August 24, 2015 Krasnoyarsk to Nizhneudinsk

Another early morning start was on tap for today. We had 544km (340 Miles) to cover before today's goal - Nizhneudinsk.  Our poor van had to stay behind to get a new leaf spring installed.  In Russia, nothing is easy.  Janis couldn't go to a NAPA and pick up the parts.  No - he had to go to a blacksmith and have a new one hand-forged.

The smith first welded the broken one together, took measurements and then forged a new one, plus a spare.  After some adjustments, Janis and the van hit the road after 6 pm to try and catch up with the group.

The weather was not on our side today - rained for most of the day.  It took a while for everyone to get ready, and since we don't need to stop as often as the rest of the group, we decided to ride ahead again with Boz. 

We passed this interesting monument in a traffic circle as we left Krasnoyarsk.  Cold war remnant?

It took quite a while to get out of town and onto the M-53 highway that would take us straight to our destination. The city is nicknamed "Chicago of Russia", in part because of all the rail traffic. We saw plenty of evidence to support the claim; both the landscape...

And the GPS (all those grey lines) verified the abundance of tracks in the area. 

The cityscape was made all the more depressing by the rain. Soon, however, we were back in the countryside and making pretty good time. I'd put my camera away to keep it dry, but had to pull it out 

when we saw this...

Closer inspection revealed...

The rest of the planes. 

Boz rode out of sight when we slowed down to take the photos of the planes. As we stopped up to catch him, we saw him riding in the opposite direction, motioning for us to turn around.

When we caught up with Boz, he gave us the bad news. John had called. Marilyn had crashed.  Although her bike was totalled, she was unhurt except for a bruised hand.  Both John and Mike were with Marilyn, taking care of her and her bike.  

This is the last photo I have of Marilyn on her bike, just as we were leaving the hotel for today's ride.  She is short and the bike is customized to have a low seat, so she will not be able to replace the bike.  From here on she plans to split time in the support van and on the back of other bikes.

In the meantime, John had asked the rest of the group to head the hotel.  We waited by a bus stop for about half an hour until the rest of the group caught up.  Then we headed down the road, with David acting as sweeper.  Just past the airplanes we stopped for gas.

Guess this little gem belongs to the Russian Air Force as well.

It was raining again, so the only picture I took was coming into a small town.  

Their entry gate was impressive.

We were stopped once at a railroad crossing.

where we saw both eastbound and westbound trains on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

I took the camera out of my pocket at the next stop because these men were so enthusiastic about seeing our motorcycles.

Especially when they saw our map and realized we'd been to Astana, Kazakhstan.  That's where the man in the white hat is from.

Randy showed them them everything on his bike.

Alain and a couple others used the gas stop as a quick snack/lunch break.  With much waving and honking we took to the pavement again.

The rest of the afternoon was rainy, wet and uneventful, except for more construction,

and cows in the middle of the road.

It finally started to clear a little in the late afternoon, so I chanced a picture as we came over a rise into a peaceful valley.

Alain spotted a quaint little Siberian village below the bridge we were on and stopped for a picture.

As sweep, we also had to stop, 

so I took some pictures too.  Imagine this in snow - Currier & Ives for 9 months of the year.

Later, Alain again stopped for a photo op...

The sunlight was visible just above the distant mountains.  A nice end to a day of riding.

Our day ended at a sanatorim in Nizhneudinsk.  

The outside was a plain brick building with no identifying markers.  Very confusing to Geoffrey, Tom and Mona who were the first to arrive.  They  weren't quite sure they were in the right place. 

The interior was quite institutional in decor.  From what we could gather, this is a place for locals to recover from lung and heart issues.  We did not see any patients while we were here.  It is the "best available" so we made do - dormitory-style.

Tomorrow we will ride to a trip highlight, Lake Baikal.