Howdy from Ukraine…..after we finally got here. It was nip and tuck for a while. Seems the Russians took a liking to us and wanted to keep some of us as pets or souvenirs or guests or some such. The border officials still seem to act like tough guys from the past and bully civilians into paying extra (bribes) for routine services. Evidently, “You can just kiss my ass”, does not translate very well into the Russian language.

Seems the pattern is this, you process out most of the stupid tourists and when you have just a few left, then the “your papers are not in order” crap starts. Well, when the rest of us did not meekly leave the country and our friends, they started to try and brow beat us. HAHA! Like we are intimidated by a shrimp of a guy in a big hat and no gun yelling at us? “Yeah? So’s your Mama!” You guys are going to have to get bigger hats and longer legs to intimidate free people.

The same as with the speed traps in Russia. They are merely opportunists in business for themselves while on duty. They keep the bribes low enough so that it must be easier and cheaper just to pay and go on…they make up for it in volume. “Give me money or get ticket”. Oh yeah!! I just wish I did speak Russian. “Give me the ticket, butt-head; just be sure to spell your name correctly, also.”

My message to the Russian people is “1776”. Look it up, remember it. Then take the ticket and call all the newspapers. Don’t pay a bribe to process your transaction. Screw ‘em, they are not the KGB, they are civil servants, demand they behave that way and do their damn job and serve the public. The public is YOU. They can’t make the payments on that Beemer or Land Cruiser on a government salary. Let them get a real job like you did. Get the TV news guys out to the scene of the problem. Let the Bozos with the big hat and the outreached hand show up on the news and things will change. We raised hell at the Russian border and some Russian people saw us do it. We stood together in the face of men who were used to intimidation being the weapon of choice. It didn’t work, huh little men? I’m sure the word is getting around that we were not arrested or shot or beaten or fined. The bullies of the world in positions of authority beware, your job is not safe any longer.

Curtis

PS…….If the truth be known, when I found out Bill was one to the captives, I was driven more by fear of having to tell Sheree that I left him in Russia, than the red-faced little men with the big hats and bad attitudes.

Greetings from the Ukraine

It is nice to be out of Russia, especially since we managed to complete the first 7,000 miles without any major incidents. The border crossing was a challenge for some and made us all dig a little deeper into our bag of patience. The real challenge was the last 175 km to the hotel on twisting roads in the dark. Some of the towns we passed through looked like they were having a carnival with people drinking and partying in the streets. The challenge then became one of dodging drunks. Enoki-san ran out of gas along the way, and after transferring gas from Bill’s bike to his, we made it to the hotel just in time to eat dinner before the restaurant closed.

Soon after crossing the border into Ukraine, Bill commented that the country looked different. Sometimes the change is very subtle, just enough to be noticeable, but then maybe we are looking for change and even the smallest detail becomes more evident. We are finding the people much more courteous, friendly and helpful. Prosperity is also more evident, which might be why the people are so nice.

The next day we spent touring the city. We saw the Livadia Palace-Museum where Roosevelt stayed and the historic Yalta Conference of 1945 took place at the table where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin made their historic agreements. We also visited the Alupka Palace where Churchill stayed in 1945. We ended the tour with a stop at the Massandra Winery. We tasted nine different varieties of wine, most of which we liked.

Our first real day with nothing planned is a good chance to look over the bikes and make any necessary repairs. Jeff spent the morning cleaning and looking over our bike, he has to maintain his image of having the cleanest bike. After lunch at the local McDonalds, we took a hike over to the nearby beach where we stayed 6 years ago. The hotel there is giant, it holds 2,000 people and is where the “working girls” ply their trade. Things looked the same; the girls just looked 6 years older. On the way we passed beaches where people with money come to sit in the sun. Yalta is a destination spot and there are many people who seem to have come to soak up enough sun to last them through the long cold winters.

Ann and Jeff Roberg


[All images courtesy of Ann and Jeff Roberg]

Talking About Sidecars

In addition to the international make-up of this year’s group, we have another first on the World Tour 2006, our first sidecar. I happen to be the “pilot” and I’ve received a number of inquiries about what it’s like, how’s it doing, etc. So, presented herewith, all you ever wanted to know about sidecars.

A sidecar is a weird vehicle – a motorcycle to which a single-wheeled body has been attached. The term “sidecar” generally refers to the combination of the two. The combination is also referred to as a “hack”, or “rig”. The motorcycle is sometimes called the “tug”, the sidecar itself as the “car”, “tub” or “chair”.

Why would anyone create such an unnatural union? Two main reasons - with the 3rd wheel out there as an outrigger, a hack doesn’t fall over, which means you never have to hold it up. At a dead stop, it stays upright all by itself – what a concept! Also, the “chair” (which can also be a platform, cargo box, or whatever takes your fancy) greatly increases passenger or cargo capacity, making for an inexpensive general-purpose vehicle which can be built for much less than a car.

What a sidecar is most emphatically not is a motorcycle; just ask any motorcyclist who has taken a rig out for his or her first ride! Motorcycles counter-steer, whether the rider consciously thinks about it or not, to go right, you push the handlebar to the left; to go left, you push the handlebar to the right. Sidecars, like a “normal” car, direct-steer, to go right, you turn the handle bar to the right.

Motorcycles bank or lean into a corner, a rig does not. A motorbike can rotate about two axes (pitch and roll/front-to-rear, left-to-right), but a sidecar rotates about three, the third being its center, or yaw (clockwise and counterclockwise), more like an airplane.

On a motorcycle, a left turn is the mirror image of a right one. On a sidecar, a right-hand turn wants to lift the sidecar – if one’s speed is too high, or the radius of the turn too small for the given speed, the chair will lift (this is called “flying the chair”). An experienced sidecarist can intentionally fly the chair for long periods of time, even in a straight line, or figure eight! However, once the 3rd wheel has lifted off the ground, the direct-steering rig instantly becomes a highly-unbalanced counter-steering motorcycle. This change-over is called “reversion”. An inexperienced pilot will attempt to drop the chair by steering to the left, which usually results in either running off the left-hand side of the road, or directly into on-coming traffic. The correct action is to snap the throttle shut.

Left-hand turns are different. Generally they are a more stable, as the chair can’t lift, however, a left-hand turn taken too fast can cause the tug to flip over the tub – not an “ideal configuration” under any circumstance. To help lower the center of gravity when turning either way, a pronounced body shift in the direction of the turn, by both the pilot and the passenger (sometimes referred to as the “monkey”) helps.

Even acceleration and deceleration/braking maneuvers are different. Looking down on a rig from above, you have two wheels inline (the motorcycle’s), and then a large body and third wheel hung off of one side. The chair represents a significant amount of weight. If you remember Newton’s laws, when you accelerate, the motorcycle is driven ahead, but the weight of the chair lags a bit and has to be pulled along (a body at rest tends to stay at rest). This means when you accelerate a rig, there is a pronounced pull to the right, which you have to counteract with steering input to the left. Conversely, when decelerating or braking, the motorcycle slows first, while the chair wants to run ahead (an object in motion tends to stay in motion), which causes the whole rig to yaw to the left, which requires steering input to the right.

A veteran sidecarist uses Newton's laws to advantage. When entering a right-hand turn, first decelerate as you approach the turn. As the radius starts to decrease, you then apply throttle, this causes the rig to yaw to the right as the tug tries to overtake the tub. In a left-hand turn, you decelerate after you’ve already started the turn, which makes the rig yaw to the left as the chair tries to over-take the motorcycle.

Needless to say, piloting a rigs require active steering and good Sierra Alpha (Situational Awareness) at all times.

My rig is based on a 2005 BMW R1200GS. To it, a Dutch-built EZS sidecar has been attached, quite a feat of engineering as the R1200GS has no frame, and consequently, no attachment points to hang a car from. For what I needed and wanted to do with the rig, a long list of additional requirements had to be satisfied. It took a skilled designer and master craftsman to pull it off. Fortunately, one of the finest sidecar builders and riggers in the world has his shop in my hometown of Seattle, Washington, USA – Pete Larsen, and his shop, Liberty Motors. It was a long, expensive proposition, but the results speak for themselves. To date, the rig has performed flawlessly, and has exceeded my considerable expectations. And, with one exception, I’ve made it through every obstacle that the other riders have had to deal with, and of course, I’ve never fallen over!

In the course of researching hacks, I found the website of Hubert Kriegel, a Frenchman with a magnificent obsession – he’s sold everything he owns, built a BMW R100-based sidecar, and has set off on a 10-year journey around the world. His first of many good pieces of advice follows:

“When riding with a group of motorcycles, the solo motorcycle think of your sidecar as a dumpster for their overloaded motorcycle...it start with a little thing and in no time you are overloaded with their stuff! Be sure to establish your rules at the beginning, it's easy to say no, but it's much more difficult to give them back their stuff. This is up to you to manage it.”

I’ve taken his advice to heart. He’s a wise man. Hubert also offeres this observation on the evolution of sidcars:

"A Sidecar is the car of the poor - this is how it was invented and used... because if you could afford a car, you would buy it and not bother with that "anti-mechanic" machine...then it evolved... but even today, the countries where the sidecar is popular is for the same reason... Russia, Cuba, Slovakia, Slovenia, China...."

MikeP


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For more details about my sidecar rig, the link below will take you to a post on the ADVRider website:

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112117&highlight=mikepa

The man who made it all possible, Pete Larsen of Liberty Motors, has his website at the link below:

http://www.ezs-usa.com/


There’s another sidecarist out there, the wonderful Hubert Kriegel, who is making a “Timeless Ride” around the world over the next decade. He has some great pictures, and excellent captions. Please see where Hubert is now at the link below:

http://thetimelessride.com/

No story about sidecars would be complete without mentioning Ural Motorcycles, the only current manufacturer (with a dealer network) in the world which builds an off-the-shelf sidecar rig. We visited the factory several weeks ago in Irbit, Russia, in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. I also own an Ural Gear-Up, which has the distinction of having an engagable driveshaft on the tub’s wheel. You can visit Ural’s website at the link below:

http://www.ural.com/

To compensate for the loss of my left leg, my rig is equipped with a push-button operated electromagnetic shifter, and product also used my many drag racers. The unit I chose is manufactured by Pingel, who were kind enough to provide me with a free spare as back-up in case I had any problems on the road:

http://www.pingelonline.com/eshifter.htm

Howdy from Odessa---not the Odessa in the Permian Basin, Texas, USA, where I would be turning south on Highway 385 to head down to Big Bend National Park, but the one in Ukraine.

Ukraine----Home of the fake radar traps and cops whose shocked facial expressions when told “Bullshit!! That is not even a real radar gun” and “OK, Lets ALL go to town to pay the speeding fine.” Show just how far the local people have still to go in having rights and understanding how to use them. When the bums wave their little black and white stick at you, it means you have been selected to receive a threat and a bribe solicitation. Come on down, my car needs tires and my girlfriend wants shiny things. This group responds with a wave back and a “how you boys doin’?” and we just keep going. What are they going to do? Get on the radio and set up a road block for bribe escapees? Or maybe try to run us down in the little Ladas? Nah, screw ‘em.

Also noticed in this country, is the shortage of ladies undergarments. The manufacturing plants must be broken down. Material for making clothing must be is short supply, due to obvious rationing during the assembly process. The water must get very deep on the streets when it rains since the ladies all seem to wear very high heels and tie the shoes on with thin little laces wrapped around the legs up nearly to the knees. In Texas we would say they all look like Hookers----Bless ‘em all. (My eyes are tired and my neck is sore).

This is a great trip and I wish I had brought Precious Darling with me. Two-up on this trip is so NOT a problem. So to you readers out there, be the first in your neighborhood to ride around the whole freaking world and just do it!!!

Oh well, I so wanted not to rant. This trip, I bought a used bike and stripped extra crap off of it and outfitted it with used gear and am having so much better luck than using a new bike with new stuff on it----go figure. I guess you could say experience pays off. Nah, just lucky I guess. Well it’s time to go eat some more cucumbers for dinner; I don’t mind really, we just wash them down with beer. WHATEVER!!!

That is all---from your man on the scene—Adios!

Curtis

Roman Bilyk - A Real Biker!

Yasu and I had been riding all day together; our destination this day was Odessa, Ukraine. Starting out in the early morning from Yalta at the shores of the Black Sea, this early morning was all what riding a bike is about. Beautiful roads, incredible scenery and blue sky - what a start to a day! Even the police checkpoints worked in our favor, they just waived us ahead with a smile.

The scenery changed, temperatures exceeded 90 F and straight roads made one sleepy. As we came closer to Odessa we started to meet a lot of bikers heading in the other direction. Obviously “local” bikers, judging from the bikes, coming from a gathering in Odessa I assumed.

But then we met one biker riding in our direction. If it had not been for the large Ukrainian flag mounted on the rear of the old red bike I would have assumed the rider to be one of the many local farmers commuting, we meet them every day. No, this rider was different and as I passed him I could see that he had been riding for a while. He returned a waive and a smile, no helmet, the helmet was on his elbow.

Lunch that day was a cup of tea and a banana. Just too hot to even think about anything else to eat. The roadside café was a quiet little place and as Yasu and I discussed how the lady could keep the business going, the biker that we had passed earlier that day came rolling in for a break and a chat.

His name was Roman Bilyk and before we could get in a word he had told his life story on two wheels. I just could not believe it, but he was no less than 2-3 kilometers from his home after a motorcycle tour to India. No big deal one might think, after all we had come from Beijing, China. But looking at his ride and listening to Roman’s stories, he is the hero in my book!

Riding a Jawa 350cc two-stroke motorcycle produced in 1988 all the way from Ukraine to India and back takes a lot of guts and Roman has it all. His English skills are excellent and the stories are colorful and filled with tales about broken frames, engine failures, crashes, friendships and border problems. If you met Roman you will see no GoreTex riding suit, leather boots, or gloves. His broken helmet, he carries on his elbow, his jacket has large holes and his shoes are leather sandals, no socks.

We parted by taking some pictures and he wrote down our webpage and I copied his web page, www.bilyk.rv.ua

But that was not the end of our meeting with Roman. Just a kilometer ahead we passed the Ukrainian flag carrier and together we passed a couple of big rig trucks. Next thing we knew there were two policemen waving us to the side. We were told that we had passed where no passing were allowed.

I felt so sad for Roman that was greeted back to his homeland in this way. Yasu and I could walk away from the ticket. We just had to our little waiting game and crying until they got tiered of us and would let us go. Roman was written a ticket and headed for home. But before he could leave Yasu looked deep in to his luggage to find a brand new pair of nice motorcycle gloves that he gave to our new best motorcycle friend.

Take good care Roman and happy travels to you.

Greetings,

Helge Pedersen