1836 – first day of eleventh expedition

In recent years, this region close to Lithuania is becoming more and more famous thanks to the festival of alternative chamber music – Sansusī. For the fourth time the festival will take place at the end of the summer in the old council house in a now extinct village of Suseja. We contact the owner of the house, Armands Siliņš, he helps us with accommodation. We start from here.

This time our guest is director Mārtiņš Grauds. He is a seasoned traveler with a small background with motorcycle travel in Peru, when he rode on a Honda 250 from Kusko to Machu Picchu. That was his first time when he switched from a scooter to something more powerful. Mārtiņš has watched several of our episodes. Powerful bikes, extreme riding and a lack of experience makes him nervous, but his urge for adventure takes over.

We started early from Riga and by midday we are already there. Usually, we gather information from all possible sources beforehand and then we pick the objects and potential film heroes. When we connect them on map, we get our route. But this time the only object is the oldest Great Oak in Europe, located in Stelmuže. We hope for the best – that our filming material we will find on our way. From Aknīste to the oak is forty kilometers. We decide to do this as a warmup. We should be back before dark. The road in our map leads us right next to the border of Lithuania. It promises adventures.

After several weeks of hiatus, we are hungry for motorcycle riding, that’s why we feel unstoppable!

It is nice that Latvia and Lithuania live so friendly and there are no border guards here. But at the same time the road is grown with trees and bushes, muddy and full of fallen trees. We fight every obstacle, but after few km we encounter a small, but deep swamp river. Time is running out and we can’t reach Stelmuže this evening. We turn back to Aknīste. 

Our adventures are not yet over. On our way back, in the fast sweeping corner the tyre of my back wheel comes off. First, I thought that the rear wheel blocked and had a thought in my mind: “Great, just rode out of the backyard and I already fell down!”. But it all ends luckily. My tyre is badly damaged and can’t be repaired here. I take Grauds’ bike and go back for the supportmachine. Renārs contacts local motorclub, looking for spare tyre and camera. There is always hope. Motorcyclists are friendly and helpful folk. We got the spare wheel, and now we have repair works ahead of us.

While Grauds cooks us dinner – pasta Bolognese, me and Renārs dance around the rear wheel. Both our rituals are successful, we are served with the pasta I have eaten recently and my bike is ready.

We are next to a road, our windows are in opposite direction, no signalization for our bikes – every motorcyclist has encountered this feeling un restlessness. We put our shame on side and tie our bikes together with ropes, now it won’t be so easy to steal them. We will sleep peacefully tonight.