Vladivostok

My daughter was in Vladivostok for three months for her studies and I thought that it was a nice excuse to make a little bike trip from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok, 800 kilometers. Usually I spend sufficient time in the preparation of trips, but unfortunately this time I rushed it a bit, and in the hurry I overlooked one tiny detail: the fact that in January it is a little cold over there. Cold as in: really really seriously cold.

Cold

Ouch. But since I had already spread the news about my bike trip there was no backing out. What had started as a nice plan, quickly turned into a true sub-zero expedition.

To get some expert advice I went to www.bikeforums.net where they have a special section on winter biking.

The main advice was to stay home. Some other advice I got:

• if you have no experience your chances of succeeding are very small
• what you are planning is a really really bad idea
• seems like heavy-duty trolling.

But still other people offered serious advice, which I used as much as possible. I purchased balaclava’s on eBay, super arctic gloves, ski goggles, thermo underwear, and some more thermo underwear.

I threw my phone in the freezer to check if it still worked at -20º Celcius, I went to the local butcher to check what -20º Celcius felt like in his freezer, and I bought a mountain bike. I did have three bikes already: one city bike which is useless outside the city, one racing bike which is useless on bad roads, and a special super-relax-seat bike which is useless everywhere.

On my new mountain bike I installed some old luggage bags or panniers that I still had from a previous trip, plus a holder for my phone, and some lights. I was especially concerned about these lights. I mounted one on the bike steer, a second one I had on my helmet, and then two rear lights, one under the saddle and one all the way at the back. And I actually tested them at night with no moon, just to make sure I could see where I was going. Because, where I live there is so much light, even at night, that you never need a light, except to prevent being ticketed by the police. I didn’t plan to ride in the dark, but better be prepared. For all lights I had rechargeable batteries as well as single-use batteries. That should do it.

Here is the bike in my kitchen. It is a Cube. I had never heard of Cube before, let alone of the model number of my bike. There must be a lot of money in this mountain bike business because the marketing guys come up with the most ludicrous nonsense to sell their bikes. Mind you, these are not normal bikes, no, these are bikes with nanoparticles in the resin, Advanced Twin Mold and Zero techniques, Spread Tow Material and a biaxial structure with Ultra High Modulus.

My advice (also to the boys and girls at

: buy last years’ model. Because if you buy last years’ model, not only do you get last years’ model which is just as good as this years' model, but also you get a 30% discount.

Other preparations mainly had to do with emergency scenarios. My main worry was about what to do when getting a flat tire halfway between two villages that are forty kilometers apart. Let’s say you get a flat tire, and it is four in the afternoon, and it is -20º Celcius. Now what? Fix the tire? Forget it, impossible at those temperatures.

Worst case I would have to walk twenty kilometers in the dark at -20º Celcius and I am not sure I would have survived. I never solved that puzzle so instead I decided to check the map before every leg and never start a ride unless I could walk out of it before midnight.

Other question: would my phone last for 24 hours in the cold? On eBay I purchased an extended battery for my Galaxy S4 which worked fine in the freezer and kept my phone running for a solid three days. Problem solved. Even after the trip I kept using this supersize battery, so handy to have a phone that can run for three days without needing a charger. I also bought a 50.000 mAh battery pack which theoretically would let me recharge the phone about six times. But that turned out to be theory. I could charge the phone maybe twice. Not as advertised but I still took it with me.

On my bike I had a sleeping bag with me. I am not sure why I took that bag. It could offer a little extra protection when necessary, and I could use it when sleeping in other peoples homes, but at the same time it was obvious I could not spend a full night out in the open in that sleeping bag. I might as well have left it home.

What other preparations I made? I learned the Russian alphabet. You may think that is useless without learning some of the language, but it is not. It is very usefull, because many Russian words turn out to be recognisable for anyone that speaks a little Dutch, German, French or English. For instance, аптека translates into apteka, which is an apotheek in Dutch. Or кино: translates into kino, which is indeed a kino, or cinema. A метро is a metro, which is a metro. Easy, no? In the photo above I can now easily read Vladivostok on the building. Admittedly there are words like Железнодорожный, but those you just skip.