A corrida? No, a train

Driving around Akademgorodok requires the highest attention.There is a railroad crossing on the way to work which is always open to car traffic... Never saw a single wagon on it in 16 months... until today. This morning, they decided to use the railroad for a train. No luck, the barrier does not work properly, so the lady came out with a flag of the size of a handkerchief to stop the cars passing by at high speed. A chance that this morning, I was forced to take the taxi, because I would definitely missed that lady's sign and would have come to a close encounter with the train...

Looking at it on the bright side: Thanks to my Niva for breaking down today.

Tough time for Niva

I have not talked about my Niva for a while, so i thought I'd mention it again today. Niva had some small issues with the transfer case when, in an attempt to show off the 4x4 abilities of Niva to my parents, I must have inadvertently damaged the transfer case over a stone in the Altai mountains. I also inadvertently drove about 800km with it before going to the mechanics, which apparently did not help. No matter how much progress i made in Russian these last 4-5 days, it was still difficult to convince the mechanics that breaking the transfer case and driving the shortest distance that was separating me from him should have been covered by the warranty (the same warranty that did not cover filling up the car with diesel... I definitely should have read between the lines when I signed up).

Well, anyway, I figured that, since my car breaks down so often, I should enjoy it to its full potential in the short periods when it is good shape... So I went out with my friends Tim, Cedric, and Mandy, all of them enthusiastic owners of Niva, and we kicked around some mud. My Niva definitely showed better performance than theirs, mainly because of the new roof rack that I installed and which looks pretty damn cool.

Below, a failed attempt at going up a muddy hill. I wish the movie showed better how steep that was... It was so steep, and I was going so fast, that when I finally passed the hill (not shown, for some reasons) I literally experienced zero gravity for a few seconds. That's how bad that was.