8SEP - Left this morning at 08:00 and stopped at a cafe for breakfast at the far end of the village. So actually hit the road at 09:00. 34 degrees and heavy fog for the first ninety minutes or so. Then a great day, especially with 'electrics' in the low 50s for the day.
The last two hours of the ride we ran into our first real rain of the trip. We'd planned to visit the BMW Motorrad shop but the GPS couldn't get us there. After screwing around for a hour, in heavy rain, the group fell apart. Dave and I we're infront and the other four got tangled up in traffic and missed a critical turn. Our helmet communications systems are line of sight so in a large city, with buildings blocking the signal when the group spreads out they're useless. The problem is even worse in that the Russian drivers are fairley aggresive so if you give them one car space they'll take it. Pretty soon the group is so spread out that it gets split by stoplights. The traffic is so heavy that for the group in front to try and wait for the others to catch up would be dangerous. Can't immagine what Moscow will be like with far more traffic and more aggressive drivers.
Anyhow, I was able to transmit to Jean, 'lets bag the Motorrad dealer and go to the hotel. Most of us have GPS units so all were able to make it to the hotel. Of course as soon as we arrived at the hotel the rain stopped and the Sun came out.
The good news is that the 'Garage Hotel' is very nice and has great Wi-Fi.
We arrived at the hotel at 17:00 (And we gained another hour traveling West), got a 336 mile day.
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