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Cossack Owners Club |
Bike Magazine Jan/Feb 1973
Rather than a conventional road test of the Russian BMW, we let the failed
novelist Richard Coltartovich loose on Fred Wells' demo outfit.
I've
never felt the same about motorcycles since I had a little bother with mine last
summer. It all started quite simply with a trip to the market in my local town,
Vyazovka, to do a little trading, swop a few ferrets, buy some matches - the
usual sort of thing one does in town. I should explain that I live on a small
farm about 20 kilometres out of town, where I keep a few animals, carve wooden
dolls, raise children and drink a lot of vodka. Now the road into town is not
one of the country's greatest but really quite good in the summer when the mud
dries out. On that fateful day I was going to take old grandmother Olga along
with me, as she enjoys a change as much as any old person. That is her excuse
for having married 6 times but I have to say that her latest choice, 97 year old
Eugeny, has seen better days. He didn't come with us as he had some peat
collecting that needed doing, so tottered off into the woods whistling merrily.
I walk with a limp because about ten years ago I was pedal-cycling home from the
fields after having drunk a medicinal bottle of vodka when I saw what I thought
was an old bear-skin rug lying by the road so I jumped off the bike, intending
to take it home to my fat wife Sophia, and picked up one end of it. I then
realised that it was rather heavy for an old rug at the same time that the bear,
which is what it was, realised that someone had caught it by the back leg. A bit
surprised and probably cross too he whipped round took a bite out of my knee,
and ambled off into the forest. I gave a great shout and hopped like a Yankee
pogo-stick back to the bike and pedalled home to my wife, who nearly died
laughing until she saw that I was making a mess of the floor.
Since then I've always ridden a motorcycle with a sidecar hooked on, a Ural from
the Miass factory in the east. A nice machine really with old-fashioned
telescopic front forks not those new swinging arm affairs. Some of these
Capitalist
countries
insist that it bears (ooh, there goes my knee again), a close resemblance to
some Kraut piece of machinery. Rubbish, my Ural is built from solid iron and
will hoe comrade Branaski's cherry orchard and plough twenty acres of Tundra
before lunch -those Bavarians wouldn't froth a lager without dropping to pieces.
My outfit handles, like most of these affairs, in a rather odd manner and
Grandmother Olga calls it the Swallow because it swoops about. Still it's as
reliable as the sunrise once you get to understand it's whims and habits. The
sidecar is really useful because you can carry not only Grandma but also
chickens tied onto the spare wheel, beetroot in the boot, under the spare and
also a few ferrets running around in the 'car with Gran. She doesn't like that
too much, neither do the ferrets but that's hard borsch as my father (God rest
his soul) used to say.
Our trips into town were often quite exciting, what with wolves, ice and snow in
the winter, bears, mud and forest fires in the summer.
Well, on this famous day we loaded up Grandma, a large sack of beetroot, a pair
of breeding ferrets to trade for the chickens I needed and some dolls to send to
Moscow for the capitalist tourists. I had a little private business to attend to
with young Natasha and Grandmother wanted to see her cousin Nina to discuss
various rumours and gossip which had filtered out to us from the town. The
journey into town was uneventful; we saw no bears, wolves, (it was spring time
and we might have seen both, I can tell you it's very unnerving to be chased
round a corner by a pack of wolves to meet three large bears; still more of that
another time) just a lot of mud. Arriving at noon I dropped Grandma at Nina's
and rushed off to the market as I intended to spend some time with Natasha
before going back home. The ferrets were successfully traded for the chickens;
the dolls were handed to an agent, when an old friend of mine, Igor, came up
with the most amazing looking pig I had ever seen. After a little hard
bargaining the pig was mine and Igor the richer by 125 roubles, still not a bad
price with all this inflation. I dashed off to see Natasha, but found that she
was involved with another person when I called. Her mother said she was having
music lessons but knowing Natasha and her mother for that matter I doubted it.
Feeling rather disappointed I decided to go home at once. The pig by the way was
sitting in the sidecar all this time seemingly quite happy with the chickens
tied to the spare wheel. Arriving at Nina's house I could hear Grandmother
singing - a terrifying sound, just like an air-raid siren. She had been
drinking, Nina told me, since she arrived. This was bad news. Grandma is not the
best company when she's sober, ghastly when she's drunk. Still hoping to make
the best of a bad job I put Grandma on the pillion and left the pig with the
chickens in the 'car.
Poor
Grandmother fell off twice in the first 300 metres. This shook her up a little,
so I tied her to the footrests by each ankle, told her to stop being silly and
drove on. Suddenly rounding a corner about 10 kilometres out of town I came
across a very new, very shiny, army motorcycle painted bright blue - I knew it
was army because of the two soldiers on it. I always carry liquor in the 'car
for such occasions, which are quite frequent in my part of the world, so I
decided to stop to pass the time of day and offer them a drink. There are so few
strangers that to meet one is worth celebrating. We had a drink and a chat,
remembering the old days when the young knew their place and when vodka was
really vodka: the usual sort of thing. All this time Grandma was snoring on the
back of the bike, when she suddenly woke up and demanded to be let off. The pig
was still sitting in the 'car and the chickens were still tied to the wheel. One
of the soldiers, called Viktor, was standing on the sidecar's footrest looking
at the pig when suddenly as Grandma got off the bike she managed to stand on the
kick starter. The machine was in gear and gave a terrific jerk, Viktor shouted
and fell off the sidecar letting fly a stream of bullets from his machine pistol
that nearly cut the pig in half, Grandmother Olga screamed, leapt round the bike
and hit Viktor over the head with the vodka bottle then fainted. At this stage
Andrei, Viktor's companion came leaping out of the wood where he had been
attending to one of natures frequent calls, slipped on a patch of mud and banged
his head on a large stone, knocking himself unconscious. I was shrieking with
laughter at all this but gradually got under control and revived Grandma, Viktor
and Andrei in that order. The pig unfortunately was dead. After more vodka, I
once more tied Grandma to the bike vowing not to release her till we got home,
said goodbye to the two soldiers who were going back to their barracks and set
off for the farm. My fat wife was most angry about the pig being dead but salted
it up at once and we've been eating bacon for nearly every meal since. As the
advertisement in your country says, a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.
Next time I will tell you about my son Alexander and the day he took my ferrets
to the kinema.
Richard
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Please Note: The above picture was an advert in 1973, we only wish this would be
the price today