From Russia with gLoves (and a helment)

This morning found us with apprehension. After being reintroduced in to polite society in Joensuu, Finland with an expensive italian meal last night, we awoke with good intentions of getting an early start. An early start to Russia. We had heard mixed reports of the road across the border and the amount of hoop jumping that we would have to endure. It ranged from 'no problem, good roads' to 'many passport problems, no road'.

Mike wanted to stop for breakfast before we left town but I wanted to get going, we fuelled and headed South for Imatra and the Russian border. I was in front and I thought I better stop after 50km. I was soon informed that had we not pulled in I would have had my head kicked in - these boys and their calorie requirements.

It was another 150km on good, if boring, Finnish roads to the border. One quick conversation is important here - we decided not to stop and get 3rd party insurance in Finland, being sure that we could get it at the border.

Customs and passport control were straightforward and luckily there wasn't much in the way of a queue. After a customs declation and a cursory glance at out luggage we were through. The border guard said 'good luck in Russia' and we were in.

Then it all went wrong - imagine a 60 year old road that hasn't been repaired in as long with 30 tonne logging trucks hammering it all day. We went from perfectly paved black in Finland to foot deep potholes in the space off 200 yards. After 50km of this we hit the main highway to St Petes. 'Mint' we thought but it soon became clear that the Russian motorway etiquette is somewhat different to our own. In true 'if you can't beat them join them fashion' we got stuck in. First refuelling stop on the motorway wasn't too succesful as they didn't take plastic, cash only! So it was 5 litres each as we only had 500 roubles between us (20 quid) and hoped it would be enough to get us to St Petes.

We stopped to gather our wits and get wired on caffeine as the whole day had been pretty tiring. Stroke of luck when our new best friend Uri pulled into the petrol station (maths and computer science lecturer from boston but a st petes native befriended us) followed shortly by our new, new best friend Leonard showed up on his 400 Bandit and kindly offered to lead us into town, result as we would never have found our hotel without him. Following him in was probably the craziest 60 minutes on a bike ever!

More tomorrow - tired!