Yaro 2012

May 26, 2012

Went to Yaroslavl for one night for City Day.  Left Saturday at 13:00, arrived at John's place about 17:00.

I took the XChallenge, because I wanted to make sure it worked before the trip to Mongolia.  It is not a great bike for road trips, because the seat is not very comfortable and there is no fairing.  Other than that, everything was OK.

Walked around town, standard City Day stuff. Later, kind of a slow night in Yaroslavl.  

Left in the morning, rode back, no big adventures.

Test Ride to Yaroslavl

A couple of weeks ago I took the Xchallenge on a test ride up to Yaroslavl, with basically the same load plan as I'll take to Magadan.  Here are a couple pictures of the bike:

 

In the parking lot, before packing up:

Here is one by the usual monastery in Rostov:

In general, everything went fine, no major changes necessary, although the big fuel tank does not seem to be working correctly.

Yaro Music Festival

Had packed the bags for a trip to Lake Seliger this weekend, but literally at the last minute decided to go back to Yaro instead. I had stayed home on Friday and didn't really feel like sitting in a tent by myself on Saturday, so I decided to go visit John in Yaro.

I decided not to take the highway, but to head sort of E-NE out of Moscow, and then veer back toward the NE to Rostov, where I would check out the kremlin before heading to Yaro.

It was a nightmare getting out of Moscow, as I had picked the wrong via point on my GPS, so I was trying to ignore it and dead reckon my way out of the city. Finally got out the city and hit some massive traffic jam--cars at a total standstill--so I turned around and tried to navigate around it but got stuck in some town which was bisected by a rail line, took a long time to fight through the town and traffic.

I finally broke free of the city and traffic and got on some very small roads. Lots of pretty scenery, old churches, etc. Here is one ruined church, but there were lots more:

I should have taken more photogs! Anyway, soon after leaving this town the GPS turned me on to some dirt roads and the road got really fun, with an uneven dirt road with big patches of mud/puddles. Past these, some good gravel roads, and then a road made of concrete blocks laid on the ground. This last one wasn't too smooth, because the blocks didn't line up well and were missing big chunks, which made for some rough riding. Finally I made it back to pavement about 60 km east of Rostov, and it promptly started to rain.

By the time I got to Rostov it was past five, so no time for the kremlin...I texted John to let him know I was nearby, and headed in to Yaroslavl. I guess I haven't posted any pictures of Yaroslavl in this blog, will have to remedy that next time. Anyway, it turned out that there was a big music/beer festival going on in Yaro, so we headed over there to check out the scene. Music was OK, beer was cheap, crowd was a bit tipsy but so far not too surly, although that would probably change as the night wore on. We left by about 20:00, and went for dinner and drinks on the pedestrian zone before heading to a big beer tent type place with live Soviet-style music. We stayed there for a while before heading to a nearby nightclub, where we stayed until late...a good time was had by all.

The next morning I got up bright and early and decided to stop in Rostov to see the kremlin on the way back. Had a quick breakfast at the McDonalds in Yaro and headed off to Rostov. I parked right in front of the kremlin, here are a few shots:

Didn't go in the kremlin, have to save something for later, so after a while I got back on the bike and headed down to the dirt road by the lake for a couple more shots, one of the monastery:
And here's one for my "Rowboats of Rostov" series:By now I was ready to leave Rostov, so I mounted up and got back on to the main highway to Moscow. This time I decided to take pictures of more of those Russian churches which I usually just blow by, so here are a bunch of them:

As you can tell, the weather got progressively worse as I got closer to Moscow, but the rain had basically stopped by the time I got home. Anyway, a fun little trip.

Yaroslavl Party

This weekend I decided to head back to Yaroslavl, because my buddy John was having a going away party for one of his friends from there who was going to study in Australia.

So anyway, this weekend I decided I would take a little time and check out Rostov Veliky (Rostov the Great) on the way to Yaroslavl. It is another of the "Golden Ring" cities and supposedly quite nice, although I had never stopped there, just ridden by (really around) it on the way to/from Yaro. Supposedly there a is nice kremlin there, so I thought I'd check it out. I got there and found a rather nice monastery, but no kremlin, here are some pix:
After leaving the monastery, I rode a little bit and found the kremlin, but decided to save that for another visit, and kept on going to Yaro.
I got to Yaro and got some rest before heading over to John's for the party. John knows some fun people in Yaro, there were about twenty at the party, it was pretty fun:

The next morning I got up pretty early and headed back to Moscow. but I decided to get off the main highway and check out some smaller roads. I rode to Rostov, then hung a right, came across this kremlin and church, pretty cool:
After this I kept running down a bunch of little roads, more or less relying on the GPS to keep me heading in the right direction...the only problem was it kept spazzing out, sending me down some road and then recalculating, sending me somewhere else. But it was OK, found some dirt roads and rode through some little villages, very fun overall.

Yaroslavl Bike Fest

Went up to Yaroslavl this weekend, but my buddy wasn't in town, so I had to hang out by myself. On the way out of Moscow I noticed lots of bikers heading out of town, and then I bumped into a guy on a 650 in a town along the Volga called Uglich who said that there was a "Black Bear" biker fest in Tutaev, a bit north of Yaroslavl (the Black Bears are the local bike gang in Yaroslavl). As I rode from Uglich to Yaroslavl, there were huge storm clouds all around, especially right over Yaroslavl. I seemed to be just a bit behind the storm, however, and while I encountered some trees it blew down laying in the road, it didn't start raining on me until I actually got to Yaroslavl, and even then only for a few minutes. I went to Cocktail Bar for dinner and then went home for a quick nap before going out...but then didn't wake up till morning...

Next morning I got up and headed to the bike fest, although I didn't know exactly where it was...I figured I would just follow all of the other bikes. Finding it was easy enough all right, and there must have been a couple thousand bikers there, a big stage, and...a rather nerdy sword-and-shield reenactment.

I wandered around for awhile, but I couldn't drink since I was riding, wasn't really into the "loudest bike" or other competitions, and didn't really feel like hanging out until evening when the music and other festivities would start. Plus I didn't bring my tent, so couldn't spend the night. Anyway, decided to leave and do more riding around.

First, I decided to head to the other side of the Volga, check out Uglich again. There is a ferry at Tutaev, so after looking for it for a bit, found some other bikers waiting for the ferry as well:
It was a nice ferry ride, and then off to Uglich. I poked around there a bit, saw the usual churches, etc., and then back to Yaroslavl. Here is an old church at an intersection I went through several times this weekend: