TUESDAY 02 JULY, 2002 - KRAKOW, POLAND

LAT:N50.05876 LON:E19.92361

GLOBERIDERS TOUR DAY NO: 56
DAYS SINCE LAST UPDATE: 48
TOTAL NO. OF AA BATTERIES USED TO DATE: 20

Aillene and I took the train from Warsaw to Poland. I was glad to see that even the national railway people had a sense of humor, see below:

[I doubt Steven Spielberg would approve of this aptly-named dining car. Hope the scene inside doesn't match that of the movie from which the name was derived!]

Since I had last seen the group in Beijijng, they have driven over 7,000 miles, travelling through Northern China, Mongolia, across the vast country of Russia (8 time zones!), and through Ukraine. I hope some of you were able to follow their exploits on Speedchannel. I couldn't begin to recount their adventures (and mis-adventures) here, but I know that a lot of vodka was consumed, a few braves souls dared the frigid waters of the world's largest and deepest fresh water lake, Lake Baikal (20% of all the fresh water on planet Earth in that lake!), joined in drag races, got lost, found, and continued to make friends and memories across Eurasia.

However, the "endurance far and above the call of duty" award had to go to David Wilde, an English ex-pat from Indonesia, riding his Kawasaki KLR 650. Somewhere in Russia, his bike developed a VERY pronounced vibration from somewhere down in the bowels of its engine. Another rider, who rode it for a while to give David a rest, claimed that he could only hold onto the handlebars with one hand positioned near the center. The vibration was so bad his hands became totally numb in minutes. As if that wasn't bad enough, David's rear shock lost its damping ability, meaning that he was riding solely on the spring. Imagine riding a two-wheeled pogo stick across Russia! Then, adding insult to injury, the shaft and spring finally gave up the ghost and broke. A replacement shock was nowhere to be found in Russia. Their solution is shown below:

[Any self-respecting engineer would tell you that you can't weld steel to aluminum - here's proof that isn't neccessarily true. A local repair shop in Russia took David's now broken rear shock, removed the upper and lower mounting points, and jammed and welded them onto a piece of rebar (concrete reinforcing bar, a universal way to strengthen concrete)!]

[A bemused Sterling Noren holding David's make-shift "shock".]

I'm sure the pogo-sticking was bad. I can't imagine how horribly worse it must have been to ride a motorcycle on roads in a sad state of disrepair for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. In the United States, people still build highly-customized motorcycles called "choppers", and many of these are intentionally built without a rear shock to enhance their appearance. These are commonly referred to as "hardtails". With his "rebar strut" in place, David surely deserves an Ironbutt award for riding the "ultimate" hardtail through the world's largest country! Fortunately, I had received a desperate email plea to locate and hand-carry a new rear shock with me from the States, which I presented to a weary David when we met at the border. The cost of a new replacement shock in the States as quoted by a local dealer? $850.00! The value in Poland - priceless!

[David and friends busily installing the new shock in a border restaurant's parking lot near Krakoweic, Poland.]

In the next Update - Krakow, Poland....