From the Library

[Biggles]

Upon checkout I asked whether I could borrow some tools to complete one final - but critical - maintenance job on my bike. By the time I had got to the garage there were two men (one a young mechanic) ready to assist - or rather, actually do the job while I watched. They worked hard and quickly had the job done. The young mechanic was clearly a motorcycle enthusiast so I offered him a ride.  which thrilled both us for different reasons as he roared away, out of sight and then came skidding back into the garage, stopping just a few inches in front of us, transferring much of the rubber from my tyres onto the concrete floor.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p5

[Biggles]

Suddenly my front wheel sunk into a deep patch of soft dirt more like sand - and I immediately lost control of the bike. My handlebars swung back and forth and buzzed in a wide arc before my eyes, triggering that sickening sensation, almost in slow motion; the voice inside my head saying "Now, there is nothing you can do, you are going to crash and this is really going to hurt." Oh bugger! But there was more to it as I felt a sharp tug at my left ankle. Jammed under my pannier, it had become the pivot; I was a human catapult and my head the pay load. Oh dear. And before I knew anything else, the ground rushed up to meet me in a bone crunching collision.  My head slammed into the hard gravel of the road like the atoms in a particle accelerator colliding with six feet of cement. Colourful sub-atomic particles whizzed about inside my head in a wonderful show, like sherbet fireworks exploding against the blackness of my skull.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p6

[Biggles]

The only issue now was actually riding the bike with an ankle was numb from the pain so I mounted the bike carefully, turned it on, held the clutch tightly with my right (wrong) hand while bending over from the waist to move the gear lever up into 2nd gear with my left hand before lurching off along the road. I could brake and use the throttle, but, apart from steering (with warped handlebars), that was the extent of my control. I would just keep riding until I found someone or ran out of petrol, whichever came first. And I didn't even think about in which direction to head, for turning back was never an option. So, injured, deeply depressed but faintly optimistic, I headed off deeper into the wilderness, another victim of the Road of Bones.
Then I began to think how lucky I had been - my helmet and safety gear had saved my life and my heavy motorcycle boots had probably prevented my leg from being completely snapped off. Slowly, and with a wry smile on my face, I began to whistle and sing...
Always look on the bright side of life...
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p8

[Biggles]

The drivers were friendly and very interested in my bike. They shared their tea and food with me and I offered them what little I had but they refused. My Russian-English dictionary was invaluable as we worked through many topics. The older men in particular were very interested in Australia and what is was like to live there. 
When I explained the concept of long service leave they all fell about laughing - these men all worked every day of the year hauling diesel and other critical supplies up and down the Kolyma Highway (or at least the sections where it was possible to drive). They were away from home for long periods and often slept in their truck cabins. There was certainly no regulation of driving hours, although each truck usually had two or more drivers (the machines ran continuously) and speed was not an issue as it was impossible to drive more than 40kph in even the best weather on these roads.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p18-9

[Biggles]

This lifted my spirits no end - I had conquered the Road of Bones and was about to get through on the winter road to Yakutsk! I rode on - the channels got deeper and the mud thicker, the bike was struggling and so was I. I was drenched with sweat from the physical effort required to keep the bike upright and move forward. I made it to the corner. Almost there... I could see the end of the mud marked by a bridge and dry road ahead. I rode on for another few hundred metres until I reached a 
particularly bad patch. I had to stop - the bike had lost traction and I was worried I was bogged. I looked down at the back wheel and found it covered in thick mud, but not bogged. I clicked into gear but the wheel just didn't move - no drive. I checked again. I got down into the mud and pawed as much of it away from the drive chain and frame to give the wheel some clearance - again there was no drive, no power to the back wheel. Bugger - what had I done? Why wasn't the wheel moving? I had been OK with minor mechanical issues up until now, but an engine problem three hundred kilometres from the next major town I did not need. I kept working at it - I was convinced something was jammed in the chain stopping it from moving. I spooned the wet mud out with my bare hands from every conceivable part of the bike. My boots and legs were covered in mud. I took off the luggage and panniers and tried again - nothing. I tried pushing in neutral and the bike moved forward including the back wheel so there was nothing jamming it- it just wouldn't engage in gear and drive forward.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p51-2

[Biggles]

As soon as he slid his finger across his throat and said in his best English "ghum ovah" I knew that the game was indeed over. Lyo-ha carefully pulled the lightly baked clutch discs from the engine and showed them to me. These had worn severely from my incompetent riding and were now slipping over each other giving no traction and hence no drive from the engine. A search party was formed and they went scouring the auto-markets of Yakutsk in vain for replacement parts; for these were proprietary parts and the nearest Kawasaki dealer was ten thousand kilometres away in another country - but at least we had tried. After some complicated reparations, I managed to speak with my local dealer at home; he could have the parts within two days but then it would be over to an international courier to get the parts to me in Yakutsk.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p61

[Biggles]

In the morning, Sergei cooked me a full breakfast and then he and Sasha escorted me out of town and to the ferry across the Lena - some hundred kilometres away. As I sped away across the countryside, my two week stay in Yakutsk didn't seem so bad after all; I had been rescued from the middle of nowhere by an incredibly generous and hospitable man and his colleagues. I had been welcomed into his family and shared many things with them, I had explored a frontier town, hopefully understood the Yakut people and their culture a little better, I had seen fabulous wealth in gold and diamonds, I had seen and touched ten thousand year old life in permafrost and been granted honorary membership of the Nord Brotherhood motorcycle club. What else could I ask for?
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p78

[Biggles]

I spent the morning checking over my bike - it was amazing the number of factory-tightened nuts and bolts that had somehow loosened themselves in the course of riding over these rough roads. I checked each and every one and tightened many. Even the twenty seven mm nut at the top of the steering column was loose so that I could easily turn it by hand! I wasn't exactly sure of its purpose, but I suspected it was important and critical to be tight when riding - I had visions of the handlebars coming off in my hands as I tried (and failed) to corner a dangerous bend. As I went about my work the old lady owner was belting the living daylights out of the carpets that were hanging up in the yard for cleaning. She might have been old, but she sure packed a punch. Note to self: don't argue about the bill when checking out.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p85-6

[Biggles]

There was stuff every where; tyres, panniers, bags, toolkit, helmet, jacket, nuts and bolts - all spewed out onto the platform in a hurry, for the train had to vacate its position to let others come and go. This was a busy station in a large city with many train services both long distance and urban. People came and went too, inspecting my work but not bothering me. It was hot and sunny - over thirty degrees - and I quickly worked up a sweat putting all the pieces back together AGAIN. I sure was sick of doing this job. Within an hour, however, I had it all back together and was riding down the busy platform dodging commuters and travellers. 
I crossed the tracks with some tractors and cargo moving equipment and was suddenly on the streets of Novosibirsk, solo and dangerous - all I had to do now was ride down through Barnaul, to Semipalatinsk, across the steppes of northeast Kazakhstan to a remote and seldom used border crossing with China in the next eight days.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p102-3

[Biggles]

It felt as if I had been spat out of a time machine, so stark was the contrast between where I had come from and where I was now. I had spent over a month in the far north east corner of Russia in remote parts of Siberia. I had lived on a diet of bread, tea, sausage and tinned food. I had lived with locals and shared in their difficult conditions, stayed in the occasional "hotel", bathed in muddy tap water, ridden through mud, bog, swamp and rivers, drunk too much vodka, shared feasts of the best local food with generous hosts, eaten freshly cooked fish straight from rivers, slept in police stations, Kamaz cabins, workers' camps, apartments and camped in derelict ghost towns. Now I was riding along the wide open boulevards of central Novosibirsk in the hot summer sun.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p105

[Biggles]

By 9:30pm, however, I had made it to the outskirts of Semipalatinsk. It wasn't particularly well lit and there were absolutely no signs and when the road came to a fork I had to stop and ask for directions. I pulled up at a petrol station in the middle of an unofficial taxi rank. Out of the darkness came faces and bodies of all shapes and sizes. This was the place where the Russians had exploded over four hundred and fifty nuclear bombs - right up until the late 1980s - and it looked to me as if most of the guys here were a few chromosomes short of a full deck. It was like I had landed on the Island of Dr. Moreau. One man in particular was very peculiar - he had short hair on the top of his head, but big side burns and long curly hair from both the sides and back of his head down to his chest and I don't know how he ate without puncturing his lips - so badly arranged were his teeth. But he, like all of them, was extremely friendly and curious about me and my bike. It was as if an alien had landed and they were trying to make sense of it - that's impression I got anyway. Another man, dressed in a shell suit and looking the most normal, approached me. He was drunk and insisted I stay with him and his family - an offer I politely declined, but after asking about hotels three or four times it was clear I wasn't going anywhere. We talked about where I had come from and where I was going and they all inspected my bike in detail and were impressed. Some teenagers on motorcycles pulled up and also joined in.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p110-1

[Biggles]

In the morning I awoke to find Mischa meticulously cleaning every inch of my bike with a small rag and a bucket of water. He worked from top to bottom and around both sides for at least an hour, scouring and scrubbing and washing until the bike looked almost brand new. I tried to help, but he wouldn't have a bar of it – insisting that I was his guest and this was a gift from him to me. I ate a huge breakfast of kolbasa, eggs, bread, jam, sour cream etc, etc, and was completely full by the time we headed into town to say goodbye to Bolyat and Olya (sans Lyuba of course). Then the torture of breakfast #2 began. I couldn't believe it, it was an even larger fare than I had just consumed. I didn't know how I was going to manage it, so I just ate very, very, very slowly, chewing each mouthful as much as I could before trying to force it down. I felt they were at risk of breaching the UN charter for the protection of human rights. It took me a full two hours to get through just a fraction of what they had laid out. Luckily they weren't too offended and packed the balance in big plastic bags as add-on luggage for my trip. There was half a loaf of bread, honey, nuts, biscuits, potatoes, tomatoes, eggs and more. This would be lunch and snack food for the next few days.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p121-2

[Biggles]

I waddled down the stairs and flopped onto my bike, said my goodbyes quickly and rode off, following Mischa who had promised to show me the way out of town. But we weren't heading out of town at all. We soon pulled up at a large Russian Orthodox cathedral along the river bank near the centre of town. Mischa motioned that I follow him inside, so I entered the solemn space of the church vestibule facing the wall of icons common to all these churches. The priest was chanting prayers in deep monotones, seeing other people and trying to deal with their issues and requests. Mischa interrupted and politely dragged the priest over to meet me. He explained what I was doing and pulled out of his pocket four tiny golden crosses which he had purchased earlier. Mischa then gave these to the priest who blessed them and then carefully and earnestly hung one around my neck, singing softly in prayer as he did so. He then landed the other three crosses to me for safe keeping (one for each member of my family). Mischa definitely had a tear in his eye now and I was touched yet again by the depth of his feelings and his efforts to support and help me. We composed ourselves (well, Mischa did anyway) and I followed him in his car to the very edge of the town at the start of what looked like a barren and rocky desert. He stopped and got out, we gave each other a big hug, observed a minute's silence (a Russian tradition?) and then I was off across what turned out to 
be a barren and rocky desert; this was the beginning of the Steppes.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p122

[Biggles]

Omar rolled out a detailed map of Xinjiang Province which had pictures of famous and beautiful scenic locations for tourists plus a little descriptive text. I looked at each scene hopefully and asked Omar whether we would be going there - "No, that's not near our route" he said each time, or "That's close, but we don't have time to go there." He told me that Xinjiang has many beautiful mountain ranges, lakes and pastureland (where most of the scenes on the map were from) and the rest is desert. And where were we going I asked? "The desert"; we were headed along the southern Silk Road, across and around the enormous Taklimakan Desert. At this scale our journey (just in China) looked epic, and even though I had already ridden several thousand kilometres, this leg alone was going to be a few thousand more. It's funny- when I planned this trip I really had no comprehension of what riding a thousand kilometres would be like - distances between cities and across countries were just added up and averaged out in a mathematical exercise to spread the journey out over time. I had no real appreciation of the effort involved or the reality of relentless riding.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p133-4

[Biggles]

He worked quickly with deft hands and had soon removed the engine oil, coolant and all of the engine bolts, placing the removed parts carefully to one side on the pavement on a towel. He worked in silence and alone but the engine cover just wouldn't come off - the long rod that runs vertically and turns on its long axis to push and pull the clutch plates was jammed in position, stuck to the plates preventing the cover from releasing. He tapped, pulled, pushed, inserted screwdrivers from many angles but it simply would not come off. It would move a few millimetres back and forth but no more. Undeterred, Mr. Fan persisted until finally after a couple of good thumps with my rubber mallet (I knew it would come in handy for something) the engine cover came off, and as it did, little pieces of broken metal fell from the open clutch and rained onto the pavement. Mr. Fan looked up at me slowly from his prostrated position and there was no need for words - his expression said it all; it was bad, very, very bad and wasn't going to be fixed quickly or simply here on the side of the road in a remote village. 
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p137