Last entries of my journal
logbook - 10th day
Today is the final day of our little adventure. The thousands kilometers of snow, cold and struggle to keep our truck, no, our moving home, is behind us. But still, let me tell you something.
It isn't cold or other hardships what we will remember from this trip, but the feeling of trust, friendsip and accomplishment. Our travel was a bit troublesome and, frankly, reckless. Every day prepared for us some new challenges, tiny or big. And you know what, we beat them all.
And I'm feeling a bit philosophical (thanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.4){kind=small}
malck, clancynorthwind and some others who shared their thoughts with me during the course of travel). So bear with my ramblings a little, or just see the photos.On every log page I wrote "stress level of the crew - absolute zero", and that wasn't bluff. Yes, we have some stressfull moments, but it all passed very quickly. I think it's the nature of such travels, when you live by your own struggle and struggles of few close friends.
There are nobody to blame here, nobody to moan. Nobody owes you nothing, your complaints have no meaning there. You either do everything you can to survive and go forward, or you stays where you are, alone and in the deadly cold. Your engine stuck because of some bastard at refueling station, well, maybe you could sue him. But it won't get you out of where you are right now, in the cold without means to go forward or sometimes heat yourself. So your only way is to do what you must to repair it, no other options, no complaints, no regrets. Just do what you must and you will win. Rawr!
This kind of thoughts, primal, animal-like, leave no place for doubts and other complex existential things. So you really at peace inside, inner tranquility of struggle to survive, and as you continue to beat the odds this feeling grew, and you don't need to be a tibet monk to feel like buddha.
Purrs and whiskers, my dear readers, purrs and whiskers.
The temperature outside is -15 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +19 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is +5 celsius;
local time zone - GMT+9 (Moscow standart time +5);
stress level of the crew - absolute zero;
10 meters to our destination.
And now the photos:
logbook - 9th day
I'm typing this log in a truck's cabin while we crossing the border of Irkutsk oblast.
Yes, our destination is almost within our grasp, and it fills our hearts with joy (oh, yeah, bath, warm water, we soo missed ya)! The taiga surrounds us, pine trees all covered with fluffy snow, very cozy.
Feels almost like home. Well, it's certainly home for our truck, it seems to love deep snow and forest roads.
Yes, deep snow =^_^=.
Oh, and as for our habit of saving people along the way - today we helped out 4th one. This far it was the easiest of our cases. WV in the snow so near the road we wasn't need our heavy offroad arsenal. Just a little tug, here you go little one:
The temperature outside is -16 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +18 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is +3 celsius;
local time zone - GMT+9 (Moscow standart time +5);
stress level of the crew - absolute zero ;
600 km to our destination.
And now the photos:
logbook - 8th day
Okay, I must admit it, saving people from snow became our hobby. We saved the third car today, some nissan was thrown out of the road near Kemerovo. The driver was so thankful for our help, so he just open a trunk of his car, took from there huge sack of ... wheat flour and threw it inside our truck. And refused to take it back by all means. "You helped me, I will help you, no isn't the option!" He was soo persuasive we just can't say no (by the way, owner mazda we saved yesterday tried to gave us money but we utterly refused to take 'em) . So now we have 30-40 kg of wheat flour in our living space and wonder what use could it be to us...
Yes, our truck may be a bit ugly and the worst thing to long-distance travel, with it's huge fuel consumption, noise, vibrations, no comfort whatsoever. Our paws may be dirty from constant repairs and adjustments. But this truck is the best thing you could hope to meet on the road when your comfy little car happened to be stuck in deep snow, at night, far from asphalt so other cars can't dug you out. We have a sack full of flour to prove it!
Oh, and tiggah made a little fire alarm in the truck's cabin, never mind that.
The temperature outside is -10 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +19 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is +6 celsius;
stress level of the crew - absolute zero ;
1350 km to our destination.
And now the photos:
logbook - 7th day
Our internal clock set for gmt+4 (aka Moscow time). And while we travel futher east, we shift our driving time more and more for the night one. We already crossed GMT+6 (Ural) and now we travel in western Siberia's GMT+7 (Novosibirsk) time zone. Combine all this time shifts with midwinter shot daylight duration and you will get a complete mess with the times of the day.
Well, at least we free from any kind of dogmas. We eat when we get hungry and have the time for cook or some roadside cafe near. We sleep when we want to (or when we had to)...
And just when I wrote this very words the life made a brief test to our freedom. We was targeted for protection racket by some, I dunno, local gang maybe. At 1:10 AM local time we stopped to check our cheetah riding in unheated living space of our truck (well, we run out of gas for our heating and still can't find a refuel). Federal road, empty, no towns or villages near, closest big city in about 200 km from our stop. Next to us, just a meter from our bumper, stops BMW, and a few guys walk towards me (I was sitting at passenger seat in our truck cabin). "- Where are you from?" "-And where to...?" I answered about Moscow and Irkutsk. "- So you're the head guy" "- Okay, pay 12 grand and you're got a safe road from all bad guys". I answered politely, guys, this is old military track, we're not hauling any commodities, we're just a travellers. So, our answer will be STEP ON IT AND RUN YOU OVER. The dragon at driver's seat just answered the same and as he added some gas and handled the gearbox, the guys answered "- Oh, so you're travelers, sorry to bother ya", run to their car and ride out full speed.
That's the story.
Oh, and as a matter of fact it wasn't bluff. We were ready to do it, especially at the sign of possible weapons. We knew our truck good enough now, the mere bmw sedan won't stop it, we will run over it.
...
Oh, no, another adventure prevents me from finishing this log. Another +1 to karma. 3AM local. This time Mazda 3 was thrown out from the road at huge speed, a family of 3 inside. We helped to extract it from the snow. Everybody in mazda is alive, through their car is trashed pretty badly. Torn our "10 ton" rope a few times in process, cheap chineese crap.
The temperature outside is -12 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is -6 celsius and raising (we just now refueled our gas);
temperature inside truck cabin is +5 celsius;
stress level of the crew - absolute zero ;
2000 km to our destination.
logbook - 6th day
Yesterday was a hard day, so I'm writing this report today, a bit late. It all began at around 4AM GMT+6, when we had our road accident. As we found out later the fuel from our last refuel was, well, let's say "homemade", it happens in this oil-rich Tyumen Oblast. And the engine fuel line, fuel filters and fuel line all went clogged mid-run. And the engine stopped on our way, just the moment when we travelled at roadside at 65 kmph, It happens unexpected enough for our dragon driver to sway a course a little (as the power steering went down with the engine) and we fall out of the road, into deep road ditch, filled with show. The ditch was deep enough (something like two -three times height of our truck) and had the harsh slopes (something about 45 degrees), but the deep snow, from ankle-deep to waist-deep stopped our fall and cushioned our speed. The truck stayed upright and undamaged, even on the bottom of ditch, we all - unharmed. And the long night struggle begun.
First of all we tried to restart the engine. After some manipulations it started, through it lost much of it's power and runs with conks. Still the truck was able to move and we decided getting out was our first priority and the engine our second. Even with unstable engine and deep snow (sometimes it was so hard to walk in it we had to crawl) the truck could move with 4WD and demultiplicator on, thanks to it's huge tires and locking differentials. But it lacked the power to crawl on the slope and the angles was dangerous high to it to overturn. So after some struggle we decided to travel along the ditch in search of a easier slopes. The truck travelled down in the ditch and chetah and I walked on the road above. After kilometer of such long and tiresome travel with frequent engine stops we found slope easy enough visually to get out.
We stayed there for awhile trying to start the engine, and after an hour we could make it run long enough for the escape attempt.
It was dawn already, and after few run-downs and some digging the truck was free from it's snow prison.
We was tired enough from the struggle and sleepless night to start engine repairs right away and we just went to sleep. And only afrer sleep and few test runs we determined the reason for power loss and engine unstable work - not enough fuel. First step - checking the fuel filters. All clogged up by dirt and rust particles. After a cleaning and replacing the filters we did the test run - bah, no effect whatsoever. Next check - fuel pump. Dirt inside, clogged out pretty badly.
Cleaned it and washed with petroleum, reassembled and installed. All in the field, just on a roadside, at -18 celsius. We even made makeshift "hand warmer" fire, from aluminum cup filled with petrol, just to allow us to work on cold metal parts and fuel without risk of cold burns.
Engine runs better but still not as good as before, without full power. Next stop - checking out the fuel line. Also clogged, in the multiple places, even inside the fuel tank. To disassemble it we need to disassemble the fuel tank, and we had only one tank in a working condition right now, so we can't do that in field. So we worked out the makeshift solution. Using the hose we had in our spare parts, smaller hose we salvaged from remains of military air purification and filtering equipment (those things above truck's cabin, we should only need those in case of a nuclear or chemical war) we made new makeshift fuel line.
I'm afraid we getting better and better at those makeshift things. And I thought the joke about duct tape and WD40 as universal solution to all engineering problems supposed to be a joke. Silly tigah is silly =-_-=.
All those repairs makes us tired so much, that after a short travel we went to sleep without daily report.
The temperature outside is -18 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +12 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is -2 celsius;
stress level of the crew - absolute zero ;
2800 km to our destination.
logbook - 5th day
Yesterday night was cold, the temperature outside dropped below -26 when we went to sleep, and even through our gas heater was turned on maximum setting, frankly it wasn't a comfort sleep. At morning we doesn't want to stress the engine by the cold start and tried to heat it by petroleum wielding torch, to no avail (our torch was a bit broken and can't give a decent fire).
So we risked the cold start, and all goes well thanks to new starter we installed the day before.
We made some adjustments to our truck before riding out, most noteworthy was layer of thermo insulation outside the cabin and engine hold, to prevent engine (and those inside the cabin) from freeze.
Well, at first we overdone it, and on long climbing roads we had a few boilings of antifreeze in truck's radiator.
So, we added a hole to ventilate radiator and experimented with shapes for a while =^_^=
Today we passed through Ural mountains and hills. A magnificent sight, and a hard road, with continuos ascends, descents and turns, combined with heavy long-haul traffic. As wikipedia notes this part of the road nicknamed by the locals as "Death's road", due to heavy casualties from numerous road accidents (more than 50 deaths annually on a small 150km part of the road). We also has our small incident, nothing serious... almost nothing. The makeshift fuel filter that was installed by army technicians had a loose screw at one of the fittings and long runs with heavy load produced enough vibration for it to fall off, and the jet of fuel split on the hot engine. Well, we was lucky as cold weather prevent it from ignition at exhaust pipes, so all we needed to do is reconnect it and double-check all the fittings.
Oh, and tiggah got himself a nice pair of mukluks. Through I prefer not to buy any natural fur things, this one buy was more of a necessity as it is one of the best ways to keep your feet warm in extreme cold conditions. And I'm really sorry for the dog who gave his life (and fur) to keep me warm.
The temperature outside is -22 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +11 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is -6 celsius;
stress level of the crew - absolute zero;
3100km to our destination.
And now the photos:
