Baltic tour- 11 capitals

[Amy]

No entries for ten days... Was our team abducted in The Hague ?
~concerned.

Sadly, the International Criminal Court didn't take the opportunity to charge my father with crimes against fashion and decency, and he was allowed to leave.

So worry not - if you look on the second page of this thread you'll see they're all alive and well, not yet divorced (dad and Scott) or completely broken (Josephine Jupiter) and are apparently en route to Riga.

[Srenner]

The hotel owners gave us a tour of their collection. Outside the building sat a 1927 Fordson tractor they had just dug out of a feild last week. There were many stationary motors of American and German manufacture and a Soviet made Volga 4 door sedan that was in nice shape and completely original. Behind it was a beautifully restored Edsel with a 292 V8 engine. The current project is a Czech made Aero from the 30's. Just sprayed a deep maroon, the black fenders are almost ready for mounting. Hiding in another shed was a bright yellow 1949 Willys Jeep sporting a new amry olive green camvas top.

As Keith noted, it was a bit rainy on the road down. Once crossing into Latvia, it became apparent that not repairing the roads is a good way to keep speeders at bay. Having said that, we saw some spectacular abuses of vehicular laws and must note that the tour guide highlights that Latvia has the hightest per capita accident rate in Europe.

The rain was gone by the time we checked into the hotel and we drove off to get our hero shot of the Freedom Monument close to the oldest part of the city.

Next, we headed over to see the Anderjs Rode restoration shop. Along the way, Keith had a little explaining to do to the local constable. Ater lecturing me at length on the neccesity of always carrying your papers with you, it appears Mr. Clements had left his driver's license back at the hotel. He managed to convince the officer that the photo on the expired, 30 year-old International Driver's License he scrumped form his wallet was in fact him.

The Rodes shop was an amazing surprise. Nestled in a residential area behind a fence, it was a very large complex of buildings and garages, stuffed with Stalin's Russian copy of a Packard, Horsch, Fiat and Mercedes cars. Primarly pre-war and just post-war vehicles, they had a full machine shop, a full-time upholsterer, body and paint guys, as well as someone to do assembly. I'm not sure if there were 6 or 8 of them, as they all appeared from nowhere to look at the Jupiter.

All the work we saw was of great quality and it appears they have projects lined up for the next few years. The grand tour took several hours and I promised to locate a 1951 Buick Straight Six carb for them.

Dinner was very tasty, with an elk goulash soup,followed by roast lamb with barley in sour cream and cherries for me and beaver meat with mushrooms sauce and noodles topped with pineapple for Keith. We could barely waddle back to the car for the drive back to the hotel.

KC will have to post the photos in the morning, as it appears to be above my intelligence level.
Cheers,
Scott

[Chris Spencer]

Sadly, the International Criminal Court didn't take the opportunity to charge my father with crimes against fashion and decency, and he was allowed to leave.

Amazing that he got away with that and the brush with the local constable and his lack of driving licence - but Amy have you forgot about all the crimes against humanity that he commits ? - There he has me, Sharon, You & Jack slaving at his beck and call in the garage - all for no pay - no nothing and then he has the cheek to stroll round your house and force you to cook and feed him !!

I can't see how he always escapes capture!!

[Forumadmin]

Not quite sure how The Mighty Quinn says we had not posted for ten days. Perhaps the link does not go to the last page. Anyhow I have avoided capture by using my Nom de Plume 'Forumadmin'.

Pictures of Riga are TOPIC here

But for consistency here is the Riga icon.

[Keith Clements]

Another quite day! We were strongly recommended to visit the Riga Motor museum so we arrived early before it had opened. However, our local contact who was in Sweden had phoned to ask the Curator to take us around. We arrived and were greeted by one of the very pretty guides whose good English let her down when she asked us to take our clothes off to put in the wardrobe. Much giggling ensued.
Gunars Dortans, the chief restorer, gave us an informative guided tour of a remarkable collection. More from Scott on that I expect.

This tour gave us a challenge to get to Vilnius to meet the local dignatories in the Rotary Club. But we offloaded our now unwanted Lats at the border on fuel for us and the car. We ate on the move and made it with one minute to spare after 5.5 hours driving. We were delayed by some long roadworks and the slow speeds on the bad roads. But the last 150k into Vilnius was on a new motorway which allowed me to finalise meeting arrangements by SMS and phone.

We had managed to get 10 minutes to change out of our jeans and teeshirts. I gave a speech that I learnt inspired the club to aid cancer research. So mission accomplished.

Stasys Brundza was the President of the Rotary Club and was also the best Lithuanian Rally driver. He invited us to see his collection of cars. This was housed in an exhibition hall. There was a room of his rally cars and racing cars spanning over 30 years. Then to a hall of bikes and military vehicles. Then a hall of commercial vehicles. But then we were gob smacked by a hall of his collection of mainly Americal cars but also some great Aston Martins and the Rolls that Breshnev had stuffed into a wall.

When I say a collection , this was like a cigarette card collector collecting cars of a specific make. He had for instance a Mark 1 through to a Mark 8 Chevy, all in fantastic condition. Every car had a story and Stasys relayed it to us. He presented us with his book signed . So does anybody know someone who can translate?

Tomas Digaitis, our guide from the local car mag, then took us for a tour of the very pretty old town to take our pictures and then for a meal. My traditional fishcakes followed by beef on beetroot and cottage cheese followed by pear tartin was good.

Now preparing for another day and another country. Poland, without going to Belarus or Kalingrad is the next job for our navigator.

[Jack]

All this driving about is lovely, but you are aware that you managed to miss Saracens beating London Irish on Saturday by 40 points to 3? Ashton's debut scoring two tries, bonus point win, and Quins vs Wasps must have been one of the biggest comebacks in the history of the premiership.

No news back from the local paper, but hard to tell if they are running a story and it is on its way or if they haven't picked it up.

Jack.

[Keith Clements]

YesI did know. But that is not a game of rugby. Bring on Leicester , Quins or Northampton.

[Drummond Black]

Keith, Scott,
We start our leg of the Jupithon Relay tomorrow, MORAYSHIRE to YORK. ( the Jupithon began in York yesterday - Tuesday ) and we head to York on Friday.

Is there any message you wish me to relate on your behalf, facts , figures, etc. to the JOAC gathering ?? I can take updates up till Saturday. May as well promote the remarkable story of this Jupiter journey.

GOOD LUCK on your remarkable trip.

Just let me know.

Drummond

[Keith Clements]

Vilnius cathedral .

Sure Drums, Scott is just checking if this is as far east (Longtitude 25.2)as we will go, baring getting lost and deported to Siberia or some Belarusian jail.

Best wishes to both of us to all at JOAC.

Other Pictures will get TOPIC here, only a selected few as the connection is slow.

[Srenner]

We had a bit of an easy day ahead, so we re-packed the car. Somehow all our stuff keeps expanding even though we have added nothing to the stash.

A quick once over on the car found the left front shock wobbling about on the top mount. With a little help from a wheel shop (alost everyone speaks English), we found a parts store. We thought it was a bad rubber cone in the shock eye, but it turned out to be the steel tube inside the rubber cones had worn oversize. The crafty Mr. Clements obtained a plastic lid from a coffee cup, sliced a rectangle from it and we rolled that into a tube. Once placed inside the steel tube, everything fit snugly.

As Russian territory is on one side and Bellarus on the other, we carefully chose a safe route to Poland. The Lithuanian countryside is very rustic and we passed through a large National Park. Stopping for a roadside picnic of sausage, cheese and tomato crisps, Keith saw a road not on the sat-nav, but looked to be considerably shorter than the planned route.

The first 50 meters was paved, but after that it was dirt and gravel for miles. Blasting through the countryside, swerving to avoid crater-sized potholes, Keith got to put his rally driving to use. Uphill and down, through farms and forest, it was fantastic. This unpaved road even had bus stops!


We got to thinking we were taking an unmarked entrance into Poland. My plan if we got stopped by the border police was to claim we were still on the Denmark Rally and were looking for Copenhagen.


Once across the border, the road improved, became asphalt and eventually led to the motorway. I don't thimk we saved any time, But Keith claims we pulled back onto the motorway just ahead of the car that had been in front of us. It was, however, a spectacular way to enter Poland. We are pretty sure a Jupiter had never been down that road.

[Keith Clements]

Just to add to Scott's post. Another record was broken today as my Jup entered its 27th country, perhaps add to that half a country as we went along a track close to the Belarus border or maybe even in it as the Sat Nav did not no where we were. .

A VERY LONG DAY TOMORROW sO PROBABLY NO POSTS!

[Chris Spencer]

Who's the hoodie that stole the Jupiter ?

[Keith Clements]

The hoodie took it to Warsaw today where we met the local car journalist outside the Stadium.

We had our picture shoot then followed him through the drab streets of Warsaw to King Wilfreds palace, which was much better. We had our lunch of soup and then Leslaw Sagan led us to the new motorway to take us to Lotz.

More later but now off to walk in the woods.

[Srenner]

Heading from Augustow to Warsaw was a bit slow due to heavy traffic on two lane roads. Entertainment was provided courtesy of the Lithuanian and Russian drivers in their SUVs, as passing another car is not restricted by pavement markings, signs or common sense. Or fear of the police!

Entering Warsaw was not nearly as fun as crossing the border. The sat-nav kept trying to put us on a road that was closed for construction and I managed to drive through a construction zone and on to the bike path while Keith laughed. We did get our picture in front of the Stadium, but that is on his camera. So, here is a shot of our intrepid hero in front of the Kings residence with our helpful guide.


It was a long slog to get from Warsaw to Lodz down the new E30. It is still only half complete, so traffic in both directions share what will be the west bound lanes. Most sections of the roadway for 100 km or so are walled in with steel panels or green snow fencing 5m tall. It is like traveling through a long hallway where the sky is visible, but not the surroundings. Truly mind numbing in the monotony. It may be faster than the old route, but give me the old road with some views.

As our map did not have a city view of Lodz, we had to rely on the sat-nav to guide us to our hotel. Since it repeatedly tells us to turn left, when we can see it has to be to the right, or when it seemingly randomly changes the directions, we were both a little skeptical when it took us to this road:


It did lead us to the hotel a sort of cross between Hansel & Gretel and Hound of the Baskervilles. Situated near a small lake at the end of another dirt road, it sits deeply in the woods with a wrought iron gate. Maybe I read too much Brothers Grimm as a child, but I also have seen a lot of horror movies where one shouts at the screen: "Don't go in THERE!"


The artillary gun sits rather incongrously near the tidy house and riding stable. From behind the largest Great Dane I have ever seen, we weren't so much greeted by the lady running the place as it was more like she could not understand why we were there. Speaking no English, she mimed that there were no rooms available, in spite of Keith repeatedly pointing at the online confirmation. After quite some time she relented and found two very charming rooms on the upper floor, reached by climbimg a staircase build by some one with very short feet and a penchant for vertical ascent.. I had to twist my feet sideways to get a toe grip on the stairs. The walls are covered in game trophies and antlers, and I half expected to see a spot reserved for "American Tourist".

DInner was had at the nearby grill/bar/camping goods shop. A nice local beer, some perogies and a bowl of tripe soup.

[Jack]

You'll be pleased to know I took a very enjoyable call this morning from a very interested local journalist. Hopefully the story will be in print by the time you get back. I have provided lots of information, and told them to make the pair of you out to be mischievous schoolboys with a talent for evading local authorities in various eastern european countries.

Jack.