August 12, 2015 - Kazan to Ufa

Add in flora, fauna

We checked out e-mail as soon as we awoke this morning for news of Emma, our grandchild who as born yesterday in Oak Harbor, WA.  She was anemic and in respiratory distress on birth and had to be air lifted to Seattle.  It was tough at first, but she's holding her own.  Momma Anna has arrived from Oak Harbor and sent out the first photo.  The cause of her troubles is still unknown and she's still on a respirator, but her blood pH is back in the normal range.  We remain hopeful.

We have a longer than normal ride today and lose 2 hours going into the next time zone.  This is strange, but a real thing!

We met by the bikes at 8 am this morning. We won't really be seeing anything other than a few smal towns, and enjoying the countryside.

As we left, I captured another monument.

This church is on the outskirts of Kazan.  David proclaimed that the domes look like Hershey Kisses - very low key and tasteful compare to many churches we have seen with ice cream scoop onion domes.

We ran into road construction again today, so reverted our shoulder riding strategy.  Because of the tough winter climate, summer is the best time for road construction.  We will be seeing more.

Some villages are very well looked after.  Blue seems to be the favorite color.

It was overcast and cool today,  Not bad - as long as it doesn't rain.  The group stayed together through the first two stops.

The second stop was at a little truck stop near a lake.

The roadside vendors were selling dried, smoked and fresh fish.

This man was very excited to hear we were from out of country.  He wanted to know about President Obama.

A few of us decided that 2 stops in 2 hours was 2 much.  We wanted to make sure that with the time change and distance to be traveled, we got to the hotel early enought to shower and be ready for  dinner.  Three of us decided to strike out on our own using GPS, leaving behind the guides and the slower riders.

Boz led the way, and David (with me) and Geoffrey were right on his tailpipe.  Here Boz is heading through another construction zone.

We passed large fields of sunflowers.  In the gas station mini markets, I've started to see bags of sunflower seeds for sale.

We passed through an oil rich area and the accomanying infrastructure.

The provincial signs proudly proclaim the abundance of the natural resource.  If you look closely in the green area, you'll see an oil derrick spouting black oil.

We've noticed these yellow pipes in the smaller villages.  It appears to be a gas line with connections to each home.  Whenever it passes over a road of a driveway, the just raise the piping up a couple of feet.

We're seeing more mosques.  This area of Russia is approximately 28% muslim.

I think this may be the smallest Russian Orthodox church we've seen so far.

We entered Ufa at approximately 3:00pm this afternoon.  Then all of a sudden it was 5pm.

In the span of a few seconds we leaped forward 2 hours.  Most time zones in Russia are two hours different than the one next to them.  In one more day we will enter Kazakhstan, and lose another hour!  At that time we will be 10 hours ahead of New York time, and 13 hours ahead of Seattle.  The following map shows how topsy-turvy time is around here:

As a reminder, you can see where we are by looking at the satellite-linked map on this page:

https://www.ayresadventures.com/epic-journey-2015-travel-journal/

We got to Ufa with two other riders, Jeff and Boz.  We had decided that the group's stops every hour were a bit more rest than we wanted, and preferred to get to the hotel quicker, so we split off, relying our GPS units to get us to the destination.  That went fine, and we arrived at the Ufa hotel more than two hours before the main group.  It is likely that there will be two riding groups from here on except for border-crossing days.  This will allow faster riders to get to the destination and tour or rest, while the slower riders take time to see more bathrooms.  Just kidding, or course.

We are staying at the President Hotel tonight.  A little dated but comfortable.

Dinner tonight was in a quaint little cabana by a pond.  Good food and conversation, albeit with a smaller group, as some riders wanted to rest up.  Left to right, Alain (retired French/Swiss executive), me, Andre (Indianapolis - retired executive chairman of a large company, currently on the boards of the Indianapolis State Fair, the Indianapolis 500, and several other organizations), Marilyn (Santa Barbara - retired underwater photographer), Randy (Santa Fe - retired Texas litigation lawyer and all around raconteur), and Janis (riding guide from Riga, Latvia)

Randy always makes me smile.

Tomorrow we continue our trek eastward to the industrial steel town of Magnitogorsk, our final day in the western part of Russia, as the following day we will enter Kazakhstan.