After several days, I could sleep straight again. I got up around 8:00 a.m. to move forward with the file backups. It’s been several days since the last time I had an internet connection and could upload them to the cloud. Anyway, the quality of the service wasn’t great either.

The three of us had breakfast together and then I went with Lucas to look for a Bank to exchange some Dollars into Rubles. We walked around a few times until we found one that had a currency exchange service.

Surprisingly, they asked us to exchange a minimum of 300 Dollars each.

We believe this was due to the Bank not requiring a passport for this service. As I left the hotel with exactly 300 Dollars, we had enough to cover the minimum required. However, it turned out that they didn’t accept Lucas’ bills. The employee said they are torn when in fact it is those 100 bills have been legal tender for more than 10 years.

We ended up exchanging the money I had on me. I gave the equivalent of 100 Dollars to Lucas in exchange for one of his bills, hoping to get to Novosibirsk and have better luck with it. Back at the hotel, I paid for the room and gave Margaux what she had lent me these days, before going out again to get a SIM card. As we arrived late at night, I didn’t have enough cash at the moment to pay for the room or the meals.

It was now time for a walk.

At the cafeteria I had visited four years before with Nikos, I got a chicken sandwich and a ‘banana’ coffee and had lunch in the park nearby. I was spending some extra time at the park when Margaux wrote me. They were returning to the garage so we met at the hotel to take a taxi.

Going in a taxi felt like a Paris-Dakar car.

Alexey, and Gregori, were waiting for us in the workshop. He removed the engine guard from my motorcycle, which was bent three days ago at the Ölgiy High Pass in Mongolia. He had time enough to fix certain things on Margaux’s motorcycle. Among other things, he changed the poor-quality gasoline she had. It seems it was smelling too much.

Margaux paid for the service. Alexey will charge me tomorrow because he has not yet straightened the engine guard. We farewelled for now, and I took Margaux and Lucas to visit the ‘Bayk Bar’ in the city.

I was there in 2019 but I wanted to show it to them.

On the wall, I see several familiar stickers. Among them, was my friend, Chefi, who was also asking me for ‘Lara’. It turned out to be the waitress who served us. Before taking our orders, she gave us a tour of the bar and I stayed for a while talking with her about the motorcycle my friend Óscar had stranded in the city. We had dinner and walked back to the hostel. Tomorrow, we will leave at 8:30 in the morning.

I ended up going to bed at 1:00 in the morning. However, I didn’t sleep at all because my neighbor turned on the TV at full blast at 2:00 in the morning. After insisting for a while, along with the girl in the other room next to it, I called the reception desk.

They asked this guy to leave the hotel at once for disturbing other guests.

At 7:00 in the morning, I got out of bed to be ready on time before having breakfast together. I still have the cider I had the night before hanging around in my stomach. We called a taxi, but the one that arrives is too small. Since we carry all our bags this time, we have to ask for a second one.

At the garage, Alexey tells me the work carried out rises to 800 rubles, which is approximately 8,5 Euros. Once everything was in place, Lucas and I went out to accompany Margaux to the city’s exit. I will continue with Lucas to Novosibirsk since he is on his way back home. The trip is a little slow because the maximum speed is 90 km/h.

We managed to avoid the rain until we reached the city.

Once we were at the entrance, it started to rain harder and harder which forced us to stop. We had the opportunity to farewell while dressing up with plastics. Lucas continues the next few days towards Moscow without stopping too much. I entered the city and the traffic was chaos. Specially, the area near the workshop I was heading to because there were some road works and traffic was completely stopped all day.

It took me approximately thirty minutes to cover six hundred meters. There wasn’t much chance to overtake cars as the road was too narrow. When I arrived at the workshop, I saw Volodya wasn’t there.

He will arrive in two and a half hours.

I waited a long time outside until one of the employees told me to put the motorcycle inside and wait in the lobby with a coffee. Since they have internet, I continued with uploading files while I waited.

Volodya arrived after 8:00 p.m. There was nothing we could do at the garage, so we went to his apartment. Elena had already written to me telling me she was waiting for us for dinner. However, Volodya wanted to go to sleep early and someone was waiting for us at his house. I spent some time with Viktor, who has his cousin in Argentina, before going down to see Elena.

When I arrived, Aria, 3 years old, and Maxim, 1 year old, were already asleep. Elena and Viktor have had two children since we last saw each other.

Around 11:30 p.m., I returned to Volodya’s apartment to sleep.

Elena asked me to come down to her house around 11:00 a.m. to have breakfast with them. Volodya left today at 7:00 in the morning, and I saw Viktor just before he went to work. Because of moving to the ‘big city’, he left the farm and is now dedicated to machinery maintenance. Elena tells me they had a problem with the owner. They had the right to exploit it, but when they wanted to buy the farm he canceled the agreement.

After breakfast, I go out to the street to exchange currency. I was a little layabout and when I arrived at the bank I realized I had left my passport at the apartment. After retrieving it, I was back in the queue. Fortunately, Sberbank doesn’t have any problem with Luca’s banknotes, nor do they require a minimum. As I was already out walking around the neighborhood, I stopped for lunch. Just below the building where Volodya lives, there is a beauty salon. From afar, it looks like it is only for women, but they also cut men’s hair, deep in the background.

Since it’s been more than four weeks, I stopped by to have my hair cut.

I returned to the apartment to update my travel diary and upload my files to the cloud. Around 8:00 p.m., I went down to Elena’s apartment because we had all planned to have dinner together. However, Constantine is ill today and Volodya is nowhere to be found. I would later realize that he didn’t even spend the night in the apartment. In the end, I had dinner alone with Elena. Viktor arrived at 11:00 p.m. and I left after 11:30 p.m. Kirrill, Volodya’s eldest son, arrived a few minutes later to the apartment.

The next morning, I had breakfast at the waffle bar on the ground floor of the building while waiting for Volodya to return. He arrived at 2:00 p.m. and we ate something together before he took a nap. Around 4:00 p.m. we went to a shop to look for the tire I had ordered.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the size I needed.

Volodya ordered a 150/80/16/77H instead of 150/80/16/71V. It seems the one I needed would have taken more than two weeks to arrive. Plus, it’s a rear tire. I hope this won’t be a problem. I’m not familiar with tire equivalences, but I know that it won’t matter much here. On the way back from the workshop, Volodya tells me that he has to go look for his children since they spend time with him on the weekends.

As I needed to move on with the preparations for the next day, he dropped me at the workshop. I planned to stay the weekend in Novosibirsk to have more time to work on the motorcycle, but I couldn’t. Now, I’ve already stayed a day longer than planned and Sergey is waiting for me.

I spent a lot of time looking for tools in the workshop.

To take the tire out, I need to remove the brake pads first. When doing so, I realized the front brake pads were gone. I left Ulaanbaatar without rear brake pads and drove to Novosibirsk only with the rear ones. It was shocking I knew this and had completely forgotten to ask Volodya to buy both pairs. I sent a message to him before continuing. He replied someone would get them at the shop and bring them to me. Something similar to the delivery services we also have in Europe.

While waiting, I tried to retract the caliper’s pistons. However, I could only do one side of each and felt like I wasn’t going to succeed. The rear ones were also difficult to release until Viktor brought me another tool. However, the front wheel wasn’t coming out. I think I need a tool I will have to buy tomorrow.

To deal with the frustration I decide to rest for a while.

Upon returning to the pit I managed to retract all the pistons and finally changed the brake pads. With the wheel, however, there was no progress. I waited until they closed the shop and Viktor, one of the employees, brought me to Volodya’s house.

I had dinner together with his children. Around 10:30 p.m. everyone went to bed. Katia, the youngest daughter, doesn’t remember me and she plays crazy while crawling on the floor hidden under a blanket.

I was in contact all day with Sergey, from Krasnozerskoe. Alexey, from Karasuk, had also contacted me to come and help me because he was in Novosibirsk today. I told him not to come because I was hopeful about fixing the problem the next morning and seeing them in a couple of days.