askapro Training riders in Russia By Lee Parks #162125
Q: In your book you mentioned teaching classes for BMW riders in Russia. What hap- pened and how dif- ferent was t was
erent teaching in the U.S.?
A: I have to admit when I first got the call on my mobile phone from a Russian gentleman in Moscow who wanted us to come over and teach classes, I was more than a little bit skeptical. After all, I remember doing the drills in grade school where we hid under our desks with our arms over our heads to help protect us from the Soviet nuclear bombs. Could it really be possible that I was to go behind the Iron Curtain and shake hands with the enemy of truth, justice and the American Way? Well, it took three months of phone calls, emails, faxes (remember those?), and visas to get through the “I don’t trust you” and “you don’t trust me” but “let’s find a way” process.
that experience from Imagine a place where almost no one had
ridden or owned a motorcycle until around 25 years ago. Until the mid 1990s the only bikes found in the Russian Federation were Urals and WWII vintage Harley-David- sons. With no point of historical or cultural reference, about 50,000 riders existed in 2005 when we went there. Previously, only the military had access to motorcycles. To help understand the culture of motor-
cycling in Russia, we visited two places in Moscow where motorcyclists hang out. The first place was Club Sexton—the home of the motorcycle club Night Wolves. This was a combination of Mad Max meets Blade Runner, complete with all types of motor- cycles and styles of riding. The really unique aspect of this club was that there was no dis- tinction between types of riding/bikes as there is in the U.S. Gold Wings, metric cruisers, sportbikes (both from Japan and Italy) and BMWs of all types were found with their equally interesting owners, all hanging out together in one place. To give you an idea of how different Russian moto- culture is, the “hot bikes for picking up chicks,” as they said, are Gold Wings and BMW LTs!
The second place we visited involved a
wild ride through Moscow. Our guide, Vladimir (manager of BMW Motorrad of Russia) took us on a ride from our hotel to a place called “The Viewing Point” where bikers hang out. The view is the former Olympic venue for the 1980 Moscow games (the one the U.S. boycotted). As we found out, traffic laws are optional, and we blew by cops at speeds that would have your motorcycle impounded and you thrown in jail with your license suspended anywhere else. Apparently, unless you are murdering someone in front of the cops with your vehicle, they don’t want to do the paper- work for something as pedestrian as speed- ing.
Such is the riding life for the
action-seeking proletariat. The bikes and riders at The Viewing Point were a similar mix of what we saw at Sexton, with some added attractions such as pocket bikes that were being raced along major streets in view of the police and others. It was a mod- ern day version of the Wild West with safety clearly not a major concern. Half a dozen times that summer BMW Motorrad of Russia held demo rides at an
82 BMW OWNERS NEWS December 2016
skills
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