Blog 3.
The first few days. One man down in dramatic style.

Well, we got to Komsomolsk - on - Amur yesterday and it's now Monday, July 21st..
It's been an interesting few days.
I forgot to mention in the last post that as we entered Vaneno, a guy on a Suzuki Marauder 1500 turned around , stopped us and offered that we and our bikes could stay in their clubhouse.
Kev had already booked us into the hotel so we declined but swapped numbers, something that became fortunate soon enough.
We left on Wednesday 16th. to start the BAM.
The weather would be beautiful if you wanted a 20 minute tan but 30 degrees wasn't what we needed. We were sweating, even on the easy initial part.
We went a few kms out of Vaneno and started the journey proper. Initially, it was a pot-holed trail along the side of the railway but that soon petered out, leaving us with no option but to ride the track siding.

This was mostly a strip of loose stone, about 18 inches wide with the concrete sleepers sloping about 8 inches into that strip. The optimum position was to ride at the edge of the sleepers. A few inches to the right is the rail, where you don't want to be and a few inches to the left and you're sliding down a slope. Getting the bikes up from there proved less than easy.
I'm carrying the quadcopter on my back rack as it's the biggest. My tankbag proved to be too big to allow me to stand on the pegs, so I had to strap that on top of the quadcopter box. Neither is very heavy but at that height, they create a significant pendulum effect. Concentrating on keeping in a straight line with that behind was draining. I slipped off twice and fell over the rail once, whacking my right ribs hard against the far rail.
I lay there, winded, praying that the pain indicated only bruising. Then Kev shouted that there was a train coming.
He lifted the bike off me and we dragged it off the track and down the slope.
Soon after, Ned's bike ended up getting knocked over while helping me and ended up facing down the siding with it's wheels pointing towards the track, with petrol pouring out of it. This was not going well.
We thought about riding between the tracks and spoke to a railway worker who told us something like...after the next train, there'll be nothing for x minutes and the next hut like this is only 3 kms down the line.
We hoisted the bikes over the rail and started to make good progress down the track. Heehaw :-)
Well, not really. :-(
There were loads of trains in that 3 kms. We had to abandon that plan pretty quickly. At one point, in a moment of panic, my bike was dragged over the rail to avoid a train some distance away. When we stood it up after the train passed, the clutch lever bracket had been broken, not the lever (I have a spare for that) but the bracket it pivots on.
We managed to McGyver a repair with a piece of wood, some cable-ties and duct tape and on we went.
By the time we decided to camp, I'd run out of water and with the heat, I was fairly dehydrated.
We decided to set up camp next to a river over which was a railway bridge.
As soon as we got off the bikes, the rain that would have been very welcome earlier, started.
Anyway, we set up the tents, made Michelin star food and retired.
That has to have been one of my toughest days to date on a bike........to date!

Thursday 17th.
We got up to another warm day, had breakfast , packed up and headed on our way.
The first thing we had to do was cross the metal railway bridge.
Kev crossed first, then Gary, followed by me.

Gary clipped a piece of the bridge with his sidestand and broke off the piece that holds the spring onto the sidestand. Mark was to have been next. He laid his bike against the railing at the entry onto the bridge and he and Ned were looking at Gary's bike when we heard a train approach from behind us.

Above, Gary leaning away from the train. If you look behind him, that's me that the train is just about to pass.

Gary and I leaned ourselves and the bikes as far as we could towards the side railing of the bridge and watched the train speed past. I was looking back towards Mark's bike, thinking it was on it's sidestand and hoping it wouldn't rock off it with the vibrations. Next thing, I saw it, in an instant, fall towards and under the train, spin 360 degrees and get spat out again against the side railing.

Remember how tall I said my luggage was. Little did I realise at this time that Kev was actually holding tightly onto Mark's bike from the other side of the railing, when a protruding set of steps dragged it from his hands and the only reason Gary and I survived was because the bridge was 18 to 24 inches lower than where Mark's bike was. Kev was convinced that when the train passed, he'd find two bodies on the track.
While I was feeling perfectly safe, the others view was of me being inches from enduring the same fate as Mark's bike.
Well, one day in and one bike down. Mark's bike was severely damaged, his front wheel was twisted with spokes missing, his subframe bent and his back petrol tank split. We tried to work out our chances of hammering it into a condition where we could get it to somewhere where we could get parts but not for long.
We tried to flag down a few trains to no avail until, eventually, a few hours later, a service train stopped, the bike was hoisted aboard and Mark and his bike headed into the distance.

Poor Mark. Mark who? The show must go on. :-)
A little at a loss for how to feel, we headed on without our fallen colleague, enduring the same trackside conditions as yesterday, in what must have been 30 degrees of heat again.
A few kms on, having dragged our bikes down the slope to avoid a train, we saw old wooden sleepers below the slope and decided to try riding along those. This turned out to be like a trials section and our laden bikes were 4 times heavier than a trials bike. The battery on Ned's bike died and I went on the get Gary to bring back the jump leads. He'd stayed trackside and had made better progress than we had. When I got there, I was so exhausted, I couldn't speak. He asked me the same question three times. I nodded a positive reply but he persisted and on the third asking of the same question, I barked a barely audible YES. I didn't have the energy to add a swear word. Gary went back and I lay, trackside, with no water and my jacket over my head to avoid sunstroke.
We'd only covered a few kms at this stage.

When the others arrived, we carried on. At one point, I saw a metal bar about 4 inches high protruding from the rail and decided to pop over it. Oops, not a good idea it transpired later on.
We eventually arrived at a trickle of a stream and we topped up our water bottles. As we were doing so, a disgruntled 20 something year old in a Land Cruiser appeared. We were in his way and, worse than that, he was on his way to fix whatever I'd broken.
He carried on, as did we. We got to a river crossing and both Ned and I dropped our bikes in the water. I killed the ignition in time but Ned's needed to have the ''bike on end to drain the exhaust, plug out'' treatment.
By now, we'd achieved the huge distance of about 6 to 8 kms.
As we were doing this, the railway guy returned and after some chat, he became far less disgruntled. He waited until Ned's bike was fixed and led us along a better trail.
This happened to lead to his boss's container / office. We initially got a bit of a bollicking but Gary charmed him round in his almost fluent Russian.
The damage had been reported to the police but if we went in with an explanation, we'd get away with a fine of approx $1.
With a lot of Dutch courage in this Russian, he asked Gary for a spin on his bike. Reluctantly, feeling he had little choice under the circumstances, Gary let him.

He came back, then informed us that he and his guys were going to lead us into the local village. Gary was to get in the Land Cruiser, as he would lead on Gary's bike. Once there, he disappeared on the bike for almost an hour and returned with a present of bike gloves for Gary, his new best friend.

After hours in the dusty village, we were told not to worry about the fine and to follow another guy in a different jeep to a place where we could stay.
This turned out to be a really strange health resort of sorts.
As we rode in behind the jeep, through the security barrier, we felt like cowboys riding into a town consisting of brightly coloured, wooden buildings either side of a single dustrack, with all the locals staring.
We booked in, went to our rooms and then to the sauna before dinner.... an unexpected and pleasant end to the worst day on a bike.... ever.

Two police later arrived, checked our passports, had photos taken with the bikes and left. That wasn't too bad we thought.
Later, about 11 p.m. one of the railway guys arrived at our door with the kneepads I'd accidentally left in the village, 9 kms away. Great people.
Meanwhile, it transpired Mark was in the nearby village, 9 kms away, trying to sleep in the cab of a train with the engine running beside him.

The train we'd stopped didn't go all the way to Vaneno. He was brought back here, fed and watered by the train drivers wife and in the morning, his bike was transferred to another train to Vaneno. He contacted the guy mentioned previously on the Suzuki Marauder, who helped with arranging to ship Mark's bike and entertained him in typical Russian style over the next few days.

Bedtime now. Will update in a day or so on how we ended up overnighting in a hospital.