UZBEKISTAN

Dear friends.

I could find new shoes for my Little Fat in Almaty. She is happy now with new oil, new oil filter and new air filter. I changed all by my own with a lot of tenderness. Then we left the ugly city. I got Uzbekistan and earnt an hour. I lost four going East. Now I am recovering them heading West. The border was hard to cross because is in the Afghan and Pakistan heroin way to Europe. It means the soldiers took away my luggage and checked it really deep seeking for drugs. Fortunately for my dignity, rubber gloves are expensive and they did not check even deeper. But Uzbeks are really friendly. Their way of wave me is by approaching the car to my bike and then, when they are really close, horn and shout as loud as they can while the driver smiles and show me both thumbs up. They are going to kill me of friendship.

Policemen are very friendly too. They are everywhere in Tashkent, the capital. Wages should be very cheap, because in Uzbekistan are millions of policemen. Or they have a really huge budget for security, or they earn a shit. Probably, both are right. They stop me every time and every street and every corner just to ask how many centimetres cubic, if it has carburator or injection, and “skolka” and “kuda”. (How much it cost and from where I am). But one said the most stupid thing I ever heard: motorcycles are not allowed in Tashkent. Bullshit, I thought he was trying to bribe me. But not at all, it was real. Read this

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav051605a.shtml

Basically says that motorcycles are banned in Tashkent because the president is afraid of assassination using a bike. Do you understand now what I meant when I told you about Central Asia Surrealism?

Keep safe and well. Life is too short to be angry.

WILD EAST

Dear friends:

Here we go again! Going East! I am already 3500 km away from home, in Ukraine, a great unknown country full of unhappy people. Here smiles are very expensive, but not petrol. People look like being angry all the time but maybe the right reason is to much home made vodka to drink at night and too less vegetal fibre to eat for breakfast. Landscapes are really beautiful. Roads are terrible, roads marks are a labyrinth and trucks go as the Devil was sitting at the wheel. A real biker paradise! What can I get in Russia? I am sure only about one thing: a nightmare paperwork crossing the border. Just getting the visa in Madrid was about to get me into a nervous crisis.

But let me tell you how and why I am here. When I arrived home after my African trip, I had domestic affairs. My wife was a little bit annoyed, and she got into a temper when I told her I wanted also going to ride Alaska. “I know you need some kind of adventure”, she said, “and to feel young and free loving other bikes like that old African bitch. I understand you are not a sitting man. You are like a child who always changes his mind. But If you think I´m gonna stay quiet at the garage while you ride America, you really do not know me. I am patient, but it is time to ride me for a good trip. It´s been so long since you get me into the wild last time”.

Oh, friends, what can I say? She was right. Alaska could wait. Summer is long enough. She was being so patient. I had some unimportant infidelities with other bikes but I am loyal to her. We have known each other for long time. So I realised it was time to ride her to the end of the World.

So here we are, riding to the East. Only God and mechanics failures know when and where we are going to stop. Just in case, I took the rear bearing of the final drive although I don´t really expect Kazahstan fixer could rebuilt it. But God loves the crazy.