Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

[Prutser]

Originally Posted by Buuurrrt

I don't mean to hijack your wonderful thread but if anyone is interested in seeing a report on our trip.

Please click here. I would love to hear what you think.

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=818258

Hi Buuurrrt,

I did read your RR from the start and I really liked it.

[tee bee]

Originally Posted by ROD CURRIE

Terry's the older "Brother" by about 7 weeks, he's also the richer, brainier, hairier and better looking. And he can drink more vodka. Life just deals yer a shit hand sometimes.

Rods lying, i,m neither wealthier ,inteligent ,haireir and definitely not better looking than handsome Rodny....... but i don,t mind a drop of vodka.........

[ROD CURRIE]

We rode on into the evening and onto a road under construction..a few miles on the new road, a few on the support/old road that was appallingly corrugated and hammering the shit out of the bikes and riders . It became clear that we weren't going to find anywhere more suitable that night so we peeled off at a junction and headed off in to the hills to find a quiet spot to camp. There were large grassy areas near a lake but experience told us that it would be Mossie City so we kept steaming on



We rode overland and found this quiet spot at the bottom of some foothills. It was blowing very hard and it was something of a struggle to get the tents up but after a wee while we were sorted.
My stove had gone tits up a few days before so we all gathered round and P boiled enough water so we could knock up a meal.



It'd been another long and eventful day and we were all happy to crawl into our pits.
I don't know how the other guys felt and I've never articulated it thus but but I had the strangest feeling camping here-like we were were on the moon. There was lots of crap around from livestock but we saw nothing-it was like camping in a vaccuum.

[joenuclear]

Originally Posted by ROD CURRIE

It'd been another long and eventful day and we were all happy to crawl into our pits.
I don't know how the other guys felt and I've never articulated it thus but but I had the strangest feeling camping here-like we were were on the moon. There was lots of crap around from livestock but we saw nothing-it was like camping in a vaccuum.

Eerie looking in daylight. Was the stove a KTM?

[Jurassic]

Originally Posted by joenuclear

Was the stove a KTM?

[Colebatch]

I left Bayantes soon after 2pm, confident of making the big smoke, Moron, 350km (220 miles) away by nightfall.

But... 35 km (22 miles) out of the village, disaster struck. My front wheel bearings were dead.

As I coasted to a halt, my mind immediately know why it happened. It was that flash flood that I got stuck in the middle of just before Bayantes. The one that pummeled my front hub with dirty water for half an hour. I looked at my map. There was no village closer than Bayantes. I surveyed the scene. There was Ger with some people outside about 400 yards (a quarter mile) away.

I pulled the front wheel off and took it and my tools and spare bearings over to the nearest ger. The two people I had seen outside the ger cooking were a couple of boys, about 10 years old. They had no parents around but kindly offered me some tea. I ashed to borrow a tomahawk / hatchet they had ling around for chopping wood, then while I drank their milky salty Mongolian tea, I began removing the wheel bearings.

The still good bearing was pretty straightforward to tap out, and my confidence was on a high. I thought I will fix this problem and be back on the road with just half an hour out of the schedule. Still all good to make Moron tonight.

But the perished bearing had other ideas. One quick tap and 3/4 of the bearing emptied itself over the Mongolian grasslands. Only the outer race remained in place. This is always the hard part in perished bearing removal. I looked inside the hub as best I could, but could see no gap in the hub lip that would allow me rest the edge of a screw driver on it. I tried to get some purchase on the bearing with my screwdriver / improvised cold chisel, but could not.

I tried for hours. My fingers and thumbs were bashed to a pulp from times the screwdriver slipped off the bearing and the tomahawk smashed my digits into the hub.

I despaired. I yelled at the sky. I swore. All I could think was that if I dont get this bearing changed ASAP, there was no way to get to Irkutsk to meet my flight.

By 6:30pm, having been working without success for 4 hours I gave up. I took the wheel back to the bike, sitting by the track, and decided I needed to hitch a ride with the first car / truck that comes by. There had been none in the 4 hours I had been broken down. Not one. A few guys on the 150cc Chinese bikes that are so common in Mongolia, but no 4 wheeled vehicles.

I waited till 9pm. The daylight was almost up. When a chinese bike approached me from over a hill with middle aged man and woman on board. I understood from the guy that they were the parents of the two kids I had borrowed the tomahawk from earlier. He wanted to know the problem. I explained. Then he invited me back to his ger (about half a mile away) and said he had tools and they would fix it.

I wheeled the bike over to the ger in the distance, while my new friend and his wife shot off to fire up the ger (they had been away all day) and get some tea brewing. By the time I arrived, he had assembled a crew of a few neighbors, all ready to help with this foreigners troublesome bearing.

We communicated by sign language and grunts. These guys spoke no Russian. For 15 minutes they tried and failed to get the bearing shell out as I had, with no success, and then bingo, they were on to something. While one guy jammed a screwdriver between the bearing shell and the lip on the hub, the other bashed on it through the hub. It slowly began to move. A few minutes later the bearing was out, and I was as happy as a pig in shit. It was pitch black outside now. But tomorrow I would ride. I had lost 7 hours of riding time, but I could see light at the end of the tunnel now.



The new bearings that I was about to put in were not ideal. Over two months on the road had left them a little rusty on the outside. We cleaned them up as best we could, packed them with grease, and tapped them into place. By headtorchlight I put the wheel back on the bike. It was 10:30 pm now and I was ready to sleep. I had a big day ahead tomorrow.

[mrbreeze]

man, with the luck you're having, by the time you get to Moscow she'll be asking you to bring her some maxi pads.

[sparklr]

Originally Posted by mrbreeze

man, with the luck you're having, by the time you get to Moscow she'll be asking you to bring her some maxi pads.

Morbidly hilarious, hopefully it works out in your favour.

[Colebatch]

Originally Posted by sparklr

Morbidly hilarious, hopefully it works out in your favour.

Well I would be most unlikely to provide any details of that nature one way or another.

[2WheelieADV]

It is amazing that there's always some people around in Mongolia even if it's seems to be middle of nowhere!
Great adventure indeed!

[Colebatch]

Originally Posted by 2WheelieADV

It is amazing that there's always some people around in Mongolia even if it's seems to be middle of nowhere!

Yes, Terry, Rod and I, who had all ridden before in Mongolia, were noting the difference wjen we were in the remote parts of Kazakhstan - that the remote parts of Kazakhstan are actually much much more remote than Mongolia, where the population really finds a way to fill up the country.

[ROD CURRIE]

Originally Posted by mrbreeze

man, with the luck you're having, by the time you get to Moscow she'll be asking you to bring her some maxi pads.

You have to warn me before you do that. I'd just taken a drink of tea and blew it all over the laptop.

[ROD CURRIE]

The next morning the wind had dropped, and it was warm and overcast with still air.
The mosquitoes took this as open season on bald guys and set about me with a vengeance. These guys take no prisoners so I wasted no time packing the gear onto the bike and making ready for the day. The guys soon joined me. We left, passing a shrine of the type seen so often in Mongolia, festooned with blue cloth-I'm not sure of the significance but maybe someone will chime in-, but I didn't want to stop for a pic as we'd only just got moving.
We rejoined the road under construction and started battering the bikes on the corrugations, passing a few schoolgirls walking on the roadside. No idea where they'd come from as any habitations we'd passed seemed to be derelict...or indeed where they were going-but the clothing and kit carried suggested school.
After a while we approached a river we'd need to cross, but the crossing was totally washed out and when I waded into thigh deep into the torrent to see if we could get a bike across I could barely stand. Hmm. Problem.

[ROD CURRIE]

We stood around trying to work out how we'd get across and an enormous loading shovel appeared from the road construction site next to us and signalled that we could throw the bikes into the bucket and he'd carry them across. It was certainly an option but not one that was necessarily our first choice given the potential damage if something were to go wrong.
Whilst we were debating we saw a 4WD cross further downstream where the water spread out into a sort of delta and we thought maybe we'd get across at that point?
A little truck pulled up then and the guy driving offered to carry the bike across for us -result!



We threw Terry's bike and mine up on top and he drove down to where we'd seen the 4WD make the ford, and splashed in...the embarrassment!....it was only about 6 inches deep all the way across and Terry was muttering " FFS... if Wal'er could see us now he'd be pissing himself laughing at us getting a lift across this"

Just so you all know...Terry's the one with his back to the camera pretending it's not him, wishing the ground could swallow him and saying that the voices made him do it . Sorry T..had to grass you up.



I said "too late mate, they've a feckin' photograph now-the game's up"

[Prutser]

When my bike was running again after the "swim with the boxer" we drove further to Hovd.
We all needed to top-up our mongolian cash before we could re-fill the bikes and do some grocery shopping.
Getting the money was a bit difficult as non of the bankomat's would except our cards.
In the end we changed Euro's for Tögrög's

After getting the cash I went shopping for some fresh engine oil.
In the center of the town there was a local Automotive market with all the tools, oils and bits you could think of.
So I bought 4 liters of engine oil and some engine flush. Now I could get the dirty milky oil out of the engine.

While Tee Bee and I were shopping for oil Rod and Beamster got all the atention from the locals.