We breakfasted on a large baked-egg omelet, and had a few cups of tea out in the cool air out on the balcony. Earlier we had decided to ride into the city center and go swimming at an Asian lake, but en route we stopped off at the Orenburg location of Trial Sport so I could get my back tire fixed (again) and pick up some extra supplies. The 60ish bike mechanic who tended to my wobbles turned out to be the master bike mechanic for the former USSR national bicycle team! (I was pretty sure that my bicycle was in good hands!) We chatted with the staff, all of whom were shocked to hear about my journey. So shocked, in fact, that they forgot to charge me for the tire trueing. Sadly, they didn't have any extra spokes of the right size so that remained a quest for the day.
We then headed over to Asia and found the backroad to a large swimming hole located on at an oxbow lake. There were a bunch of people splashing around, basking in the summer sun, so it was a pretty comfortable place to spend a few hours. At about 1600h we decided to head over to the Victory Park military exhibit. We went a back way and were soon splashing up to our knees in deliciously cool mud. Made it to the park, where there were nice exhibits of military kit - planes, trains, and automobiles. On the way back to the flat, we found a bike shop that had my 258mm spokes in large quantities. I grabbed eight of them for crossing the Kazakh desert (just in case!). With that, I'm feeling pretty prepared to head out onto the wild steppe!
Ruslan's mom had again dinner simmering on the stove - this time a Tatarish meat and potato stew. After scarfing that down, we headed down to the local shop to grab a few beers and then came back up and watched the movie 'The Fountain', a pretty fantastic flick! Just before heading off to bed, I chatted with Sjoerd on Skype and tried to convince him to cycle the same route through north-central China during the last big of August and early September (we'll see how that goes!). Finally got to sleep around 400h, which isn't too good considering I have to start getting up early at 500h to cycle!
kazakhstan... whoa.
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