Trouble in Paradise

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011
Because of the trips to Yakutsk and Magadan during the spring and summer, I hadn't ridden my GS in Italy since March, so I definitely wanted to get in one more trip to Italy before the season ended.  So I decided to fly down to Milan on September 30, have my bike dropped off at the airport, and then ride to the Cinque Terre area on the coast, where I could do some hiking, etc.  I was pretty excited, as I've been wanting to visit this area for some time.
Everything went fine, I landed on time, got the shuttle bus to the lot where the bike is parked, and as usual, they could not find my bag and key for a while but finally sorted it out.  I got things packed up and set out after checking the oil, although I forgot to check the tire pressure before leaving, and after going a few hundred meters I had to stop to put more air in the tires. 
Anyway, after a few kilometers on the highway I exited onto a smaller road that would eventually lead to Cinque Terre.  I'd only about about ten kilometers from the airport and was cruising along at about 60 kilometers an hour when I heard a horrible gnashing  noise (imagine marbles in a blender) coming from the engine, and the bike coasted to a stop.  No warning lights, no symptoms, just a sudden horrible noise…  I tried to start the engine again, but the starter would just thunk, and then nothing.  If not for the horrible noise that I heard from the engine, I would have thought that the starter had gone out.  In any event, after a few minutes it was obvious I was not going anywhere, so I pulled out the phone.  The woman at Eligio's office gave me the number for a bike recovery service, and after some adventures explaining to them where I was (just outside of Abbiategrasso) and waiting about 45 minutes, a truck came and picked me up.  There was then some discussion about where to take the bike, and they told me they would take it to a BMW dealer nearby (in Trecate, near Novara), so off we went.
At the BMW dealer, their initial diagnosis was also a bad starter, but after a bit more tinkering they gave me the bad news, which I was already expecting:  the engine was blown.  Here are the pictures of the engine that they sent me a few weeks later (don't look if you are squeamish!):

As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed off at this point; I had really been looking forward to this weekend, and now not only was the weekend shot, but I had to replace my bike's engine, which would be hugely expensive. BMW Boxer engines are supposedly rock-solid, and are not supposed to simply implode.  I have always been attentive about oil, etc., and was immediately, and remain, very suspicious about the Milan BMW dealer which had done the service, which included changing the oil and adjusting the valves. 
So first I had to figure out what to do with the remnants of the weekend; at this point I would not have time to go to Cinque Terre and hike, so I thought about just going back to Milan for a few days to sulk, but I really don't like Milan and that prospect was just too depressing.  Luckily the BMW shop in Trecate also rents bikes, so I decided I would take one of theirs and go somewhere else, not sure where…  They only had two bikes available, a huge BMW touring bike and an R1200R with no luggage. I took the R1200R and spent about an hour repacking everything I needed to fit on my packpack, which I strapped to the luggage rack.
I decided to spend the night in Novara, which was nearby, and the guys at the BMW dealer were nice enough to make a reservation for me.  One bad thing about taking the R1200R is that it did not have a GPS mount, so I had to navigate the old fashioned way.  After stopping a bunch of times for directions and violating numerous traffic rules, I found the hotel, which was just outside the old city.  I had a nice dinner with my maps spread out, and decided that I would head to Santa Margherita Legure or Portofino, which are next door to each other, a bit south of Genoa.

OCTOBER 1, 2011
After the restful evening in Novara, I left pretty early the next morning or the coast.  I took a bunch of smallish roads and without the GPS got lost a few times, but still reached Santa Margharita by early afternoon. I had not yet decided whether to stay in Santa Margherita or Portofino, but when I checked out a couple of hotels in Santa Margherita, it turns out they were full because of a big yacht show in Genoa.  That meant I would take the first hotel I found, and I soon found a nice hotel with a room with a balcony overlooking the harbor, so I snapped it up.  Here is the view from my balcony, nice!

Portofino is actually very close to Santa Margherita, only a couple of miles, so I decided I would take a walk and check it out.  Portofino has some kind of 1950's Hollywood glam, as apparently a bunch of movie stars "discovered" it back then, when it was a poor fishing village.  Anyway, the town now is nice enough, and fairly quaint.  Here are some pix:

As you can see, Portofino is pretty enough, but like many pretty things, much of it is fake; as you can see in this picture, all of buildings accents (window frames, etc.) are just painted on:

I hung out in Portofino for a couple of hours people-watching, and then caught a ferry back to Santa Margherita.  It got dark pretty soon, and as usual I had some wine and a cigar on the balcony. 

Here are some views from early morning:

OCTOBER 2, 2011
I had to go back to Milan today, as I was flying out tomorrow.  I had reserved a hotel in Milan; I've started doing this because otherwise it can be difficult to find a room there.  And I still have not found a hotel there that I really like.  Anyway, I wanted to go back via a different route, and found what looked like a nice road on my map, going through Bobbio (see squiggly purple line on map above).  Indeed, the road was fantastic, lots of curves and beautiful scenery.  And I have never seen so many motorcycles—hundreds, many thousands of them.  I didn't get any pix other this one of the R1200R:

The R1200R is an OK bike, but pretty blah. I don't understand who would want one, as it is not particularly sporty or good for touring.  I will stick with my GSA, thank you very much!
I got back to Milan OK, found the hotel with some difficulty, and as usual sort of wandered around the city during the evening. 

Road of Bones, End of the Road

AUGUST 20, 2011

From Susuman, we could conceivably make it to Magadan in one day, although it would be a long day.  We decided play it by ear, but decided that we would probably stop somewhere along the way.  Before leaving, Igor, the guy with the garage, asked for a couple of group photos; Igor is on the right, a really nice guy:

The first city past Susuman is Yagodnoye, a couple of hours away; Doug and Max wanted to stop for lunch there so we pulled into town and spent some time looking for a cafe.  We found one in the center of town, and found out it was some kind of holiday.  Maybe it was just the holiday, but Yagodnoye seemed much more lively and clean that Susuman, although even Yagodnoye probably be confused with the deserted and derelict Kadykchan without too much imagination:

We kept going after lunch, saw a lot of the same scenery.  We crossed the Kolyma river, and bit later decided to decorate a road sign with one of my stickers:

By 15:00 or 16:00, Doug wanted to stop, so we pulled into a town called Orotukan.  Orotukan lies on the left side of the road, on the far side of a small river.  At the entrance to the bridge, there was a sign that said "ABSOLUTELY NO OUTSIDE VEHICLES ALLOWED."  Friendly place!   We ignored the sign, rode into town, and pulled into the main square, which was completely deserted.  We went into what looked like the city hall; the doors were all unlocked, but the place seemed completely empty.  We came back outside, and pretty soon someone drove up in a Russian jeep, and we asked them whether there were any hotels in town.  It turns out there Orotukan does not have any hotels, but by then the mayor had wandered up, and promised to find us a place to stay.  While were were waiting, a few other people came up, including a family with a couple of kids, who started playing like they were vampires.  How cute!

Soon enough an army guy came back, and led us to a room that they had found for us; it looked like a guest house for visiting officials or something; not a hotel but someplace made up for visitors.  It was nice enough, but the apartment was number 13, and someone had painted crossbones on the door.  How odd!  After showing us the room, he led us back to the bank's garage, where they told us we could lock the bikes for the night for security.  Finally, the army guy drove us to a little store, where we bought the usual Ramen noodles, but I was also shocked to see freshly-popped cheese popcorn and lo and behold, Budweiser (US Budweiser) in bottles.  I bought some noodles, some popcorn, and some Budweiser and as we were getting back into the jeep, the army guy told us "Whatever you do, don't leave the apartment at night."  Between the sign at the bridge, the vampire kids, the crossbones, and this comment, I concluded that we'd escaped the zombies in Kadykchan only to end up in a vampire town…luckily it was pretty obvious that there was nothing to do or see in the town at night, and I was tired, so after finishing the popcorn and beer I went to bed, hoping that we'd see the sunrise….  Here I am, toasting the wonderful town:

Sure enough we survived the night and headed over to the bank garage to get our bikes.  We had to wait awhile for them to show up and open the garage, but once they showed up things went smoothly enough.  We rode the bikes back to the room, packed up our bags, and hit the road for Magadan.  This part of the road was the most unpleasant of the whole trip; the scenery was a bit more boring, but more important, there were suddenly a lot more trucks on the road, with the resulting dust.  As before, the dust made it very difficult and dangerous to pass, and because there was a fair amount of on-coming traffic as well, it was a real nightmare.  I think at one point I was trying to pass a particular truck for about fifty kilometers, riding right on its tail and losing sight of it in the dust until it braked right in front of me, or trying to pass but being able to because of the dust and on-coming traffice.  Finally we came to a construction site and I was able to pass the truck while riding through the construction.  As a result of all the dust, I got really really dirty.  When I stopped for gas about halfway to Magadan, one of the people there asked me "Don't you have cars where you come from?"  haha.

I had gotten kind of tired of riding in a group, so told Doug and Max that I was going to ride ahead today, and that I'd see them in Magadan.  I reached Magadan about two thirty or three, and waited for Doug and Max for maybe forty five minutes before deciding that I'd just see them at the hotel, and check out some of the sights in the meantime.  Here I am at Magadan city limits:

And here are some pictures from Magadan's memorial to the victims of the Gulag:

From up by the monument, I could see the fog rolling in over the city:

Finally I went to find a hotel; Doug had mentioned he wanted to stay in the BM Hotel, so when I saw it I pulled in and asked for a room.  I was pretty happy to find out that they had a room, and the girl behind the desk told me that another biker was staying there as well, so that we cool.  He was not in at the moment, but I figured I'd see him soon.  Here I am in front of the hotel, I guess I'm lucky they even let me in:

A bit later Doug and Max showed up, as well as Luiz, the other biker.  He had arranged with Hans-Joerg (the Austrian guy that we didn't see after Yakustk) to ride Hans-Joerg's bike back from Magadan to Vienna, so he was getting ready to leave in the morning and was excited about the trip.  He had planned to do the BAM, like Hans-Joerg, but we kind of discouraged him since it was getting late in the season, and he as by himself.  After everyone had showered, etc., we decided to go out for a celebratory dinner at the Green Krokodil, which was pretty good!  Here are Doug and Luiz, and then Max, and finally Doug with friend:

I took this shot of the bikes with my iPhone when we got back to the hotel:

The next morning we had to figure out how to get the bikes from Magadan to Vladivostok.  I was flying back to Moscow from Magadan, but Doug was going to take both of our bikes to Vladi, and then his girlfriend would ride mine back, so we had to find a ship to take the bikes.  We when to the TransFes shipping agent, and they said that they had a boat leaving in the morning, but that the bikes would have to be crated first.  We didn't have crates and didn't want to deal with it, so the woman at TransFes told us to go down to the port and speak with another shipper.  We did so, and they had a boat leaving in the afternoon, with no crate necessary, although the bikes would simply be strapped on deck, rather than in the hold.  Doug was in a hurry to get to Vladi, so we decided that that would work and brought the bikes down to the port for loading.  I got back to the hotel just in time to get my bags and catch my taxi to the airport.

We hadn't heard from the Moscow guys in several days and were wondering how they had fared on the Old Summer Road.  We found out later that they had made it, but it had take then six or seven days, so I was glad that we had chosen the new road.

Road of Bones, City of Ghosts

AUGUST 19, 2011

After our relatively restful night in Ust Nera, we packed up our bikes and went to fill up.  Here is our hotel, and the gas station there:

We didn't have much of a plan today, and didn't really know where we would spend the night.  We did figure that we would spend some out Kadykchan, which was along our route and which is described in full below.  But first we had some riding to do, including a couple of water-crossings.  Here is the first one, really the only significant water-crossing of the whole trip, as it turned out:

Here is the second one.  As you can see from the water level on the truck in the river, this one was kinda deep, probably a bit too deep for the bikes.

While Doug and I were futzing around looking for a shallower part of the stream, Max took the initiative, found an old bridge nearby, and got some pix from the other side:

Finally Doug and I got our acts together and also crossed the old bridge, which was actually in pretty good shape, here is a pic from the bridge, and then me crossing, then Doug:

A little later we came across another old bridge; I guess the winters, ice, flooding, etc. out here are pretty damn tough on bridges!

So we kept going a bit and came across another old town, of which there were quite a few out here.  We rode right by many of them, but this was bigger than most, and we decided to check it out.  The view from the road is shown below.  Doug memorably describes this look as "Post-Soviet Apocalypse," which really nails it.  There were actually a few people which seemed to be living in this place, but overall the place was derelict:

The only entry to the town was over these bowed concrete slabs, beneath which was a narrow, deep gash and then a stream. In general, seems like it would have been easier just to put the stream through a pipe and then cover the gash with dirt, but I guess they had their reasons:

Here is a view of one of the buildings in the town:

Doug and Max went rummaging around in some of the buildings, but I got a bit bored and rode ahead to the turn off for Kadykchan.  On the way, I stopped at this memorial to three Soviet pilots that died during WWII while they were ferrying a plane from the Far East to the front.  The text on the front reads "No one will be forgotten.  Nothing will be forgotten":

Finally I saw Kadykchan, a couple of kilometers off to the left of the road.  Kadykchan is a "ghost city", a city of some 20,000 abandoned after an explosion in the coal mine which was the sole reason for the town's existence.  Apparently after the explosion, people were given little warning to abandon the town and little ability to take stuff with them, so the place is full of junk.  I waited for Doug and Max on the road, and they showed up in twenty minutes or so.  We had briefly discussed spending the night in Kadychan, but decided we would check it out first.

I won't bore you all with more info about Kadykchan, if you are interested, here are a few links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadykchan

http://englishrussia.com/2007/10/04/kadykchan-the-city-of-broken-dreams/

If you don't want to read anything about it, by all means proceed to the pictures:

I guess you get the idea…  Actually it was a very creepy place, very post-apocalyptic.  I you know your Soviet-style cities, you can pick out the various municipal buildings in the pictures above:  apartments, power station, theater, city hall (complete with crumbling Lenin bust, etc.).  All the buildings had been reduced to a derelict state by the elements and by looters, and there is all kinds of debris scattered all over the city.  Doug picked up an old hammer and some kind of fur thing to use as a seat cushion. 

While I didn't exactly expect to see any zombies per se, I would not have been surprised at all to see some kind of cannibalistic mutant/freaks, and in fact Max and I encountered a zombies/cannibal/mutant shortly after we arrived:  I had lost Doug and Max and was waiting at a crossroads looking for Max and Doug.  After a few minutes Max saw me and rode up.  While were were waiting there, off in the distance we saw a figure dressed in black walking toward us along the main drag, a couple hundred meters away.  Since Doug was also dressed in black, I thought it was him, so we waited.  As the figure approached, we realized it was not Doug, but figured we wait to see who the hell other than us was wondering around this God-forsaken place.  The figure in black finally got within a couple of dozen paces when Max and I realized that there was something wrong—the person was kind of stumbling and had some kind of open sores all of his face—yikes, a ZOMBIE.  Max immediately got the hell out of there, but I had to do something with my helmet and gloves, which I'd removed, so by the time I'd started my bike the zombie had approached with a couple of paces and said something to me, although I couldn't understand what he said, and couldn't even tell if he was speaking Russian.  Whatever, I zoomed off. 

After losing the zombie, we found Doug again and explored the town for awhile.  It was kinda spooky poking around the buildings by myself (Doug and Max disappeared into some buildings, and I didn't see them for a while), and mosquitoes here were just brutal. Between the zombies and the mosquitoes, we decided it wouldn't be a great idea to spend the night in Kadykchan, so we left for Susuman, maybe 80 km up ahead, here is what the road looked like: 

Along the way we passed through Artyk, where there is a gas station that works sometimes, and sometimes does not.  When we came through, it was defiintely not working, and looked completely derelict, but it is hard to tell sometimes out here:

Just past the non-gas-station, there was a police checkpoint where there was a gate-thingy blocking the road, and a policeman checked everyone's documents.  Well, everyone but ours, anyway; invited us in for tea and cookies and a chat, all the while ignoring any vehicles that pulled up, forcing them to wait.  Nice guy, he said that there had been a heavy snow two days before, and showed us his collection of skins from duckheads he'd tacked to the back of the door to his living quarters.  We later wondered what on earth had done to be banished to this place…

We set off again for Susuman.  Here is Max's bike parked somewhere along the road, and then Doug and I taking a little pitstop:

Finally we pulled into Susuman.  There were spraying some kind of crap on the roads in town that made them really slick.  The first hotel we went to was full, with construction workers.  The second hotel had space, but no secure parking, so they called some guy with a garage who came by and led us to his place. Here is my bike parked in the garage:

After dropping off the bikes, we asked Igor (the garage owner's name) if he could take us to a cafe where we could have dinner, because we hadn't had a hot meal since Cafe Kuba in Kyubeme.  Susuman apparently has three cafes, and Igor took us to all of them, but all of them were booked for weddings.  Susuman looked like the kind of place suffering from a mass population exodus, so I was surprised by the number of weddings on the same night, and not very happy, because it meant Ramen noodles again for us…