Third time lucky. Fingers crossed. A quick prayer, a wish and a promise. Up at 6 and out at 6:30 in the pissing rain. The place is still deserted except for the toast ghost who’s been wandering the corridors all night.
25 minutes later I’m back where i started. I’m about an hour in and I’m falling asleep on the bike, rain pattering on my helmet when I hear a couple of bikes pull up behind me. They’re Kazaks and they’ve been to Norway to see the fjords. One of them walks up to the customs hut and asks if we can come through. Bugger me they say yes and much to the disgust of the car drivers we’re in. Maybe Lady Luck got the desperate text I sent her last night.
An hour and a half later we’re waiting at the entry to the Russian side. Matey has a word and again, to my amazement, we’re let through to join the queue. Now this is where I have a problem with the word queue. Queue implies some movement, however small, in the direction of your goal. Unless your goal is to wait till you die then decompose on the tarmac
There is next to sweet fuck all happening. Anywhere. They take out passports and tell us to wait inside. I imagine it’s like you imagine an old Russian border post to be. The scent of urine in the air, paint hanging game-fully onto the walls, an old nana with a mop and bucket not achieving any cleaning, just evening out the dirt. The waiting begins. Maybe 90 minutes we get our passports back. Stamped. Fantastic. But now it’s customs. This is where I had problems last time with some tyres I was carrying. Just for shits and giggles, and because I like to double dare myself, I’m carrying tyres again just to see what happens.
Customs is where you queue behind cars that have to completely empty every bit of luggage onto a table that then looks like a bargain basement stand at a car boot sale. I have never ever seen so much absolute shit it all my life.
Then you have to carry every bit of luggage across to a building to be x-rayed, and then when it’s empty you take the actual car to be x-rayed too. We had 3 cars in front of us 2 hours ago and they’re still here. The Kazak was speaking to the old bloke in the car in front. He’s been in the queue for 28 hours. He saw me yesterday. He saw me get rejected and leave, then he saw me arrive again this morning.
We’ve been here about 5 hours now. And the demons in my head are well awake and restless. I can hear them kicking at my teeth. My eyeballs are like boiling water where the angry mob I carry in my head are beating their fists against them, trying to brake through and unleash spit and venom at all and sundry. Whenever you see me being impatient, this is why. It’s because I have to save all my patience for when I’m in the presence of truly spectacular fucktards. But I’m running out, fast. 2 more hours later and I’ve reached the xray machine with the bike. It’s not obvious where to go and there is a woman shouting and screaming at me. “If you don’t shut the fuck up love I’m going stake you to the ground, turn the x-ray up to 200 and leave you there till your tits are fried and your brain is bubbling out your ears”… I scream into my helmet. Which helps, but has left a few scorch marks.
Then, suddenly, 10 hours after I arrived I’m set free into the motherland. Go to get some bike insurance and change some money at a little hut. “dollars to rubles” “da”. She uses google translate. “New notes with stripe”. Fuck. She only wants nubile notes. I show her some adolescent notes that have been nervously stoked and gently fingered but she’s not keen on those. That could be a problem. A lot of my notes are not in the first flushes of youth.
Anyway, that’s to worry about later. Now it’s 100 miles to an old soviet style hotel near a river where the theme is the colour brown and style is strictly retro.
“Do you want to erase all memories of today? This will permanently delete the whole experience”. “Errrr .. yes”
Starts off ok. Nice walk in the morning sunshine. Watching the Russian world go by.
No key cards here. You get a lump like a massive Rolo and you look like you have a rare occurrence of “triplicus testiculareous” if you put it in your pocket.
And why waste money on expensive stickers to warn of high voltage electricity when you can get the kids from the local school in to draw on the boxes. You might want to turn the electric off first… or maybe not
Went to change some money at the bank suggested by the nanas on reception. Which was now boarded up and closed. So I walked a while and into the biggest bank I could find. People everywhere and a ticket machine with a zillion screens to choose from. I ask a random bloke and he presses some buttons, gets me a ticket to ride. My numbers up, I’m sat in front of the change woman, and I’ve forgotten my passport. 20 minutes later I’m back. I press every combination on the screen and get 50 tickets with every option covered, then I sit like a bingo player and wait for the call. I get the same nana and she goes through the protracted process of a million forms. The she has to have another teller come in plug in her key too to confirm the deal. All this before she shows me the exchange rate, which is, as you can imagine, is akin to having both fists simultaneously rammed into your rectum. My money has gone from pounds to euros to dollars to rubles and it’s got raped every step the way. I have a finite amount of cash for Russia. It’s my single and only lifeline. There is no backup. My cards don’t work out here. So it’s a bit of a dare to set off east. I see it as like money hourglass. Cash is falling from the top to the bottom and I have to leave before it’s empty, but at moments like this I just see a big lump fall down and disappear. I have to recalculate. Money/days. I’ll have to be very careful.
I’ve got 300 miles to meet my Russian friend. Leave at 10. Piece of cake. Even time to stop for a look at a new statue. There is a lot of 80 year anniversary celebration here and say what you like about them, they do seriously good statues.
The ride is slow and gets ever more busy as I get closer to Moscow. The satnav seems to be playing up. Dithering about and delaying decisions, often until after I’ve passed a turn. Moscow is a headfuck to navigate at the best of times. Huge multi lane roads everywhere with fast and aggressive drivers and gridlock everywhere. It’s a real maze of a place. All of a sudden, just for shits and giggles, the satnav looses satellites, and they don’t come back. The reason they don’t come back is because Russia is jamming them for the entire centre of Moscow. Welcome to hot metal hell. I’m totally fucked. I’m in the middle of Moscow and not a fucking clue where i’m going.
I’m making random choices. The roads have no pull offs or stopping places. I’m just swept along like a leaf on a river. Talking of which, I end up on the bank of the Moskva. Pull up in front of some gates and get the phone out. It doesn’t know where I am either. Oh dear. I pick a route out and hit go but it’s not tracking my position at all. It’s all just vague. All I can do is try to keep the sun at my back to head east, and keep stopping to work out from the rivers, the roads going overhead and other visual clues approximately where I am, then try to work out where to go. The phone is in my tank bag so I can’t see it. I just jump into the traffic and guess. Go for a mile and try again. 2 hours later the satnav kicks back in and my arse can breath a fart of relief. Finally pull up at my friends house about 3 hours late at 8pm, completely fucked but once again in awe at what The Bitch can tolerate. We’ve been in a lot of stupid situations together but that was one of the stupidest.
I spoke to my mate about my plan. He thinks I’m mad. He thinks it’s not possible. And now I’m scared. Tomorrow is day one of the long haul. I’ve got a long long way to go in the next 10 days. Ummmmmm