep hill back towards town. After watching several teams fail, we drew on our Peruvian mototaxi experience from October, pulled out all the stops and successfully crested the slippery slope. We made it back to the hotel just in time for the official launch party. 

Entertainment for our traditional Russian dinner was provided by a group of very cheery dancers, none of whom could have been younger than 70. We agreed later that the appropriate collective pronoun for the ensemble was a “flail of Babushkas.” Supper was followed by another Russian tradition, the banya. Essentially a banya is a Finnish sauna, complete with cold plunge and flogging with birch branches, set up on a frozen lake. Despite having brought my swimsuit, I decided that jumping through the ice before warming up in the sauna was a mug’s game. So I watched in amusement as the lad’s ‘nads vanished up behind their kidneys. Sleigh rides complete with cossack hats and a horse riding demonstration by Olly finished the evening and we retired in anticipation of the morning's adventure. 

Death & Love

Our introduction to the motorcycles now complete, we made our way to the Ural factory museum where a truly splendid collection of antique motorcycles was on display. The entire history of Urals was there, right back to its origins with a BMW R12. What was perhaps most interesting was how little the basic model changed in 60 years. It wasn't a big surprise given Russia's history of central planning and lack of investment in basic research, but it's easy to see how this manifest lack of progress helped sow the seeds of the Soviet Union's ultimate self-destruction.

That afternoon we took in a local ice hockey game. The Russians are as serious about hockey as the Canadians and that's saying something. We watched a local league match and the entire town seemed to be at the stadium with us. Among the spectators was Irbit's mayor and Sergey the fixer from the Ural factory. Behind us dozens of young kids were playing matches on the six other natural rinks.

Back at the hotel the official briefing was getting underway and was to be taken seriously. Olly, the Adventurists' own professional stunt man, had participated in the inaugural Ice Run in 2012 and learned a number of lessons that he was was hoping would scare us sensible. It was working. We learned that there were two routes north to the ice roads. The easy one was along clearly sign-posted, paved roads that were well maintained. Riders headed that way would most likely only have to deal with the cold and the generally obstinate unreliability of the motorcycles. However, there was an alternative. A route that, if memory serves me, Olly described as an uncharted avenue to certain death. At least that was his experience when last year he and three teammates got stuck deep in the woods, all the while believing they were heading in the right direction. Their road out of the town of Tavda narrowed gradually until it became a single track as they entered a forest, where they promptly bogged down in deep snow. For 48 hours in biting cold weather the four men muscled their Urals along a total of 40 kilometers. Eventually a group of local hunters found them quite by accident and with their four wheel drive truck dragged them back to safety and gave them directions. In so many words Olly reiterated the Adventurists' prime directive: "On the Ice Run you will be completely responsible for your own safety. If you get into a difficult situation, you will have to get yourself out of it." He then gave us advice on driving: 'ruts are sluts', frostbite: 'check each other to make sure you don't have any exposed skin', drinking alcohol in the cold weather: 'don't', and the mechanical condition of the bikes, 'so much better than last year!'

Sufficiently sobered up by the end of Olly's talk, we all headed back to the bar for dinner and drinks to take the edge off our nerves again. There Zaya and I sat and made smalltalk with Geordie, an Aussie from Sydney on his first big winter adventure. With his neatly trimmed beard, Geordie looked for all the world like Czar Nicholas II. Zaya was quite taken with him, that much was obvious, and it would be hard to believe he wasn't interested in her. 

Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

- This shouldn't be all that hard, after all we did the Mototaxi Junket and survived that.
- Can we take Eric's motorcycle from last year? He said all the mechanics were rebuilt and aside from the electrics it's in pretty good shape.
- Let's see, the cheat sheet says her name is Eva and that she was pulled out of a ditch last year by a tank. I saw that on Eric's video, that was pretty funny.
- Let's roll her out of the garage and try getting her started.
- There's a trick to this kickstarting. Ok, turn her over and get the cylinders aligned so that you get the maximum throw, got it. It's that flick the Russians all seem to know how to do. The flick at the end of the kick.
- Yeah, yeah, you have a go. Ok - dammit, that started her up. I'll drive first and get her round the corner. It would be embarrassing to have to be pushed at this point.
- Ice, snow, brakes. Don't need a front brake - really a total waste of time. Logically, he's right. Wheel lock up on ice and besides I can slow down with the engine. We will need to drive incredibly defensively. Just like we did in Peru, maybe more so.
- Ease off on the clutch and whoa! A hard right, clutch in, easier on the throttle, easier. Ok, that's better. Forward motion is a good thing. I'm going to die out there. I know it.
- It's like being on the set of Schindler's List or Indiana Jones, or something.
- Right turn ahead - watch out for right turns because you may tip. Crap! The damn thing wants to roll over. Ok, Ok, slowly around the corner, now. I'm a wuss!
- Sh*t, there's a truck and a car and deep snow, just follow the other guys, not so bad, not so bad, okay, uh-oh, truck from my left, he's a big bastard. Wheee! Little wheel spin there and we're around! Just don't make me stop. Don't for God's sake make me stop!
- We need to go back the other way to practice lefthand turns. It's time Zaya had a go.
- Not too bad, not too bad, but the rear brake doesn't seem to work. Could you check it and make sure it's not operator error?
- A donut at the entrance - very nice. Oh, the folly of youth! Yeah, yeah, that's what I figured, brake's fine, it's the operator.
- We're on our way! Holy crap, we're on our way!

A Couple of Pricks

During our overnight stay in Yekaterinburg, Zaya admitted that she'd been to see the doctor in Ulaanbaatar for a chest infection. With my medical background I'm leery of anyone that says they're sick and about to embrace an adventure that might kill a healthy ox. So when Zaya asked if I'd be comfortable helping her with her treatment regime I cautiously said yes. At that moment she reached into her vast bag and pulled out dozens of glass ampoules of cephalosporin, lignocaine, normal saline and gentamicin sulphate, along with syringes and needles by the score. My immediate thought was "Crikey! This woman needs to be in Intensive Care, not about to hop on a motorcycle for two weeks." The idea of injecting Zaya with massive quantities of antibiotics in freezing conditions every eight hours held little appeal for either of us. Even teaching Zaya to dose herself didn't seem in any way practical. I'd brought a bunch of Z-Pak, a modern kills-it-all wonder drug, and gave them to her as cover. Since she said she felt fine, I suggested that she hold off on the injections until she got home, but keep the other meds with her just in case. Because being sick in Siberia is nothing to sneeze at (sorry about that - ed.). 

Irbit is one of those towns that is hard to place in time. Its historical, pre-communist wealth is plainly visible in the handsome old brick buildings which line the streets. The city clearly avoided most of the ghastly destruction brought about by the Second World War and the ensuing Soviet concrete block rebuilding. In the warm light of the sunset we could still make out traditional wall decorations blending in with the fading patinas of once brightly colored stucco. Scattered around town are some impressively dilapidated log houses that look like they go back even further in time. There is something cozy about the place.

We arrived at the Hotel Povorot on Friday evening just in time for a warm up vodka slinging and arm wrestling session with the local Russian muscle. Fully embracing her new antibiotic regime, Zaya kicked things off by doing shots with Adrian and Sergei and then mysteriously vanished. One minute she was there, the next she was gone.

The Povorot has an interesting set up in their bedrooms. The outer door to the hallway can be locked with a key, but there is also an inner door that can be locked only by hand from inside the room. Access to the toilet and separate shower lay in the wide vestibule between the two doors. In her stupor Zaya had made her way back to her room and subconsciously locked the inner door thus locking me out of my much needed bed. Banging on the door, calling out, phoning, and otherwise raising hell proved fruitless. Zaya slept on. Not sure what else to do, I lay down in the vestibule and slept briefly until a paralytically drunk Russian crashed in and started bashing on the inner door just above my head. Drunk as he was, he only looked down and saw me when I told him to, "f*** off you prick!" At which point instead of crushing my windpipe with his boot, he turned around and staggered out into the corridor. Jet-lag and vodka overwhelmed me and I reasoned that at some point Zaya had to wake up, so I slept for few more hours on the floor.

A View From the Bus Towards Irbit

Aeroflot's one bag rule was my introduction to Russia's general hatred of luggage. The next time I found it was getting on the bus in Yekaterinburg that was heading downtown from the airport. Stern-looking and solidly built as she was, I was in no position to argue with the conductress whether my bags were really the size of another two passengers so I  paid the $1.00 fare difference. 

Tall, with dark, tousled hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a geek's good looks, Oleg is a friend of Zaya's friend Elena. At 22, in addition to being a millennial, Oleg is part of the first post-communist generation. He says he still remembers communism, but, I asked him, will your children? Everything around us, from the McDonald's to the Citroen dealerships tells me Soviet style communism will simply fade as quickly as the generations will forget. Oleg was kind enough to let us stay the night in his tiny student apartment where he and Zaya and a couple of friends partied as I slept off my jet lag.

My next anti-baggage encounter was boarding the bus to Irbit the next day. The ticket inspector swore up and down that the bags of any kind were a violation of bus ordinances and that we should be summarily shot for suggesting there was room in the empty luggage compartment to stow them. Oleg entered into a shouting match with the inspector and eventually won the day. The bus started to fill up so we said our goodbyes and I made my way to the very back where I took a seat next to the window. 

Honestly, I'm not really sure where the border of Siberia is, but it seems to start east of the Ural Mountains and ends in the Pacific Ocean. The air is clear and bright as the countryside rolls by. Stands of silver birch with their black and white trunks are the only thing breaking up the wide, flat plains of snow. 

Now, I am in the Midwest. It's Wisconsin out there. From the farms to the fields it's very familiar and harkens back to my boyhood in Illinois. At 5:15PM the sun is still bright with a late afternoon's feel. Snow is a palette on which light plays. Right now it's alternately watery blue in the shadows and yellowy pink in the sunny spots, perhaps with a hint of abutilon, anything but white. Long shadows at a 45-degree angle indicate our easterly direction, which is as it should be. 

Welcome to Russia!

To Build a Fire is a short story by Jack London that describes an arrogant man's walk from one trading post to the next in the dead of a winter along the Yukon Trail. London is unsympathetic to his central character, as unsympathetic as nature is. At the start of the story an old timer warns the man, if it's fifty below, don't venture out without a partner - better yet don't go out at all. Even the man's dog knew better, but the man goes anyway. And dies.

Not much has changed in the hundred years since that story was written. Caution in the frozen north pays rewards and success goes to those that are prepared and respectful of nature and her awesome abilities. It's been said that nature has nothing to fear from man and that when it is time she will reclaim her birthright. When she does, we humans shall sit down and we shall sleep the most comfortable and satisfying sleep ever known. I digress.

The art of over-preparation and overpacking for these adventures has its consequences. Having frequent flyer status on Delta allows me to carry two bags for free. Aeroflot, a Delta Sky Team partner airline, could apparently give a toss and told me I could only check one bag, the other one I'd have to pay a surcharge for. The pretty brunette counter agent looked at me with solicitude, but made a lackluster shrug that said, "Really, I can't do anything. Decisions need running up the management chain and if the manager won't return my call then, gosh, comrade there's really nothing I can do. You will just have to wait." Initiative, I realized at that moment, relies on trusting people to do the right thing without supervision. Trust is still in short supply in Russia. It will take a couple more generations before the double double checks become the exception rather than the norm.

Eventually I was directed upstairs where I talked with a ticket agent who said the same thing, that my fare allowed only one checked bag. She then sent me over to the check-in clerk who momentarily gave me a little hope that I might get away with it. No such luck. The mousey agent's fearsome middle aged supervisor said 'Nyet!' and I was sent packing to the excess baggage desk manned by the most ferocious looking woman yet. She hit me up for a $70 surcharge and made me feel like I was lucky not to have been arrested as well. 

Cutting back into the boarding pass line I heard someone behind me calling my name, "Mike! Mike!" It was Zaya, my traveling partner for this trip. At the last minute she had decided to abandon her original plan of taking the Trans Siberian Railway from her home town of Ulan Baatar in Mongolia and flew instead. We hadn't seen each other or spoken since we parted ways in Peru four months earlier. After we checked in we spent some time catching up. Zaya is in her heart a romantic, even if she is unsure if she will ever fall truly in love. She wasn't having much success in that department, but was happy to know that I'd gotten engaged almost as soon as I returned home from Peru. I had a feeling her luck was about to change and that someone would sweep her off her feet - if they could only keep up with her.