Chernobyl - The Road Trip

Elena is a 20-something Russian woman with a big Kawasaki cycle who has chronicled her solitary road trips through the Chernobyl dead zone.

She notes in her unique, utterly fascinating journal that the 130 km (78 miles) trip north from Kiev to Chernobyl is her favorite ride of all because

"one can take long rides there on empty roads."

I'll bet.

She continues:

The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes.

In places where roads have not been traveled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through.

Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again... a few centuries from now.

Elena has much to show and tell and teach us, about radiation - how she measures it with her radiation meter, and decides where she will and will not go as a result - and much else.

I find it hard to believe that no one's offered her a book contract yet, and even more difficult to understand why National Geographic or PBS or the New York Times hasn't given her a portable satellite TV broadcasting antenna and video camera to chronicle her travels for the greater world.

After this post, shouldn't be too long....

_____________________

Addendum posted at 4:51 p.m. this same day: a joehead just emailed me to advise that Elena is "pseudofraudulent"; he states that she and her ex-husband did visit the places noted on her travelog, but with a touring company rather than her alone on her bike.

He further states that the biking shots were later interspersed with the tour pictures.