Казань, easy access to the big city
A shorter ride to bring us to the city of Казань and a rest day. We left our riverside campsite and were back on the larger roads today heading to the city. However, rather than taking the large bridge (M7), the plan was to take a small ferry across the water from Верх. УÑлон I had been asking for a few days if this ferry existed and with exception of once this morning, the answer was affirmative.
It was getting warm again today, but we had slight tailwinds as we climbed over several hills and then to the turnoff at 40km. The last kilometers brought us closer to the Volga River again and then down to the ferry. Turned out it was a passenger ferry and left in two hours (1pm). So we found a store for lunch items, went to the post office and then on the ferry. I spoke with a man who introduced his profession as “officer†on the ride over. We had a Lonely Planet Guide that told us the likely hotels and picked out our candidate (Hotel Fatima). It took a bit to get through the city, and on the way we came across three other hotels. Each of them told us they were full. Finally we got to the designated hotel. They had room! We found and picked out a room, and then let them know about the bicycles. They were initially reluctant to allow bikes to the room but finally gave up on us foreigners. It was nice to get to a shower with warm water and otherwise change after some days on the road. Plan is to use tomorrow as a rest day and then be on the road again. However, more likely to try the roads towards Perm since we’re still a bit gun shy about the M7.
As you can see, I’ve been able to upload some photos to the web site – though I wasn’t able to copy the larger originals and make thumbnails. Each internet location has its own different things that seem to work or not work. For example, gmail worked last night at this computer but seems to be having difficulties this morning (so if you didn’t see a mail, I wasn’t able to send it).
55km today, 4179km across Eurasia [Photo: 652, 656]
Mike,
Keep up the great work…home page shows you are 30% done, so to me, it looks like you are tracking pretty relentlessly. Ugh…some of those days have sounded like maybe an all terrain vehicle would be better than a bicycle…I hope that your bikes are holding together and that you have a nice respite in your current location.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous in relative terms, somewhere along the way, either my local browser env changed or you made an adjustment because I can now see your map section just fine using IE7, rather than needing to use Firefox, et al.
Best wishes and well, easy does it…don’t overextend.
Dave,
Mike has had problems in the past to put markers on the map, so lately I have done it for him based on the daily stories. Therefore they are not 100% accurate, yet they still help in following the roads taken.
I do not think my additions of coordinate data later-on has any bearing on the IE7 behavior. Glad it works for you at present.
Hi Mike,
Just a note to let you know that I’m keeping tabs on your progress. Peggy’s very jealous – she’d like to do a ride like yours. Me, I’m a little less enthusiastic but admire your commitment.
I hear there’s been some big changes around USEL.
mlc
John (V.),
Fair enough!!!! Surrogate route trackers are fine by me! Thx.
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Yeah, there is probably no relationship…either problem with IE7 “self-corrected”, or maybe something altered in my env or multiple people’s env to suddenly make it work…sometimes these MS Update applications can alter something, hopefully to the positive, but we never know.
Thx, bye..Dave S
Hmmmmm….no post for many days…hope all is well…hope you are not in some Russian equivalen of the Bermuda Triangle.
Regarding the map display, I found that the maps started working when I set my browser window to be a bit wider, and still will vanish if I make it a bit thinner. Funny how often it is the simple stuff.
Thanks for the encouragement. It does sound like some big changes at work, hope all goes well for folks there. I’ll see how things have changed when I am back in December. As you’ve noticed, I’ve ridden another 1000km past Kazan and am now in Asia and ready to start riding across Siberia. Those markers are pretty close the to the real route, I’ll do some fine tuning when I am back in the USA. The larger cities become further apart from here, so may be some time between posts.