We Meet the Scooter Boys September 6
All night long I heard intermittent grunting and wheezing. I knew it wasn’t Rick, his snoring was loud, but it had a different tone than these noises. We had seen herds of camels during the day, so I suspected we had camped near one of the herds and I spent part of the night hoping they weren’t like elephants, prone to stomping on a tent that invaded their area. Morning arrived before the camels attacked our campsite and yes, we had camped close to a herd, they were ambling around just after sunrise having spent the night competing with Rick, or Alec, as he has come be known in these parts. I don’t mind hearing people struggle with saying Bruce, Rick decided to give then a break and opted for Alec.
After our usual breakfast of muesli and coffee, we packed up. We have established a few rituals while on the road. Fire up the stove in the morning, heat some water for coffee, use the rest to wash our faces and the dishes, and at night, fire up the stove to wash up again and to fab up some soup and tuna surprise.
New snow had again dusted the hills lower down than the night before. After about 10 km, we came across the scooter boys, Jonah from the UK and Daniel from Switzerland, these two, in a state of either foolishness or a desire to make the Rally very tough on themselves, opted to ride Honda 90’s and two Americans, Mike and another real nice young man from either Utah or Idaho, I can’t remember which, whose name escaped me the moment after I met him, who were riding a pair of 125’s. Jonah’s steering column had broken a few minutes before we arrived and he had experienced a crash, a bit shaken, but otherwise, generally OK. The scooter was not rideable. There were 3 options, just leave it where it lay, load it onto Dennis and haul it to Altaj or wait for a pair of Norwegians driving a 4×4 fire truck that had a small welder on board. Being a true rallier, option 1 was dismissed outright and after some discussion with his bike gang, Jonah opted for option 2, so the battered scooter was hoisted on top of Dennis and tied on top of the spare tire on the roof. We gave the rest of the gang some beef jerky and 3 beers to enjoy as they set up their bound to be freezing cold camp the coming evening. Jonah lucked out, a ride in the back of the dusty fire truck for the day and a hotel room for the night. Off we went making pretty good time.
As we headed along the road, off to the side near a few gers, we saw a young man, maybe 4 or 5 years old set off at a full run uphill towards the road. He was working very hard to intercept us, so we slowed down to make sure he was successful. He was soon joined by 2 other young kids, the reward for all the hard work was some beef jerky and a soccer ball. Now, these kids were really happy!
We arrived in Altaj late in the afternoon, found the mechanic’s shop for Jonah, dropped him and his scooter off, the mechanic got started right away. We surveyed the rally vehicles that retired at Altaj and to our surprise we found the British Leland fire truck in the yard. It had the same problem as Dennis, broken rear leaf springs. We had a welcome hot chai in the nearby café, then resumed our journey to the east. Camp again was in a cold and windy location, dinner was another variety of tuna surprise.
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