Freezing rain

“No rain,” I whisper cheerfully as we wake up the next morning, refreshed from a deep sleep. We crawl out of our tent into the great outdoors. Only a narrow row of bushes separates us from the very busy main road. If it weren’t for the incessant humming and screeching of cars and trucks working their way up the mountain, we could be enjoying the taiga. We would never have thought that we would encounter such an indescribable volume of traffic here at the supposed end of the world. At this hour, we hear little of the chirping of the birds and the buzzing of the insects. After a hearty breakfast, we set off at 11:30 am. We take our time. Nothing drives us forward. No more appointments at last. Finally we can listen to our inner clock. As we push our aluminum steeds through the tall grass to the road, it starts to drizzle. The sun has instantly moved behind an impenetrable cloud front. We quickly put on a light jacket and start the day by cycling our luggage up the mountain. At the top, we are surprised by the sight of a rest stop. “Look at this. There’s even a gastiniza,” I say. (Gastiniza is a simple accommodation but sometimes also the name for a real hotel). “But it was much nicer in the tent,” Tanja replies. “That’s right. Among other things, they only rent out four-square-metre cabins with just one bed,” I reply after a brief exploration of the place. We buy six liters of water, fill them into our Source hydration packs and our Bestard bottles on the bike. Then we continue our journey. For safety reasons, we let our bikes roll down the mountain with a slight brake.

Are there angels?

A car has stopped at the side of the road. A sporty-looking middle-aged woman is standing in front of it, waiting for us. “Where are you from? What from Germany? And with all that luggage? There are still many steep mountains waiting for you on this route. A considerable part is even gravel. I like cycling myself, but how you’re going to manage that with the trailers is a mystery to me?” she asks, pointing to my large Zargesbox, which is mounted on a Used trailer. Since the woman is looking so closely at my trailer, I feel compelled to take a look at it too. When my gaze falls on the left-hand axle, I am startled out of my wits. Half of the thru axle has worked its way out of the anchorage. As soon as the Siberian has said goodbye, I put my bike on the stand to take a look at the mystery. “I don’t believe it. Just a few hundred meters further and the tire would have come off. That would be a real disaster on a descent and in this crazy traffic,” I explain excitedly and push the thru axle back in until it clicks into place. “What do you mean by ‘super disaster’?” Tanja asks, startled. “Well, if a tire comes off for whatever reason, the trailer is still connected to the frame of the bike. That would mean that it would tip to the side, the bike would flip over and the rider would fly through the air. Regardless of the fact that I might have broken my neck in the process, the frame and trailer would definitely be ruined,” I soon realize devoutly in the face of the happiness I’ve just had. “Good that you noticed.” “Yes, it’s amazing how quickly and unexpectedly something can happen,” I think aloud. “The thru axle probably came loose when you pushed the bike through the bushes,” Tanja ponders. “Hm. Never happened in the last 11,000 km, but there’s always a first time. It could be that the pressure pin that releases the wheel connection to the trailer has hit an object. In future, we’ll have to check the quick-release axles every now and then,” I say and get back on my Intercontinental.

I ponder for a long time why the woman stopped our journey at that very moment? Was that a coincidence? But in the course of our years of traveling, Tanja and I have come to the convincing conclusion that there are no coincidences. That events happen to us that we have to experience for a reason that is not apparent to us humans at the time. They often teach us something. Sometimes, as in this case, they also help to prevent worse. We usually only realize their meaning later, namely when we are able to put together the various pieces of a life puzzle. It is only when the puzzle of our lives forms a visible picture that we realize why we have had one accident or another, why we lost our job, why we met someone, and so on. The events and happenings in our lives are connected in some way. They are interlinked and guide us through our lives, even if we often don’t want this to be true.

“Is this woman an angel?” I ask myself. “Do angels even exist? Who are they? What are they? Energy beings from another dimension of the universe? Why did the woman feel compelled to look at my pendant like that? So much so that I felt compelled to turn around. But maybe the people who consciously or unconsciously help someone are not angels? Perhaps they are simply touched by an emotion in a way that is inexplicable to us? But what are these emotions and where do they come from? Are invisible beings that we humans simply call angels responsible for them? Are they beings who touch us with a feeling so that we react in one way or another? Man oh man, what a complex topic this is. Angels here, angels there. Luck or coincidence. Without a doubt, this moment shows me that there are events in our lives that make sense to think about. That under no circumstances should we dismiss them with a simple wave of the hand. Such experiences have a message, even if they only make me think about their causes. In our busy lives in Germany, I hardly have the opportunity to think about this. This world is too fast. We humans are in too much of a hurry. We have too many items on our daily agenda to simply think about sense and nonsense. To think about messages, possible angels and much more that happens to us all over the world.”

Grinding brakes and accidents

Heavy thunder snaps me out of my thoughts. “We should put on our rain gear,” calls Tanja. “Okay,” I reply, pulling the Magura brakes. As I don’t think the approaching thunderstorm is too powerful, I just put on a rain jacket while Tanja slips into a pair of rain pants. Only minutes later, the gates of heaven open. Icy rain is pelting down on us, so that my lower body is completely soaked in a short time. Suddenly it starts to hail. Temperatures plummet by 10 degrees to 9 degrees. Even in summer, Siberia shows us what extremes its weather is capable of. Your hands turn into lumps of ice, the ice water shoots into your shoes, only to splash out onto the road, somewhat tempered by your dwindling body heat. “I should have put on a pair of rain trousers after all,” I husked. Instantly punished for my comfort, I start to shiver all over. “There’s a bus shelter there! We can shelter there!” I shout, pointing to an ugly concrete tube that has been eaten away by the ravages of time. We lean our bikes against the concrete wall and escape into the tunnel-like thing. I immediately take off my soaking wet trousers and get into my rain pants. “Ah, that feels good,” I say as I slowly get warmer again. Meanwhile, Tanja unpacks the thermos flask and prepares two hot cups of tea for us. We also enjoy a few pirashki (dumplings filled with eggs and chives) made by Sascha. For dessert we eat piraniki cookies. (Russian cookies that taste a bit like Christmas cookies) While we let the delicious food melt on our palates, cars and trucks roar through large puddles close to us. Huge fountains of water are hurled for meters through the humid air. “Not the weather for a bike trip,” I say, shivering slightly. “Will it ever get better?” asks Tanja. “Who knows? There has to be some kind of summer in Siberia at some point. This is definitely not how I imagined it. You’d think winter was just around the corner,” I sigh.

When the rain subsides, we want to continue. “What a mess,” I curse. “What is it?” “The front brake is dragging,” I reply and realize that it’s covered in heavy mud. I take a sip of water from the Bestard bottles attached to the frame and spray it in a thin stream over the brake system. This way I can free it from all the mud. Once the dirt and small stones have been removed, the reliable brake works again and the journey through the cold South Siberian mountains can continue. Most cars and trucks treat us with consideration and overtake us at a reasonable distance. Nevertheless, many drive like crazy. A rear-end collision occurs directly behind us on an incline. A motorcyclist is almost run over before our eyes by a thirty-eight-ton truck with a trailer as he drives out of a bus stop onto the main road without looking back. A BMW has to abort its aggressive overtaking maneuver on a bend. Only at the last second can he avoid a head-on collision with an oncoming truck by jerking his steering wheel. We hope that the traffic will slow down after the upcoming city of Kansk and long for the quiet roads of Kazakhstan.

After seven hours, around 600 meters in altitude and a ridiculous 27 kilometers, I discover a row of bushes at 6:30 pm behind which we can hide for the night. But before I check whether the place is suitable for us, I spray myself with mosquito repellent, as I did yesterday. So I feel at least somewhat protected from the nasty ticks. “It’s a good place,” I say after five minutes, returning to the road. We push our bikes through the tall, green and lush grass behind the bushes and set up camp. As soon as the tent is up, we take off our wet clothes and lay them over the bikes to dry. A distant rumble in the ominous passing clouds heralds more rain showers. Thousands of mosquitoes seem to feel right at home in this stormy atmosphere. They attack us in order to steal blood from the last uncovered part of our body.

While Tanja boils water for tea, I log our coordinates such as daily temperature, kilometers covered, sunrise and sunset times and altitude, etc. Then we eat the rest of Mama Sasha’s pirashkis, a chicken drumstick and some fried fish. Because of the increasingly penetrating Siberian mosquitoes, we retire to the tent at 20:00. Tanja is already asleep when I load our pictures of the day into the laptop and label them. In addition to recording the log data, this is an important daily task. Although I am cowering in the low tent at this moment, I am forced to this discipline. If I didn’t archive the photos in a program every day, I would lose track after just a few days. On earlier trips, in the days of analog photography, we needed many months after each trip to organize our pictures in a reasonably usable way. Today I have the opportunity to do this work directly and on site. This has the great advantage of having usable material available immediately after an expedition trip and, above all, being able to enter the pictures into our web diary during the trip. But it also has the disadvantage of sitting here at my laptop every evening, no matter how tired I am. Just then, the cold of the approaching night creeps through the thin fabric of the tent. I pull my sleeping bag over my legs to protect myself from it, put on my headlamp as dusk falls so that I can still see the computer keys and am glad when I can finish my work for the day at 11:30 pm. Then I put the Itronix back in its waterproof Ortlieb bag, pack the Leica in an equally waterproof Ortlieb camera bag, put on a fleece hat against the cold and slip into my sleeping bag.

Tired, I think about the distance I have already covered. In the first two days of our stage 4, we only covered 49 kilometers due to the mountains and the bad weather. According to my calculations, this is decidedly too little. It should be at least 50 kilometers per day. But at this early stage of the continuation of our Trans-East expedition, we still have the beginner’s bonus. This has also been factored in. We are aware that we must not overstrain our bodies, especially at the start of a stage. That would be a big mistake, because you can quickly overstretch a joint, muscle or tendon under such conditions. These initially minor injuries can quickly develop into chronic inflammation. Especially if you hardly have a chance to cure them properly.

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