Nice up date!
The answer to this should be a good one ...
No way to weld that crack up somewhere there? Make it strong enough to finish the ride?

Hello chris,

thanks for the update, good to read about your journey.

As you know I am not a Bmw man, but I would have tried to weld the swingarm.... but I dont know what material it is ....

anyway as a Russian friend said: there are so many little stickers on a Bmw, dont put leaded fuel in, wear your helmet, dont put more then 5kgs on the rack, read the owners manual ... and so on ... but there is no sticker ... dont take your Bmw to Russia.

will be back in Russia next year, on a DR350 !!! yuheee

greetings from Switzerland
mika

Hey Mika

The swingarm is aluminium. I'm not a BMW man either. People tell me the only thing BMW about the bike is the badges (unless you stick gaffer tape with "Honda Transalp" written over them ) on the side and the mapping on the fuel injection unit. It's an Italian Aprilia with a Austrian Rotax motor with Swedish Ohlins (rather than the sh!te original part) suspension.

I liked riding it and I've never had a 650cc single cylinder bike previously, so I bought it. I'm heading your way through Switzerland on said RBA (Rebadged Aprilia) in early July. I'm riding as much dirt as possible between Albania and southern Portugal. Drink a ?

Best wishes
Chris

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Hey Chris,

Yakutsk is a big enough city to find somebody that welds aluminium, I would say, but I only spend a few days in Yakutsk in 2003 and my Honda did not need any welding.

Good to read your ride report and look at the pictures.

Saludos desde Berna
mika

Weld cast hollow aluminium, the shape of which gives it its strength? This is the only one to ever break, and there's a reason why it broke that I won't go into here. We'll have a chat about it over a cerveza.

Either way, we/Felix didn't have the time due to various other factors/work committments. As we couldn't ride the Old Summer Road due to the monstrous amounts of water in 2013, the New Federal Road was, in my opinion, a pointless exercise when you compare it to excellent parts of Central Asia/ Altai/ Mongolia/ BAM. Felix missed absolutely nothing of interest.

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Ch 20, The end... or Brighty, Show us yer gulags...

Right chaps and chapeses

Let's make this the final instalment. Why?

• Why not? 20 is a nice round number
• I got a major monkey off my back, finally after all this planning and en route mishaps (adventures) actually reaching Magadan. This ride report is now taking an awful lot of time that I don't have at the moment. I need to plan this summer's trip and actually get out riding...
• There isn't really a lot to say. After the fun of Mongolia and the BAM, it was IMHO a pointless boring trudge riding the New Federal Road version of the Road of Bones to Magadan, solo and in sh!te weather and in a big rush to catch flight connections. I should have taken more breaks en route, but didn't have the time, due to work commitments. Oh yeh: The bike is virtually unrideable at less than 30mph/50kmh: No oil in either fork, and totally shagged steering head bearings. Felix had some, but I forgot to blag them off him.

Many thanks for reading this RR and even bigger thanks if you took the time to comment. Much appreciated.

See you on the road

Chris



Friendly chap who helps me extract the snapped key from the petrol cap on the bike. He even gives me for free the screwdriver I now use to "lock" it






The situation I’m in






Quite a pleasant view




A bridge over a piece of water connecting 2 bits of mud…





Luverly jubbly





Drink driving?





Sunset over the flooded fields





The next ferry across the Lena River isn't leaving until tomorrow morning at 7am. So I sleep on the boat. The captain is cool enough to let me sleep in a spare cabin. For free. What a nice man





The engine room




In the morning they start loading other vehicles…





…but we don't leave until noon when the mist/ fog has cleared. I've lost 4 valuable riding hours :-(





A trucker and his wife





I'm on a new bit of track that was carved out of the mountain side after a huge land slide. It took them 4 days





Riding until well after dark every day meant I had the chance to take pictures of sunsets without getting off the bike. At 60 odd degrees north in the summer, it didn't get dark until very late





The turn off for the Old Summer Road. In 2013 no motor vehicle made it from here through to Magadan via the OSR





The fuel station at the turn off. Phil on the MZ had written his details here a few days ago. I add mine. I wasn't organised enough to print stickers before I left :-)





The fuel station





After a night camping at the cafe/petrol station at the turnoff: Amongst the crashed/abandoned cars and trucks. That black cloud in the distance was coming my way. I tried to race it, but it was faster than me :-(





The highlight of my Road of Bones ride: Near Ust Nera, bumping into Pete Berry and Adam Lewis again. They had made it to Magadan, but transport for themselves and their bikes out of there, was beyond their budget, so they were riding back. Pete rode is XR400 all the way back to the UK. What a man!





Landslides have been cleared. In the distance, centre right is where the road came from. This is me looking back. I've just ridden a 1/2 mile detour





Lots of abandoned buildings everywhere on my journey. Now an abandoned town. No time to look round as it's getting dark







Ghost Town by The Specials (1981). The first vinyl record I ever bought

I don’t visit any gulags, so have no pictures to show. Lack of time, an unfit bike (remember 50kmh min speed…), solo riding and most definitely not in the mood




After the ghost town I get to next inhabited town in the dark (11pm?), where my GPS unit says there's a hotel. It's closed. Bollocks. The janitor lady suggests I try elsewhere. They tell me to get lost too. So I head back to the closed hotel and persuade the janitor to let me sleep on the floor in the hallway. Actually, she lets me sleep on the benches in the gym room/waiting room.

The next morning the hotel owner lady arrives and sees me. She says nothing to me but gives the unfortunate janitor girl a whole load of grief. So I impress owner b!tch with my excellent grasp of Estuary English and head out of town. Only one more day of riding to go....





It stopped raining enough to kick up some dust





The only fuel station in town





I is dirty too :-)





A bloody long way to ride to get a picture at a road sign. Bashplate/skidplate, silencer and auxiliary fuel tank are all held on and in place with fencing wire (probably a few cows have since escaped en route...), cable ties and bungee cords





I rolled into downtown Magadan at about 10.30 at night. In the rain. (Did I mention it rained a lot?) "Great, there's the hotel", I think to myself. I get off the bike in front of the main entrance and while I'm trying to remove my helmet, this rabid drunk man is preventing me by every means from getting to the hotel door. Oh joy...

I'll spare the details, but I did "assert" my right to enter the hotel prior to the police taking him jail.


And I leave you with a song:

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I loved that Russian song ... is that deep sense of melancholy (so evident in the song) perpetuated throughout the culture? Is it as palpable as it appears in the song? Does it "rub off" on your out look while your there? :confused1:
Is it the Vodka?

I hate obnoxious drunks. I think I'd rather camp out on the outskirts of town ... but probably all a toxic pit? Serious environmental degradation there ... worse than anything I've ever seen anywhere in the world.

The Shed MK 2
I know you mentioned it in your report somewhere ... but I've forgotten ... did you buy the X Challenge from your buddy? Or just borrow it?

In the end, what are your thoughts about it? Would you own one? (if you don't already) Is it a worth while bike to put money into? :confused1:

I remember your joy when you first got it ... and the comparisons to your Transalp "Shed MK1". But here at the end seems the BMW is kind of falling to pieces.

So what is your verdict? Keep the X Challenge? Go back to a DRZ400? or something else?
What's up next for travel?

Thanks for the great report!

If i understood correctly, the main highway road from yakutsk to magadan is more or less a regular gravel road, without any needs to cross swamps, collapsed bridges etc?

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I was running the same ride report over on advrider. Felix has now described what happen.

See post 149 at Mongolia to Magadan: Any which (the hard) way - Page 10 - ADVrider

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