Blog 2.
Vladivostok to Vaneno, where the Bam starts.

On Saturday night last, July 12th., in Vladivostok, we went to eat with two German guys, Fritz and Tomas, who were also staying at the hotel.
They were on their way to Japan, traveling around the world in a mini.

On Sunday morning, as we flew the quadcopter towards the hotel, they unfurled a large German flag from their balcony, blew a vuvuzela and sang their national anthem. We'd been slagging them, the night before about the impending world cup final. Less than 24 hours to go. :-)

Fritz and Tomas seeing us off in Vladivostok.

Late morning, we got on the road to get as far as possible towards Vaneno.
We encountered a serious amount of roadworks. Here, they just dig away the old road until it resembles a stony, tilled field. No warning, no stop/go guy. Just choose your line and go.
Sometimes, there'd be a stretch of newly laid tarmac alongside, blocked by rows of old tyres. We'd slip through the tyres onto the fresh tarmac to make quicker progress.
On approaching one of these, Kev slowed to find a way up onto the fresh tarmac, Gary ran into him and down Gary went.
As they'd slowed, I'd gotten closer than ideal and when Gary went down, I barely managed to miss his bike, and didn't quite miss him.
My new sticky-out sidestand broke off. That's the second sidestand I've lost on the journey so far.
Oh, and I left a bruise shaped like a front tyre print on Gary's back.
Though I'm minimising it now, we were seriously panicking initially. A blow to the back from a bike can cause that reaction. Luckily, it was just a bruise, a large one.
Later in the day, as we were about 20 kms from Luchegorsk, stopped at the side of the road, a guy called Alexandar pulled up, asked us where we're from, what're we doing. That, and people giving friendly toots on their horns, frequently happens as we go along. People seem to have a friendly curiosity in what we're doing.
He invited us to stay at his place. He also had a safe place to garage our bikes.
After a quick conflab, we decided to accept his offer.
When we arrived at his garage, his friend Sergei was there. We put the bikes away and headed to Alexandar's flat. It was not palatial but we were treated royally.
As we cleaned up, they went shopping for food and vodka.
They came back, cooked for us and shared chat, food and vodka with us for the evening.
The next morning, we got to see the world cup final from our beds.
Well we saw it together, in our sleeping bags from the floor of his sitting room, as Alexandar watched from his bed-settee behind us.

Once over, we sent congratulation messages to Fritz and Tomas.
Alexandar went to work, organised things there, came back to bring us back to the bikes and on for breakfast.
There was nothing in this goodwill gesture for him, just the pleasure of helping visitors to his country.
After breakfast, I was directed around back to the toilet.
I walked down a narrow passageway, with planks of wood and bits of lino, keeping my feet out of the puddles to a very basic loo, with an older lady behind a hatch, folding pieces of toilet paper. I handed her 15 roubles through the slot in the window and she handed me my allocation of toiletpaper sheets.

We rode on through miserable rain and miserable countryside.
Traveling through rain, through impoverished, rural Russia is so grey and dreary, it makes a soft day in Ireland seem like the Bahamas.
It was so grey, there was barely enough light to create the usual rainbow reflection that you get from diesel on the wet road, which we later encountered, safely.
We stopped that night at a roadhouse at the junction where the main road North meets the road to Vaneno.
To call it basic would be generous but it only costed €10 per person and there was a large shed out back where we could change our tyres.

It was 11 by the time we'd changed all the tyres for knobblies.
At least we didn't have to carry them on the bikes from here, which is a major relief.
We celebrated, though tired, with a few beers, some vodka and a little boisterousness.

On Tuesday morning, Ned's rear tyre had gone down overnight, through a pinch puncture so that was redone and we traveled forth.
Again, we encountered the usual variety of good, bad and dug up roads but now, we also encountered roads that were so bad, they resembled what we expect the BAM trail to be like but we're sharing these "roads" with cars and trucks and, this is a main road between two large towns/cities.
Early on this track/road, a strap on Kev's bike came loose, caught in his back wheel and ripped his rear light/numberplate unit off.

This, added to his front light falling loose of it's retaining clips earlier wasn't good. His fuel injector later causing trouble meant he wasn't having the best day.
We ploughed on to arrive at our destination, the 5 star Hotel Vaneno, the easy part of our journey complete. 5 star the sign outside says. It wouldn't get 2 stars at home but it's clean and the shower is powerful.

Kev and Ned stripped out the dodgy injector and put in a spare Kev was carrying.

A quiet, weary bite to eat and early to bed, ready to head in the morning to find the start of the BAM.
I got up the next morning to a dose of the trottskis. I went to the local supermarket for Imodium and a lady next in the queue drove me to a pharmacy.
So many people told us before we came that the Russians aren't nice people. Our experience hugely contradicts that assumption.