Aleksey accompanied me the first fifteen kilometers towards Omsk. Not too far from the city, the asphalt disappeared and the road turned to be a mixture of dust and stones. When we reached the asphalt, the farewell time came and I continued on my own. What I thought it could be a long stretch of asphalt was reduced to a few kilometers. Not too far from there, I was again over stones. Just before starting this section of off-road, I saw a sign that sais the are we were getting into was a border area with Kazakhstan. I turned around on the road to take a picture with that sign, but as soon as I got the wheel in the hard shoulder I felt. It was completely covered in mud and I couldn’t hold the motorcycle back Fortunately, the fall was not too hard. The hard part was getting the motorcycle up on its feet again while cars were passing by without even stopping to help.
I stopped at a gas station somewhere halfway down the road to have a rest. I was just eighty kilometers away from the main highway connection Omsk to Novosibirsk. One hour and a half later we reached the asphalt and the rest of the road was just smooth. Almost. I told Lena I was expecting to arrived around seven o’clock as I was relying on the GPS estimated arrival time. In the end, I arrived at six o’clock because I was not aware that the time zone was different. In fact, I was told later that the city changes its time zone not too long ago. For some reason, my GPS still doesn’t recognize the update. Anyways, I got there right on time for dinner. We spent the whole night drinking and laughing around the table. The hosts, Lili and Max, opened the doors of their home to me.
I took Thursday as a rest day and at night Max took me to Mechanical Angels workshop and Club House. In there, Anton greeted us and gave us some Chinese root tea, something I have never tried before. In my opinion, that is a very sour and strong tea. Later on, he gave me a tour around the place and we took the regular brotherhood pictures. The truth is I was surprised that he took me to this place because he told me it was a place where bikers got together. After the experience I had in Moscow and St. Petersburg, I thought we were going to an open area and not to a private space.
I went the next morning to walk around the city center with Lili, Lena, and Max. Our first stop was the Church of the Assumption. I entered with Max, is the first time visiting it for both of us. After it, we moved a little bit farther to walk along the main avenue. We had some coffee and went later to the harbor. Near the main building, there is a sphere-shaped monument to honor the founders of the city which turns out to have rolled out of position last year due to strong winds. At night, we went for a ride around the city with the motorcycles and we met up with Anton again. We visited some of the same points we have been to during the day and ended up having hot tea on the riverside. It was late and the group was heading back home, but Anton offered me to do “The tour of Siberia” on a motorcycle. The ride lasted about an hour and ends at Victory’s Park, right in front of the eternal flame.
Saturday was just another relaxing day. As I needed to get some food for myself, I accompanied the guys to the supermarket. I was looking for a way to store some breakfast that would not take too much space. The answer was having some “Kasha” with me, as an emergency breakfast or meal in case of camping far from anywhere. I managed to get powder milk, sugar, and this porridge. Back home, we spent the afternoon trying out old motorcycles Max had in his garage. Unfortunately, after a while, Tania had a small accident while driving a scooter over an area covered with gravel. Nothing important, just some scratches. That evening was the last one we would spend all together and I cooked a potato omelet as they have seen the one I made at Vladimir’s house in Novosibirsk.
On Sunday, the first one to leave was Tania. Max took her home in the morning. I was supposed to leave in the morning as well but I found out my hard drive disk was not responding. After four days on a desk, it decided not to work anymore. In the end, I found a recovery software I could try but to make it work I had to pay for the license. I left the software scanning it and we all left to the train station to farewell Lena and Victor. They had a problem with their car and had to go back home by train. That evening, the scanning process finished after twelve hours although it was saying it would take only two from the beginning. Nevertheless, I could recover ninety-five percent of all the videos I took the last ten days. Unfortunately, the videos from the Insta360 were lost.
