AUGUST 4, 2015
Hard to believe I'm making my seventh border run from Moscow. Wow...
Last year I had a problem in that I had to do the border run at the end of April, because my temporary import expired earlier and earlier every year, because I had to leave Russia before the previous one expired.
But I fixed that problem last summer by going to Norway and returning in August, so I "reset the clock" with my temporary imports. So this year I had to leave Russia before August 12, which is much better than April!
While generally it would have been good to not do the border run until April 10 or 11, this year I was leaving for Kyrgyzstan on August 16, so wanted to have plenty of slack. Therefore I wanted to go in the first week of August.
It turns out that a couple of buddies volunteered to come along, in particular Tony Pettie, Pete Dick, and Terry (all Brits). They would ride along towards the border and then peel off towards Sebezh, a small town near the border, and wait for me while I did my temporary import business.
So that's what we did. I got to the border by about 16:00 (late start!), while the other guys found a hotel in Sebezh. It took me four hours to cross out of Russia/into Latvia, out of Latvia, into Russia--a personal worst time for me. There was a little drama involving my license plate which I won't bore everyone with, but everything finally worked out and I got back to Mother Russia by about 20:00, when I rode to Sebezh to meet the guys.
It turns out that Sebezh is a rather nice little town on a little lake. Our hotel was right on the lake, and they had a shashlyk pit and bar so we had shashlyk and beer, it was really nice.
Next morning we got up bright and early to get out of dodge; here are pix of the crew:
Terry, on his way back from Kyrgyzstan to England:
Pete:
Tony on his cool new bike:
Hard to believe I'm making my seventh border run from Moscow. Wow...
Last year I had a problem in that I had to do the border run at the end of April, because my temporary import expired earlier and earlier every year, because I had to leave Russia before the previous one expired.
But I fixed that problem last summer by going to Norway and returning in August, so I "reset the clock" with my temporary imports. So this year I had to leave Russia before August 12, which is much better than April!
While generally it would have been good to not do the border run until April 10 or 11, this year I was leaving for Kyrgyzstan on August 16, so wanted to have plenty of slack. Therefore I wanted to go in the first week of August.
It turns out that a couple of buddies volunteered to come along, in particular Tony Pettie, Pete Dick, and Terry (all Brits). They would ride along towards the border and then peel off towards Sebezh, a small town near the border, and wait for me while I did my temporary import business.
So that's what we did. I got to the border by about 16:00 (late start!), while the other guys found a hotel in Sebezh. It took me four hours to cross out of Russia/into Latvia, out of Latvia, into Russia--a personal worst time for me. There was a little drama involving my license plate which I won't bore everyone with, but everything finally worked out and I got back to Mother Russia by about 20:00, when I rode to Sebezh to meet the guys.
It turns out that Sebezh is a rather nice little town on a little lake. Our hotel was right on the lake, and they had a shashlyk pit and bar so we had shashlyk and beer, it was really nice.
Next morning we got up bright and early to get out of dodge; here are pix of the crew:
Terry, on his way back from Kyrgyzstan to England:
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