Siberia
The main thing worrying me, and that everyone had warned me about, was an off-road section that began about 30 kilometres up ahead. It turned out to be like a battlefield, with big construction vehicles going up and down the road in the rain. It was fun to start with, having my picture taken with the labourers working on the off-road section, but the road had deteriorated to squidgy mud, sludge and slime. The main road itself was under construction and was impassable. This meant having to use this side road (hardly a ‘road’ at all), but in the rain it had turned into what seemed like a tilled and flooded rice field. Unable to morph into a tractor, neither Rocket Boy ONE, piled high with baggage, nor I, were going anywhere. The sticky mud clogged up my brakes. Accretions of mud grew like snowmen, so that in the end my rear brakes completely disappeared and were immobilised. I had to stop and scrape the mud off when the globs got to this stage. I was ready to drop, but I slogged on through the slime, until eventually it seemed that the mud hell was about to end. In fact the road became very greasy, and we both began to slide. We slipped over again and again. The earth was playing with us. It was a relief to eventually get back to our immediate goal, the asphalt road, but the day had been a wipe-out. We were both well plastered in mud. (from "Against the Wind" - Poolbeg Press)
