Wandering Off Script: The Ice Run

2013 - We heard rumblings when we were in India about the Adventurists latest concoction: a challenge to drive an old, unreliable Ural motorcycle and sidecar 2000km across the middle of nowhere Siberia in February. Our finish line? Salekhard, the only town in the world situated on a polar circle. That's right, we were headed to the arctic circle, on a motorbike, in February. This was without a doubt the most insane of all of their adventures and so we knew it was a must! Partnered again with my trusty British adventuring companion, we joined only the second group of 23 mentalists ever to attempt this trip. The bikes lived fully up to their terrible reputations (only six out of 12 of them wound up at the finish line still functioning...sadly, Baldrick III was not among them, having been trucked the last 200km in the back of a giant lorry) such that my teammate, who is a self-professed gear-head madly in love with anything with a motor, declared that if he ever saw one on the road again, he'd pull over, light it on fire and call the driver an unmentionable name for riding such a piece of "crap". Still, we did manage to see a pretty massive meteorite streak across the morning sky, were blown away by the unending hospitality of the locals, learned that beer, snickers bars, and human beings don't fare well when camping in temperatures of 30 below, and consumed lots and lots of vodka and cognac. And we did, in fact, make it to Salekhard, just not exactly in the manner we'd expected.