Dave wakes us with coffee next morning. He's in a good mood but Mike is not because our front tire is right down and the bead has broken loose from the rim. That means we can't inflate it with the truck's air, and Mike has to change it.
Our neighbor in the TIR park is Ian Prince of ASD Transport in London. He came out from England with a load of shirts, and is now hauling hanging garments to Lithuania.
He drives an Iveco Eurotech with high bulk trailer, and he has little hammock hanging in window with a toy stuffed rabbit in it. It's a mascot, and not the only one I've seen in a truck. I remember one American trucker who drove a Mack, and who had a little knitted coat to put on the bulldog-shaped hood ornament when he went north in winter.
Ian has been coming to Moscow for a year and he's not sure how much he likes it. He says one driver in his company arrived in Russia for the first time, drove to the British Embassy in Moscow, gave them the keys to his truck and flew home. He just couldn't handle Russia.
Ian knows that Mike has a thermometer on his dash, and he asks how cold it is.
"Seven degrees below zero", Mike says.
"Couldn't you have lied to make me feel warmer?" Ian asks with a wry smile.
"I did," Mike says.
Mike has the tire off now, and it has another nail in it. Mike thinks he got it here last night. Could be, but it's surprising how far you can drive with a nail in your tire. It may not go flat until you pull it out. We still have a good spare, and Mike puts it on.
Our road out of Moscow is good with little traffic and some snow and two lanes of wet road with wide shoulders. Most of it is through birch and pine forest but in spots we have wide fields. It is very boring.
As everywhere in Russia there are scrap tires beside the road, some of them burning. When people break down first thing they do is find a tire and set fire to it for heat. Sometimes we see two and three columns of black smoke from burning tires in a couple of miles of road.
A lot of the breakdowns are due to flat tires. Mike says Russian tires are very bad and he's right, we see cars and trucks with flats everywhere.
There's an English-registered truck parked by the road and we pull over to see if he's okay. The driver is a Pole, driving for a Moscow company, and his air is frozen. Dave gives him a shot of alcohol to clear it.
Air brakes often give trouble in cold weather because water condenses in the tanks, and freezes in the system. Modern trucks have air driers to remove air before it gets into the system and purge valves to blow off water from the tanks, but they don't always work as well as they should. When the system does freeze up the usual cure is to pour alcohol into the system. The alcohol mixes with the water and prevents freezing, and the mixture of water and alcohol will blow off as the brakes are used.
Truckers in Canada and the US carry wood alcohol to clear their brakes, but truckers in Russia use vodka because it's cheaper than wood alcohol, and easier to buy.
We stop at a roadside cafe with nice. pinkish marble tile walls and floor, big windows with bars and lace curtains, and cut glass light fixtures. For 16,000 rubles we get roast chicken with potatoes and beets. This is the same type of operation as the Cafe from hell we stopped at on the way out, but much better run.
A Lada car parked outside has a sticker in rear window that says it was assembled in Halifax Nova Scotia
One truck we pass on the highway has a sign on the side that says the driver is a Navajo American Marine. I tell Mike I think I saw that guy once before, in Spain, but Mike says they sell that sticker at truck stops.
But why would anyone buy it? I guess for some European truckers the ultimate in cool would be to be a Navajo Indian who was a veteran of the US Marines. I wonder if some camel pullers of the old Silk Road pretended to be former Roman legionnaires, or Mongol cavalry.
By early afternoon we're running through dry light snow. It's no problem, but Mike says there could be a lot more ahead.
The bar and the restaurant are closed as we pass the Oasis but Mike and I stop for diesel. There are two lines of trucks waiting for the pump but a Slovenian truck tries to jump past us to get to the pump ahead. The truck there is very slow and he is still waiting as we fill up.
If he had stayed in line he would have been next at our pump and now we want to leave, but he is blocking us, and he won't back up and let us out. He holds up both lines, and takes longer to get filled himself because he's too mean to take his turn. We just filled the tractor, not the belly tank because we can bring only 200 liters of fuel into Germany, but Mike figures it took us a half hour to fuel and get out.
Outside the restaurant a respectable-looking man wearing a fur hat and brown coat says he has problem and asks for a loan of DM 5. He looks to be well off but Mike says he's a professional beggar who turns up everywhere.
At Smolensk, about half way between Moscow and Minsk, we stop at the Intourist Phoenix Motel and pay for a shower. For 5,000 rubles we get the temporary use of a hotel room but no towel. The shower has hot water but the room is dirty. I don't even want to walk barefoot on the bathroom floor.
Someone has boxed the radiator so it will look pretty, but a boxed radiator does not radiate heat well. The rad is hot, but the room is cold.
The restaurant has a buffet and the food -- mostly cold meat and bread -- looks okay but it has been sitting out all day and it's not refrigerated. I settle for coffee.
Mike buys a Russian doll from a vendor for 10 German marks. Another vendor offers tapes for DM2.50. Ian says the place is full of whores and pimps at night, but there are none now.
I have a soft spot for some Russian women and I meet one in Smolensk who really impresses me. She's beautiful, she speaks good English and Ian says she trades currency and sells black market cigarettes. She's obviously smart. In this country most people are sheep but the few who can do things can get rich
The others didn't get fuel at the Oasis, so they will go ahead to a fuel stop on the highway. We take our time, and will meet them later.
At the Belarus border the guard wants us to pay a $60 transit tax but Mike refuses. "Nyet bokage", he insists. "We have no freight." As usual, he manages to face down the border guard.
Somehow he seems to know beforehand when he's going to win an argument, and when he can't. Sometimes I see him cave in to extortion without a fight, but every time I see him fight, he wins.
It's dark and getting colder as we approach Minsk. The snow has stopped but we are driving through a surreal ice fog. We can see a white line in the middle of the road, the red lights of the truck ahead and the white lights of on-coming traffic but not much else, At one point we see a police car parked under a light, with a ghostly figure standing beside it.
The others are going to a motel but Mike will spend the night with Riassa and I will sleep in the truck outside her apartment. It's late when we arrive, and we just drink a cup of tea and go to sleep.
Early next morning we drive on to the Motel Minsky, to meet the others.
The public washroom smells so bad I can't even enter it. There's no food at the restaurant so our buddies didn't eat but they had three bottles of vodka between them. Ian is in bad shape this morning, but the others seem to be okay.
A vendor in the parking lot offers me an ornate Czarist five ruble note for DM10. Considering that the going rate is about 4,000 modern rubles to the mark the price is a bit high, but the old note will make a nice souvenir and I buy it. It may be a forgery, of course, but I don't plan to spend it anyway.
We are heading for the Polish border, and this time we will go through the main border crossing at Grodno. As we approach the border our road parallels a set of double fences for a while.
Then we come to a tee junction with a huge paved waiting area, where a double line of trucks fades out of sight to our left. We join the line at 1:48pm and Mike figures it will take at least 12 hours to get through, but this time at least we have a nice place to wait. This is a wide, smooth road, with a tree-covered hillside beside us. Some workmen are building something -- either a rest house or another monument -- on the hillside above us, but it's not finished yet.
These lineups are insane. Trucking companies charge about 200 pounds per day demurrage when their trucks are held up and that cost is built into the price of trucking to Russia. Mike and I lost at least a day each at the Polish, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan borders, and that cost the Central Bank of Uzbekistan at least 800 pounds for our truck alone. When you figure it took three trucks to carry the computer and if you assume that Davies allows for delays when he sets his prices, the bank paid at least 3,000 pounds for delays at the four borders.
This lineup is a special hassle for us because of the leaky valve in Mike's air tank. If the valve were tight it would keep air pressure for hours after the engine is shut off and if we did lose pressure we could build it up within a few minutes of starting, but we have a bad leak. We lose air pressure in about 15 minutes after we shut down and we take about five minutes to build it up after we start, so Mike leaves his engine running.
By 4:30pm we have moved about 100 yards and the line now stretches about a mile behind us. I have lunch of peas, potatoes and canned beef with Mick. Mike has reclined his seat and curled up for a sleep.
About midnight we approach the line of shops leading to the border. We can't buy any food, of course, but they have lots of liquor, cigarettes and chocolate. I settle for some chocolate and a bottle of pop, which I share with Mike.
About 3:30am, after 14 hours in line, we reach the border. One of the orders of business is a DM50 ecology tax we have to pay as we leave Belarus.
I'm still in the truck when a young officer climbs in to search the cab. Feeling around in one of the upper compartments he finds Mike's wallet, with it's ten compartments and a different kind of currency in each one. The young officer sorts through them in wonder, naming the countries when he can, asking me for help when he can't.
I watch because I assume he would like to pocket some of the money, but he is just dreaming. He puts the wallet back, then finds the cookie tin in which Mike keeps his pocket change. Again, he sorts through it in wonder.
When he realizes that I'm from even farther away he asks me if I have any Canadian or American coins. The coins that were in my pocket when I left home are now in a side-pocket of my bag, and I bring them out. From the handful he sorts out a loonie and a quarter, dime, nickel and penny.
He looks at me with a question and I realize this is not a matter of money. The coins are worth $1.41 Canadian which is not far short of a day's pay for him, but banks won't take foreign coins and he will never be able to spend them. He wants a dream, so I nod and tell him to take them.
We finally pass into Poland about 4am, and park beside the road to sleep. We have taken 14.25 hours to get through.
We park beside the highway here, because Mike says there is no serious danger of robbery in Poland.
Next morning we wake early and drive on, past several miles of trucks lined up to get to Russia. The ground is covered with snow and the trees with hoarfrost. For all it's Communist past Poland is more like Germany than like Russia. The gas stations are modern and the food is good. Ten German marks buys 16 Polish zloty, and six zloty buys a good meal.
We're going to pick up a load of Milky Way bars from the Mars plant near Warsaw. Mike has never been to the plant but he figures he's been to Warsaw about 60 times in the past three years, and he's not worried about finding his way.
Finally we find the Mars plant, outside town. It's a showplace with a modern, well lit cafeteria and a crew of obsessive compulsive cleaners. In the washrooms I find them cleaning the under-side of the sinks.
It's a nice place, but they are now building a series of covered tunnels to connect the three or four buildings of the complex. The tunnels could be intended to provide a dry walk-way from building to building, but when they are finished the only way into any building in the complex will be through the front entrance.
It looks to me as though the tunnels are one answer to a serious theft problems, and they will be a nuisance to truckers because the front entrance is a long way from the loading dock. This time we are okay because the tunnels are not yet finished, and there are several gaps where we can get in.
But at that I guess we should feel lucky because many plants bar drivers from staff cafeterias. They may require a driver to wait hours or even days to be loaded or unloaded but they don't see the driver as part of their production process, and they see no need to provide even the most basic facilities.
That's one point of view. I saw the opposite a few years ago on a ride with Andree Berins of Spedition Sturm of Viersen, on the edge of Germany's Ruhr industrial area.
We were near Barcelona, in Spain, and heading back to Germany with a cargo of meat when an expensive car pulled up beside us on the highway and honked, then drove ahead and turned in at a highway restaurant. Because the car had German plates, and because it had stopped under strong lights with too many witnesses for this to be a hi-jack, Andree stopped too.
The driver of the car was Uwe Hindrichsen, the meat importer we were hauling for, and he wanted to buy us dinner. The truck was obviously safe, parked under lights in front of a busy restaurant, so Andree accepted.
As we ate an expensive meal Hindrichsen explained that he often drives back and forth between his offices in Madrid and Bonn, and he flags down every Sturm truck he meets on the road. He offers the driver a free call home on his cellular phone -- a worth-while gift at European phone rates -- and if it's anywhere near dinner time he buys dinner.
It probably costs him about $100 every time, but it's a good investment. Sturm hauls five or ten truckloads of meat a week for Hindrichsen, and it's a safe bet that most Sturm drivers will go a little bit farther to get Hindrichsen's loads through in good shape than they will for anyone else.
Here we are glad that they invite us to use the cafeteria because the plant has no load for us yet. No problem, Mike says. After driving through Russia we have to take a day off anyway, before returning to the west, because Russia has no hours of service regulations. If we didn't take the time here, we would have to take it somewhere else.
That evening we go to a bar down the road where we meet English trucker Tom Jackson. He thinks Poland is the end of the world.
He's never seen the east but he has some good tales about trucking in other parts of Europe. One was about the policewoman in Spain who guided him to an address. When the men there didn't want to unload him she made them do it, and it was later they discovered they were at the wrong address.
The policewoman made the men there sign for the goods anyway. From then on it was their problem.
I have no reason to doubt that story. Andree Berins told me about the time he asked a Spanish policeman for directions, and the policeman led him down streets that were closed to trucks. I believed that one too, because he told me the story while we were driving the wrong way on a one-way street in a Spanish village, with a local policeman leading the way.
Part of the talk tonight is about truck stops, and why some of them have gone out of business. Prices are wild in Eastern Europe, partly because the real prices are so low and the truckers so relatively rich they don't care what things cost.
Some truck stops seem to think they can charge infinitely high prices, but sometimes they run prices up so high that even western truckers stay away. That night I hear of several truck stops that closed because people stopped going there.
We stay at the bar until 2am, then drive back on icy roads.
Next morning the plant starts to load Mick, and Dave backs his trailer up to the doors. For some reason the shipper calls up Andy Wagstaff, who drives for Express Freight France Ltd. of Coventry, to load next. Mick, Mike and Dave head for a bar across the street.
I'm napping in Mike's truck, when Andy comes from the shipper's office. Dave's truck is loaded too, the shipper says, and if they can get to the customs broker by 2pm they can clear. If they don't make it they will be stuck for the weekend.
I run to the bar get them. Mike is not loaded so he will stay over 'till Monday. I have a plane to catch out of England, so I will go on with Mick. That's good news for Mike because he wants to see Riassa again, and Sunday he will switch trailers with another Ralph Davies driver and head back to Russia.
I ride with Mick to the customs office but his truck is crowded, with a fridge in the passenger seat and the upper bunk full of baggage. Andy Wagstaff has more room in his Mercedes so I leave Warsaw with him, in convoy with Mick and Dave.
Andy Wagstaff is also known as Andy the Bear, possibly because he stands six foot three inches tall and weighs 22 stone -- 308 pounds. He's a friendly giant and he's glad to have company, because his truck has right hand drive.
That's a problem for him because when there's a big truck in front of him he can't see whether he has room to pass until after he pulls out. From the left hand seat, I can spot for him.
Like the Volvos Andy's Mercedes 2550 is a high-tech powerhouse, with semi-automatic transmission and 500 horsepower. To shift gears up or down Andy just jogs the stick forward or back. He pushes the stick sideways for neutral, and if he goes into gear from neutral the transmission will choose the right gear for the road speed.
But like most European trucks this one has a speed limiter set for 90 kph and, even with 500 hp, we can barely pass trucks that crawl along at 80.
When the truck was two weeks old, Andy says, the speed limiter cut out and he tried to find out how fast it would go. The speedometer was still climbing past 80 mph, he says, and it drove the needle of the recording tach right off the card.
The storage compartment over Andy's head is full of language dictionaries -- English, German, French, Italian and Polish among others. There's a small Teddy bear -- a present from Andy's girl friend -- stuck in the grab handle over the passenger door and Andy's nick-name, Andy the Bear, is painted over the top of the windshield. One of his mates painted the name, Andy says, and it was there a couple of weeks before he noticed it.
The passenger door lock on this truck is messed up because somebody tried to break into it with a screw-driver while we were at the bar last night.
Andy spent three weeks in Canada in 1993 and he's a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. He's seen Canadian and American roads, and he says the average American interstate trucker would have kittens on these roads.
He likes trucking but if he ever wins a lottery he knows just what he will do with the money.
"I'm going to buy the biggest and fanciest tractor I can find", he says, "and I'm going to park it in front of my house.
"Then I'll go out every morning and throw rocks at it."
Driving truck in Europe is a nice job, Andy says, because Europeans respect trucks and truckers. Most Englishmen think trucks are too big, and that there are too many of them on the road.
"They don't really care where their corn flakes come from," he says.
Near the town of Sepolno we stop at Otwarte Worta Boleice Polish hotel. As soon as we pull in to the parking lot the girls approach. They're very friendly, and there's no doubt about what they're here for.
The hotel is on a on hill above the parking lot and it has a very Black Forest look with lots of gables, wood beams and steep ceilings. I'm going to take a room here because none of the drivers I'm with now expected a passenger, and they all have their upper bunks crammed with baggage.
For $20 I a get a clean and comfortable small room with varnished wood walls and double windows in the dormer roof that slants over two bed-couches. There's a table between the beds, swivel chairs and a small couch at one end and a basin on the wall. The bathroom is across the hall. It's not fancy, but it's nice.