Saturday 30 July 2011

Fuel Shortage (Verdun, France - 30/07)

Pushing the bike to the next petrol station, luckily it was mostly downhill:
Finally, after 30 minutes of pushing the bike on the streets, the first one we found:

Mobile Bakery (Chatillion Sous les Cotes, France - 30/07)

Pleasures of being back in France!!

Diner by the lake (Chatillion sous les Cotes, France - 29/07)

Mess around Diana's feet (Chatillion Sous Les Cotes, France - 29/07)

Head cylinder oil leaks repair at BricoMarche Parking (on the way to Verdun, France - 29/07)

Co-pilote (on the way to Verdun, France - 29/07)

First steps in France (on the way to Verdun, France - 29/07)

Setting up in this empty camping (Leun, Germany - 27/07)

Modern and fast version of our sidecar (on the way to Giessen, Germany - 27/07)

Lunch break at our favourite stop, petrol station (Kassel, Germany - 27/07)

DDR style moped (Kassel, Germany - 27/07)

Memories for Diana

Camping with few world records (Bad Lauterberg - 27/07)

Bye bye Family Schramm (Flemsdorf, Germany - 25/07)

Sunday 24 July 2011

Test ride (Flemsdorf, Germany - 24/07)

After 3 days of rain, the sun is here today: I can profit to test the bike
after rebuild.

Sidecar big service (Flemsdorf, Germany - 22-24/07)

3 days of big work on the bike with the help of Daddy Schramm, experience
mechanic in old machines.
Finally, the parts bought in Poland did not fit even if the reference was
good... lucky we had a good price, we were ready to pay lots as the parts
are rare now...

Back at farm work (Flemsdorf, Germany - 21/07)

Non-stop Rain (Lowicz Walecki, Poland - 20/07)

It started to rain non-stop from this evening until we arrived safely at
Flemsdorf (Diana's home sweet home). Driving the sidecar was a freezing
experience...

Side-car enthusiast (Lowicz Walecki, Poland - 20/07)

At the precedent camp site, we met a young German telling us about a camp
site where the owner is sidecar enthusiast. Here we are!!
He could sell us some parts for our sidecar at a good price.

Wood sculptures camp site (Lasin, Poland - 19/07)

Lamp repair day (on the way to Lasin, Poland - 19/07)

Front lamp, 3 times + 4 lamps (turn signal, side front and 2 back)

Monday 18 July 2011

Cracking noise inspection (Gizycka, Poland - 18/07)

After some big showers of rain, the Moskwitsch started to squeak. here we
are in a garage for a check + two skype conference calls with Mr daddy
Schramm, ex-mechanic during soviet times.
We are ready to go but Diana has to be careful when driving.

Sunset on Niegocin lake (Bystry K. Gizycka, Poland - 17/07)

Bankautomat stop in pretty village (Wydminy, Poland - 17/07)

First place where we pass an ATM: Poland is a large country, we need to get
some cash out!!

Another Ghosty border crossing (E67 between Lithuania and Poland - 17/07)

New tyres mission (Kaunas, Lithuania - 16/07)

Here we are at the second biggest city of Lithuania a Saturday to find new
tyres for the sidecar....
We start in one shop found on internet which sells tyres: they have no tyres
in stock at all, only orders by internet. They advise us another shop in the
city which has a small selection and the tyre needed are rare... The guy ask
us which bike do we have and surprisingly he has the same bike and he has 2
extra tyres...but in Vilnius, the capital, 100km away and the shops (one to
get the tyres from and one for fitting them) are closing in 2 hours.
We finally got the tyres fitted in Vilnius and back in 3,5 hours with the
fabulous Moskwitsch at 90km/h on the highway: mission accomplished.

Border crossing in Schengen zone = ghost city (E67 between Latvia and Lithuania - 15/07)

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Second business done (Tallinn, Estonia - 11/07)

Diana could not resist to buy this car anyway!!
Now, we'll go back home not with one but two unreliable Soviet vehicles...

Business done, time to go back to our headquarter (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 09/07)

Vintage collection (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 08/07)

We realised that we are buying the bike from serious vintage bike
enthusiast!!! The BMW R25 (in front in the picture) is the bike I always
though to restore when I'll have time (because easy mechanic and gorgeous
look)!!!

Market guard (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 07/07)

Sunday 10 July 2011

The test-ride (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 07/07)

We phoned Anatoli who advertised his sidecar already since last year. The
sidecar is a KMZ (Dnepr) MT-10-36 from the year 1979 and it looked to be in real
good condition. The real problem was that Anatoli just speaks Russian. Marta
asked some of her Russian friends to phone him and to set an appointment.
Luckily Anatoli had a friend who speaks English so he could translate once
we arrived in Narva-Joesuu.
Anatoli offered us a ride with him driving to see how good is the bike.
Then Jeremie tried to ride and crashed in a tree (fortunately in slow motion)....Training is needed!!

The 3. Appointment (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia 07/07)

Our sidecar research started on Tuesday we had two appointments for seeing
the bikes. The first sidecar was not driveable at all. The tyres were flat,
it had no batterie and all in all it was in really bad condition. The owner
told us that we could bring it to a garage and it would take maybe 2 till 3
months to fix it. But we do not have that much time ;-).
The second appointment was funnily in the same town just 12km out of
Tallinn. So we took the same bus like in the morning.
The young guy was not really nice and he just wanted to push us to buy the
bike. The sidecar was not complete. We would have to fix it buy ourselves
and he as-well had no batterie. He just put a car batterie on it and showed
us that the engine is working. But the problem was that we could not even
ride it once. When we offered him to come back tomorrow with a motorbike
batterie he just said that he has 2 other people coming tonight so that
would be too late. All this stories did not "smell" good for us, so we
denied.
We had one more option in Narva-Joesuu, 200km east of Tallin next to the
beach. So here we are...

Plan B test ride (Tallinn, Estonia - 06/07)



Our first visits were so disappointing, that we are thinking of a car now...
Diana was in love with the plan B already... But we still go and see the
sidecar tomorrow!!!