The introduction was done by Malcolm Pascoe-a personal friend and lover of motorbikes.
Chris began by telling us that he originally planned to have 2 other bikies join him on the tour, one of them being Malcolm however those he approached for various reasons declined the offer! (after hearing his story we were not surprised!!).
His bike was shipped to Vladivostok at the extreme east of Russia very close to Japan. His solo journey began by heading north and then west toward Mongolia-several thousand kms by the way. Terrible roads were common throughout the trip -huge pot holes and very little traffic. The trucks that mostly travelled the roads totally ignored his existence on the roads and he explained that he had to be very very careful when they either came from behind or from in front. Needless to say he travelled quite slowly and carefully most of the time. He reached a town called Chita that existed almost entirely of log cabins and then onto a huge lake called Lake Baskal, it took over 2 days to travel around the lake. He wanted to enter Mongolia but for some reason was refused entry.
He visited a beautiful city called Irkutsk and stayed in a wonderful hotel for several days. He mostly travelled each day by following a map details of which he kept on his sleeve! Siberia is an absolutely enormous place-quite daunting and mostly forested and barren-also cold. The capital city of Siberia is Novosibirsk-the third largest in Russia. It was there that he viewed one of the largest monuments to Lenin.
His motorbike performed extremely well-only required one replacement set of tyres and an oil change with daily small maintenance. He could well have talked for much longer however time prevented it-perhaps he might continue his talk and details of his amazing adventure another time.
Fred Holland thanked Chris for a very interesting summary of his trip to Russia.