Im in Murmansk! Made it above the arctic circle, and yep it is a bit colder up here! From Petersburg i got back on the hwy and managed to get a good nights sleep in my tent after a saturday night out in St Petersburg that ended up with me out dancing until 6am (well at least trying to dance!)

I had a telephone number of a friend of a friend of a friend in Petrozadovsk so when i arrived i called him and ended up doing some bike work at his workshop and through that met another lovely young russian couple who and ended up staying with for 2 nights. They went out of their way, missing much time at work and helped me get a new music player after we fried mine while making a charging adapter from the bikes battery. Had a wonderful time and managed to squeeze another TV, and newspaper interview into the busy schedule.

Back on the hwy again for 2 days and about 1000km towards murmansk. Amazing scenercy with lots of lakes, rivers and little rain. Still not seen any big animals like in canada moose or elk or anything, i think they might have all been hunted... Had a couple of encounters with local traffic police. Got pulled over speeding by 17 kph in a town but $5 AUD later and i was back on the road. while i was pretending i didnt understand what id done wrong i even got to watch some of the olympics so it wasnt all bad. The following day i was pulled up doing 18kph over the limit and once i told the cops where i was from their faces turned to that of amazement, congratulations, and they wished me luck and waved to me as i drove away. Just the way it should be eh!

I had a contact number for a biker here in murmansk but didnt get a chance to call him as i found a couple of guys on bikes, told them his name and they said "follow us". As luck would have it i arrived at registration time for a 3 day bike festival with bikers from all over scandinavia including finland, sweden, russia and norway. I was treated as an honoured guest, which amongst other things i was offered more shots of vodka than anyone else! We went to an orphanage nearby as part of the festival and gave the kids rides on the back, and had police escorts through town with all 160 bikes in convoy. Made many good friends all over scandanavia and have many people to visit now as i travel through norway especially. I ended up doing another 3 TV interviews, with help from 2 translators. Kinda strange to be doing all this, they say that this ride is an amazing accomplishment, and that im crazy. I keep telling them that im just a bloke that gets on a bike each day and rides in the same direction each day without turning round, and when things break i fix em. I did get an award at the festival for having riden the furtherst to be there, 15984km from Vladivostok. The award was called the "Iron Arse Award!" It was quite funny during the festival as at times the same sentence wase being translated between 3 languages, russian, english and norwegian.

Very much looking forward to seeing norway, gonna stock up on food and fuel before i cross the border though! Very expensive over there. Might see some reindeer too. though hopfully not lying on the ground next the them after i hit em. Will head to visit new friends and will ride up to Nordkapp, the most northernly mainland point on earth. Gotta have the photo... :)

Heres hoping the rain and the cold stay away...