It was about this time that we passed the turn off that would have taken us to the Vitim river and the infamous bridge. We had realised earlier that time was not going to allow us to go that far north. We'd heard that the roads up there were very wet and perhaps not rideable, at least for our talents.
We had the long and lat on our Garmin and decided to ride to the festival to at least meet these guys. At we approached the coordinates we saw a group of bikers standing around a monument in a gravelled area. They waved us in. Its a memorial to a murdered biker.
From the Moscow newspaper
We rode on into even worse weather. Unfortunately getting used to being cold and wet.
We were putting in between 580 and about 700km days on roads that were under repair and occupied by crazy Russian drivers. We got to Blagoveshchensk where by battery fully expired so the bike couldn't even be kickstarted. It was Sunday morning so finding a battery was not that easy, but Dave tracked one down and by about 10:30 we were finally on our way.
The leads were wrong way around, so the battery hung out the side with no side cover. The bike was looking pretty knocked about.
Rough section of the highway.
Cold, wet and tired. My short front guard meant I was riding into my own mud coming off the front tyre.
We had the long and lat on our Garmin and decided to ride to the festival to at least meet these guys. At we approached the coordinates we saw a group of bikers standing around a monument in a gravelled area. They waved us in. Its a memorial to a murdered biker.
From the Moscow newspaper
Bikers rally round after brutal Siberian slaying
by Andy Potts at 27/08/2010 11:28
A biker’s charred remains, exhumed from a makeshift tomb by a remote Siberian road, mark the end of one man’s mission to travel the length of Russia.
Police believe a refusal to sit and drink vodka with fellow travelers cost Alexei Barsukov his life as he tackled his epic ride to Vladivostok from his home near Nizhny Novgorod.
And the case highlights the speed with which a perceived slight can turn into a violent argument, with failing to share a drink being interpreted as a lack of respect and provoking an attack.
Café dispute
Barsukov, 36, was shot in the back of the head on Aug. 15, when he left the Zabaikalsk Region city of Mogocha on the Chita-Khabarovsk highway, Interfax reported.
Another biker described what happened that evening on the Easy Rider forum.
“Alexei did not want to drink with these bastards, but sat and prepared for a night in a tent by the roadside,” he wrote. “He was shot while I was sitting, in the back of the head. Death was instantaneous.”
According to the biker the killer was tracked down after he started making phone calls using his victim’s SIM card.
Confession
The alleged killer, who had apparently been seen in local villages drunk and boasting of his crime, has admitted shooting Barsukov and hiding the body in the woods.
But it took a volunteer effort to find his badly burned body, Radio Lemma reported, with the local biker community scouring the roadsides and eventually finding Barsukov’s remains 300m from the highway.
Oleg Schultz, one of the bikers, said that it was left to volunteers to preserve the crime scene and alert police to the murder.
Meanwhile, newsru quoted investigators confirming the arrest of two men on Aug. 26 on suspicion of murder and witnessing a crime.
Police say the suspect told them he buried the body then returned a few days later to try to burn it. He also led officers to the place where he burned the corpse, where forensic experts found a few fragments of the skull.
We arrived just in time for the service and were made very welcome. Breakfast and were given a patch to commemorate our attendance. Bikers had ridden from Moscow in the west and Vladivostok to the east. The upshot of the murder and the non cooperation of the café owner, the café caught fire and was completely destroyed.
Police believe a refusal to sit and drink vodka with fellow travelers cost Alexei Barsukov his life as he tackled his epic ride to Vladivostok from his home near Nizhny Novgorod.
And the case highlights the speed with which a perceived slight can turn into a violent argument, with failing to share a drink being interpreted as a lack of respect and provoking an attack.
Café dispute
Barsukov, 36, was shot in the back of the head on Aug. 15, when he left the Zabaikalsk Region city of Mogocha on the Chita-Khabarovsk highway, Interfax reported.
Another biker described what happened that evening on the Easy Rider forum.
“Alexei did not want to drink with these bastards, but sat and prepared for a night in a tent by the roadside,” he wrote. “He was shot while I was sitting, in the back of the head. Death was instantaneous.”
According to the biker the killer was tracked down after he started making phone calls using his victim’s SIM card.
Confession
The alleged killer, who had apparently been seen in local villages drunk and boasting of his crime, has admitted shooting Barsukov and hiding the body in the woods.
But it took a volunteer effort to find his badly burned body, Radio Lemma reported, with the local biker community scouring the roadsides and eventually finding Barsukov’s remains 300m from the highway.
Oleg Schultz, one of the bikers, said that it was left to volunteers to preserve the crime scene and alert police to the murder.
Meanwhile, newsru quoted investigators confirming the arrest of two men on Aug. 26 on suspicion of murder and witnessing a crime.
Police say the suspect told them he buried the body then returned a few days later to try to burn it. He also led officers to the place where he burned the corpse, where forensic experts found a few fragments of the skull.
We arrived just in time for the service and were made very welcome. Breakfast and were given a patch to commemorate our attendance. Bikers had ridden from Moscow in the west and Vladivostok to the east. The upshot of the murder and the non cooperation of the café owner, the café caught fire and was completely destroyed.
No comments:
Post a Comment