Getting a shiny-new Ural sidecar motorcycle from Russia to Oregon isn’t the easiest thing in the world. My motorcycle dealer, the reknown Jim Petitti of Salem, Oregon’s Raceway Services, broke it down to me like this (this is not quoted or paraphrased, and may contain facts intermingled with absolute bull$%&#):

Getting a Ural from Siberia to Eugene

• You finally put your money down with your dealer, and said dealer sends order along to IMZ Ural. Explains it’ll take about 60-70 days to get here. Ish (or, in the Russian, ishtroya)
• Bike built on order, in Irbit, Siberia
• After a few celebratory, dosvedanya vodkas, hungover bike shipped by truck and/or rail to Germany. Has bad headache the entire way.
• From German coast and after a few beers and sausages, rig is put on a freighter.
• Freighter goes to New Jersey. Poor motorcycle.
• After getting mugged… After singing a little Frank Sinatra in Hoboken… After eating some really good pizza, Ural is put on a truck to Oregon and has sudden cravings for Pinot Noir. Curls up in truck with copy of Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion.
• Breathing in the rain- and cedar-scented air of the Willamette Valley, Jim and his crew at Raceway set up the bike
• Then they put it on another truck and bring it to Eugene, where the Ural will get its first, unfortunate, whiff of patchouli (not our house; it’s just a bit of, well, local color, in a local odor sort of way)
• In Eugene, the bike is delivered to my garage. Literally.
• Then one of the lads from Raceway spends a few hours schooling me on the ins and outs of my new rig, from maintenance to riding. He leaves wondering what divine power would ever allow such a non-mechanical eejit novice to own one of these things.
• After much fist-pumping and huzzahs, said eejit novice prepares to go tear-arsing around the neighborhood at long, long elated last.

And that about covers it. About a 2-month gestation and delivery period, for this eccentric, unique bit o’ Russian iron to go from the snows of Siberia to the rains of Oregon.

Granted, my bike hasn’t quite finished the journey. As I type this, it’s most likely on a truck on its way to Salem. But my Ural Patrol is almost here — and that is all that matters.