Traverse 12 | Page 48

lator: "I'm just tired. 3 hours sleep, rode bike 12 hours and no food since yesterday." She gives instructions; the Russian man sharing my room makes me sugary coffee and my lady host pre- pares borsh and fusses about me like a mother ... Trucks that blunder their way past me fill the air with a cloud of white dust so thick that all visibility except for a few metres in front of the wheel is obliterated. Slow down and you risk being killed by a truck coming from behind; in that obscuring cloud of dust, no driver would see you until he felt the crushing of your bones under his wheels. It is two long hours before the road begins to improve and I ride in the heat through a land bleached of colour, an atmosphere paled by dust and the smoke from forest fires that plague the taiga each summer. By now I am filthy with a layer of dust covering my clothes, sand in my teeth and my eyes, oil from the blown forks are something to behold and almost all are spewing onto my jeans and boots documented ... something we at Traverse which absorb a thick layer of sand love. only to be coated with oil again. The After a lifetime of teaching Lawrence has heat is enervating and by midday I found the time to indulge in his passion for can feel my body weakening … travel and adventure and shares it through A ferry is about to disembark. I his books, all available at Amazon in ebook or ride up the metal ramp, park my paperback form. bike between two large 6WD Kamaz Lawrence's piece on Russia is explained in trucks, kill the engine and drag my- greater detail in his book Two Fingers On The self wearily off the bike. Jugular, it too can be found on Amazon. A group of men watch me. I approach them, and ask, "Yakutsk?" It's a stupid question but I don't want to make a mistake when so close to home. "Da," they nod, taking in the state of me with their eyes. It is done. LB Lawrence Bransby is an award winning author of several novels plus non-fiction travelogues that follow his many adventures on both two and four wheels. His adventures TRAVERSE 48