Athens

Well I needed to get to Cairo for a big scooter tour. After looking for tickets I found it was cheaper to buy round trip tickets Kiev-Athens then round trip tickets Athens to Cairo. I saved about $200 by doing that so I thought to stay in Athens a bit on the way down to check it out.

I landed around lunch time in Athens and went into the city. It costs 10 Euro for the metro from the airport to city center. I found my little hotel and went out to explore.

First I found a place that had gyro's so I got one of those amazing little things! Then continued walking.

Here is the Parthenon from afar.

I intended to go inside the Parthenon but I refused to pay 30 Euro for the entrance ticket! The closer I got the more construction equipment I could see up there anyways so I just kept on going.

Came across this also

More ruins of who knows what, they are everywhere.

Some sort of gate that is framing the Parthenon in the background

Then I ended up at the Stadium. It was the first Olympic stadium used in the modern Olympics

It was only 5 Euro to get in so I thought to check it out.

The tunnel where the athletes would enter the arena

The view from the top of the stadium was pretty nice.

The next day I had time to kill so I walked around and came across this car museum!

They had the Flintstone mobile!

The museum was pretty cool I was impressed they had a wide assortment of vehicles

This hand formed BMW

One of these cut away pieces that are always interesting

After the museum I just bummed around the city eating mostly. Ohh the food is so amazing! Then I started back to the hotel for bed so I could get up and fly to Cairo the next day!

England Part 2

Later in the evening I met up with a friend for a few beers. It was good to catch up. I stayed in a hostel there were 12 of us in one room that had triple bunk beds. Of course I had the top. About 6:00 in the morning someones alarm started going off. All of us but 3 woke up and nobody knew who's alarm it was. So after 10 minutes I tried to get out of bed and fell the three levels to the ground and busted my ass.... 

So after embarrassing myself I headed out for a bit. I went to the London Transport Museum.

It was very expensive! Honestly kind of disappointing to

This was one of the coolest parts. An original steam locomotive for the underground. To keep the tunnels clear to be able to see they converted the steam back into water.

There was some old buses also

After the museum I had lunch and just walked around some more.

Then I hopped a train south to a town called Whitstable to visit Tom an old motorcycle friend.

Tom and I went bar hopping that evening before checking in for the night.

The next day we walked around in the daylight

We found that someone had set up shop in my cottage!

Here are is the dock

From there I went back to London then got another train to Hertford. I went there to visit a friend I met at Lemans a year ago. It was his 60 birthday. Of course I didnt get any photos with all the drinking going on I was plenty busy.

The day after the party I went back to London then jumped on my plane back to Kiev. London was great but way to expensive. In 4 days I spent what I would spend a few months in Ukraine....

Quickly off to England!

Sometimes life throws you for a spin. I had bought tickets a few months previously to travel to London and visit friends. Then the beginning of September I found out I was going to be out of a job. Well life happens and I already had ticket to London so off I go!

Once I got to Gatwick it took over an hour to get through passport control. Then a quick train to the city and found my hotel. While I was looking for my hotel I stumbled across this church so I stopped to have a quick look see.

It was quite beautiful inside and very strange to be able to walk around and read everything in English.

I then found my hotel checked in dropped my bag off and headed out!

I came across all kinds of things. I believe this was near Buckingham Palace

The palace itself

There was this huge park to stroll through. Just beautiful but a bit chilly

This was some kind of horse training grounds.

A monument to the work the women did during WWII I thought was rather interesting

Then they had this giant statue of me right down town! I am not sure whats going on the dates on it were a bit off but I guess not everyone is perfect :)

The world famous clock

Big Ben and it was pretty big!

Then I saw this guy! I figure if worse comes to worse I can always pick up a traffic cone and sing through it and hope for money.

Near the big ferris wheel was this wonderful lady playing and singing. So I set there eating a banana and listening to her for a good while.

I just kept wondering through the city with no particular plan and nowhere to go it was nice

Mount Rivna & More Problems

After I was woken up at 4 am by the guys driving across the river I fell back asleep and woke again at about 10:00, which is very late for me. I hurried up and gathered my stuff up and headed to Syniver lake. I was almost the only one there. This lake is incredibly famous in Ukraine. I dont really understand why. Its cool and all but I would hardly call it a lake. more like a pond. I walked around it in 15 minutes, at a leisurely pace. The road to get there was through nice scenery though!




Here you can see the tiny island in the middle of the lake






Since I got a late start to the day I didnt hang around long. I headed out to go to Shypit Waterfall. It wasn't incredible far. It was pretty cool a 14 meter, 46 ft, tall waterfall.






From there my goal was to get back to Kiev. I didnt plan to do it in one day but to make things simple I just said GPS take me home! it made a route and I started following it. It was fine then told me to turn down a dirt road..... I thought it strange but sometimes it happens here that a road is dirt or bad pavement for a while then gets better so I went for it. Then the road got worse then worse then worse. Finally about 20km later I hadn't seen much in the way of houses or anything and I started to think ok this isn't so cool. This is pretty rough in this big bike maybe I should turn around. Then I thought well do you want to drive back through that so I pressed forward up the side of a mountain, not switchbacks just straight up the side...



It was crazy! the center of the road was washed away and was about a foot lower than the rest of the road. It was all I could do to keep it on the ruts from previous logging trucks. Then I came to a plateau.



Its at this point I really debated going back but man it was so steep getting up the mountain and so rutted up that I was afraid to go back down it. So I pressed on. I remember thinking this is probably stupid but there is no going back now. Worse comes to worse I could see they had been cutting trees recently so if I crash someone should be along in the next day or 2....






The pictures really dont do it justice. This was one of the worse paths/roads I had ever been on.






The views were nice though!



I am not 100% sure where this was the GPS said Mount Rivna, I believe, from what I can find it is located here 48.740698, 23.387804




Finally I came down into a village! this church was there!






I was so happy to be out of that mess! I really was fairly worried. My phone had no reception and if I went down I though well this will be interesting. When I got to the village people kind of looked at me funny as I went through. Then I got to the other side of it the road turned into a brand new paved road!!!! I was sooooo happy!

So I kept going and going and going. I decided not to take the super highway from Lviv to Kyiv but the road that runs parallel to is but to the south, through Ternopil again. This road wasnt horrible but not great. I went through Ternopil and ran into Sergey again. We stopped chatted a bit then I went on.




Finally I found a place to camp in a field near a river and just passed out. It was only 400km that day but it was a long day...




Next morning I woke up and headed to Kiev. I was about 100km from Kiev when I heard something funny. I stopped and found this



Some tie wire and I thought I had it fixed!






But when I started the bike it was loud..... the exhaust had cracked...



I drove a little further until I found a gas station. I stopped and bought a can of coke. Now normally I would use a steel can to repair and exhaust leak but they only had aluminum. I figured well at this point I only have 80km to go and its all on the super highway so its a smooth road this wont be an issue.






I got on the bike started it up and it wasnt perfect but good enough. As I was wrapping the exhause with the can I tried to feel if the exhaust was completely broken or cracked. I could feel anything so I wasn't to worried. This will work until Kiev.

As I cruised along at about 70mph I was thinking. Thats it! Thats all the gods of motorcycling are going to throw at me! The trip gave me everything I wanted and then some. The only payment is a loose fork bolt, loosing a headlight bolt and now the cracked exhaust.... HA! Thats childs play :)


About 50km from Kiev the bike got REALLY facking loud :) Looks like the gods heard me. The exhaust broke completely in two. I jammed it back together wrapped it with tie wire and continued on. The bike was near deafening loud but so be it. I pulled into Kiev 50km later parked the bike went home and had a celebratory beer! Trip well done!

Across Hungary to Ukraine

I staggered out of bed Sunday morning. I knew I had a long way to go. In the 2.5 days I had been in Hungary I had spent as much as 8 days in Ukraine. It was time for me to get back! I had about 700km to cover. I said my good byes to everyone and headed out. Passing just through Budapest I took the northern highway across Hungary headed east. I drove and drove stopping as little as possible. Then I noticed I had no more turn signals.... Well I stopped to get gas and briefly looked at it but could figure nothing out so I kept going.

About 550km later I got to the Ukraine border. Coming back into Ukraine was simple and easy. Nobody cared if you were smuggling something in there was no need to check every piece of baggage. So I had 150km to go in Ukraine the road conditions were bound to get worse..

Along the way I found this cool church!

My goal was Syniver Lake in the Carpathians. 

The road to get there had great scenery!

I found the entrance to the lake. I had to pay a fee to get in and I was told I couldnt camp there.... Well It was about 8:00 pm or so. I decided I would find a camping spot nearby and see the lake in the morning. I asked the guards if they knew of a place and they said any place along the river that runs by the road is fine. I asked if it was safe. Ahhhh Normalna we have a lot of tourist here its no problem nobody will bother you.

I had seen this green spot on my way there so I went back to it

The only way to get there though was across this walking bridge that was about 1 meter wide....

After checking it out it seemed doable. I hesitantly crossed the bridge and drove up to the picnic tables in the back ground. Set up my tent and started to work on the bike. I had heard a strange noise. Found the belt guard loose so tightened it up. Then started to work on the turn signal issue. Found a resistor I had installed had burned up. So I jumped around the resistor and the turn signals worked again, they blinked incredibly fast but worked.

As I was dong this these 2 boys came up to talk to me. Their Russian was as limited as mine but we had a grand conversation. I let them sit on the bike take photos start it up and rev the motor. They were as happy as could be.

I went to sleep but about 4 in the morning I was woken up by a car. I was looking out my tent and these guys in a big Soviet 4x4 came across the river and went into the mountains behind me. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but once I saw there were not interested in me I went back to sleep.

Hungarian Warriors Meeting!

I hung out at Mcdonalds for a while. they had free refills so I must of drank like 15 Coke's. Finally I headed out with the destination being Balaton Lake, Tihany to be exact. the road was good and I was in no hurry. I was to met some friends there but not until late afternoon. I saw this statue so stopped to check it out.

Of course its Soviet.... A cemetery with soldiers from WWII

It was in rough shape but I have seen worse.

From there I continues onwards towards Tihany. It was another hot day. I arrived earlier than I really wanted but it was nice to be there. A few hours later a few more guys rolled in.

By evening everyone had showed up! This is the annual European meeting of Yamaha Warriors. This year it was hosted by the Hungarians! That night we stayed up way to late drinking beer and Planeka, local version of homemade alcohol.

The next morning everyone stumbled out of bed, there were a little over 40 bikes there. We had a planned ride out today.

We rode all over the country side I think about 100 miles total.

We did have one guy go down on the ride but it was fairly minor. All in all it was a great ride, hot but good!

here is the last stop.

That evening there was more beer, palenka and food!

They had a rockabilly band to play! They put on a good show!

This was the third of these type of gatherings I have made it to in the last 5 years. This was by far the most fun! Good music good food and good people! Cant ask for much more!