Kiev to Odesa

Coming to Odesa was an unbelievably effortless affair. Woke up record-time early to beat the morning traffic in Kiev, and took the smooth 500-km motorway without police intervention!
A local lawyer instructed us that if you're done nothing wrong or a minor offense (like speeding) you're better off not trying to sort things out and be understood. Just stick to your language (don't even do English) and they'll probably let you go because it is just easier to shake down locals. If the offense is more serious, don't negotiate. Just make sure a 50 or 100 UAH note gets dropped in a police car or in a drawer in police office. Things will usually turn ok after the note gets found. Very understandable; wouldn't you be pleasantly surprised if you just happened to find a considerable amount of money at your working place, and wouldn't you just want to be very friendly to your customers after that?

All the bikes are in perfect running condition once again (thanks to 'Hooligans' stunts riders of Kiev) and to make things extra smooth there was a local biker guy coming to meet us at the city border and guide us to our apartment. The apartment is a big-job affair in the very center of things. Of course it has to be, there is still 8 of us. The girls took a night train from Kiev.



2 days in Odesa now, and spirits are high. Also two nights of dancing-till-shirt-drips-sweat-and-sun-rises-from-sea on Arcadia beach giant open-air disco. Some of the kuupelos there are not running only on Red Bull, their pupils dilated and their moves defying the traditional Newtonian physics.

Rivne and to Kiev and more unpleasantness with the authorities

Rivne (Rovno) is awesome. The Ukrainian roads are all paved by Michael J. Fox (a politically incorrect reference to Parkinson's) and it was raining all day but it's the people who make the place. Wanting to make sure we get the most out of Ukraine, calling their friends and arranging things for us. Even taking care of reminding us of our bedtime, so that we are in good riding spirits and conditions in the morning.

What is curious is that in the most downscale watering hole, 80% of the patrons were lawyers and then there was us. They assured me that Ukraine really does need that many lawyers because of the shitty laws.
Speaking of which, the Ukrainian police force is once again a bit better off, courtesy of MC Murskeat Lokit. This time there was a bigger show, threats of long time prisonment, a real judge, a court and a trial, but eventually things were taken care of with same kind of money than the last time. This made us lose 5-8 hrs and most of our faith in humanity.

Nevertheless, we're in Kiev now. The sun has shined on us all day, temperature around 30C, it's been almost unbearable to be dressed in thick black leather, and ride (slowly) these black potato fields that have road paintings on them.
The wifes and girlfriends of 3 of us flew into Kiev on Sunday. So now we have attractive women with us who also speak the language. That can never be bad.
Kiev shows promise, too. After arriving here, it took all of 25 seconds for a biker guy to come and offer his help in finding whatever we need. His help will come in handy, because one of the bikes need some fixing. And that is what these ppl are good at. Fixing things.
Some of the necessary parts will be shipped from by bus from another town, some parts will be sourced from a local stunts-riding team.
Today we went to a private tour on Obolon beer factory. It took around 15 calls to bypass the General Managers secretary (thid brewery doesnt do tourist tours) and then we were invited.
And impressive factory it was, huge amounts of hops, barley, water and yeast go in at the other end (and little solid bits of plastic and glass; they'll turn into bottles) and all kinds of great beverages come out from the other. In the meanwhile, the hundred or so 400000 - 600000 liter tanks store the golden stuff at 1C.
There has been around billion liters of Obolon made. Calculate the cubic root of that and you will learn that it amounts to a cube where each side is one kilometer long.
But remembering that every liter of beer will make you urinate at least the same amount, it is no wonder the river Dnepr runs so wide.

Sorry this blog entry took a while to air, internet connectivity has been scarce.

And greetings to all the great ppl we've met, including Alexander, Neko, Genie, Dimitri, and the 6-weeks(?) old kitten named Eric.

Warsaw, PL to Rivne, UA and how not to bribe the police

After an intense sleep-over in Warsaw we arrived to Rivne, Ukraine yesterday.
Ukrainian border formalities require the normal Soviet-style stamping of irrelevant pieces of paper. This takes surprisingly long for such a trivial task (it's not like they even understand what it says on the vehicle registration papers), and therefore the queue to the border was something in the order of 5-6 hrs. We didn't feel the queuing really applied to us, what with us being such cool guys and everything. So we lane-splitted our way straight to passport control.
Maybe some day i'll try that queuing thing, too, people must like it a lot since they do it in such great masses.
Second contact to Ukrainian officials we got in some nameless town, which we were passing thru. They were a bit upset about our speeds and habits. There was a lot of posing around and general reprimanding. Things took a turn for the better when told that we don't really need all the protocol, and a 50€ note was casually dropped into the police car as they instructed. So in fact it was the police car that got bribed, not the police.
Later we learned the going rate is 5-10€, but decided not to find the police and ask for our change back.

Rivne however seems nice enough, and we'll stay here for another night. A large beer costs 1€ in the most upscale discotheque (bottle of vodka is 5), and a room in the biggest hotel is 40€ a night. And the girls in the nightclub seem to have left their intestines home, there is no other way they would fit into those dresses.

Warsaw

We got to where we wanted to be this midsummer eve. At least in geographical sense. So we're in Warsaw now, and it is 9.30 pm.
All of Poland was wet today, but we only managed to catch a couple of drops ourself.
Riding here presents some challenges. There is always a bmw of a Merc trying to overtake you, no matter what your speed. Leaving them as dots in the rear view mirror (which is only a matter of a small twist of the wrist) will only make them make more fucked-up overtakings when they catch you. And the road paintings as well as road patches are as slippery as. (I'll leave the rest to your verbal imagination, which i trust to be better than mine).
This is Midsommer Eve now. Most of you know what that means for a Finn. There is the kokko, the sauna, and some vastaanpaneminen (controversy) which will eventually and hopefully turn into vastaan tuleminen (universal love).
Tomorrow seems like a good day to go to Ukraine.
Prove me wrong, my little wompats.

Lift-off

It's on again. The Motorcycle Club Murskeat Lokit is on the road.
This time the turning point will be Odesa, Ukraine, by the Black Sea.
At this moment we are approaching Gdynia from the Baltic Sea.
Left yesterday evening, and will return in a couple of weeks.
Plan is to get to Warsaw today, but there seem to be heavy rains throughout Poland, so we'll just see where we end up.
There are 5 of us on board, equipped with generous amounts of electronics. One of which should allow you to track our movements on the map in realtime on the right side of this page.
If Odesa is good, we might open up an electronics shop there and stay for a while. The heap of gadgetry should support us for a month or two.