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A machine built to last forever
by Walther in Stockholm
It all started about six months ago when me and my friend Egil I live with was surfing the Internet on our laptops in our living room. As we surfed around we talked with each other and in the background our TV was tuned to "The Discovery channel". All of a sudden my friend told me to look at the TV, and there was an old BWM R75 with a sidecar from the WWII. They talked about it briefly and there was some nice footage of it, so Egil and I got started on the subject of motorcycles. Egil told me that it was one of his childhood dreams to have a WWII BMW sidecar unit and I told him that if he wanted one that was driveable he'd have to pay a big bunch of money, but that did not stop him from searching the internet for BMW's that were for sale. We both looked around and we found some BMW's in Germany, and the cheapest you could lay your hands on that you could drive would cost you about 10000 Euro.
We both came to the conclusion that we'd both like one, but we couldn't afford one, not in this lifetime anyway, so it was all doom and gloom until I started thinking. I remembered a place where I was as a teenager where they sold Lada cars and spare parts for them. I was there with my dad to buy a new taillight to his Lada Samara which he had at the time, and I remember that they had Dnepr motorcycles down there too, and I also remembered that I wanted to go back there all the time, just to look at the bikes. I told Egil this and we searched the Internet for Dnepr motorcycles. As we searched we stumbled across a site which is called "Svenska Ural & Dneprklubben" or "the Swedish Dnepr & Ural club" (http://home.swipnet.se/ryska_mc/) we went in there and poked around for a good two hours at least, talking franticly with each other and showing each other pictures of Russian motorcycles of different ages and set-ups. Then I stumbled across two websites that may have changed my life forever. The first one was www.ural.se and the other was www.ural.com . The first one (www.ural.se) is the website of the Swedish retailer and the other one is yours. We quickly assimilated all information about the two, for us, most interesting bikes, the Patrol and the Gear Up.
We sat there and compared the two between each other, deciding on which would suit our needs the best, and then suddenly our doorbell rang. It turned out to be Martin, Egil and mines mutual friend. We told him about what we were doing and showed him some pictures and the video clip of the Gear Up. When he saw the video clip he too was hooked on the idea of getting an Ural, so now we were three guys in an apartment talking franticly about pros and cons of two bikes that we'd seen on the Internet. We continued this discussion every day, dragging in other friends of ours to figure out which model we wanted. After about a week of comparing, looking at pictures, searching the internet a million times over for more information about the bikes I got the great idea of actually calling the guys on www.ural.se and so I did. The call lasted for a good 30 minutes and I had booked a meeting with the guy, who turned out to live in Stockholm (as we do), two days later. He had told me that he had an Ural Sportsman, whatever that was I thought, and where we should go to meet him.
The two days went by, painfully slow and me, Martin and Egil still compared the two models Patrol and Gear Up, wondering what this new unknown "Sportsman" model was. When the day of the great "see-a-Ural-in-real-life" event was due we went out to the designated coordinates. It was a nice residential area and we took some time to find the right address. Upon finding the right address we saw it for the fist time. There she stood, in a dark carport, her paintjob gleaming in the murky light cast from the streetlights. It was then I understood that I wanted an Ural. I called Magnus, the man I spoke to two days earlier, and told him that we were on location. Magnus (the Swedish retailer) told me that he was out on an errand, but he was on his way home now and would join us in about ten minutes.
My friends and me stood there on the sidewalk looking at the big piece of shining Russian engineering in silence. For more than a week we had been comparing, discussing, looking at pictures, reading articles, comparing some more, looking at some video clips and discussing even more but now we were silent. Ten minutes passed, it started raining a little bit but none of us spoke, we just stood there, mesmerized by the presence of the thing we had been so occupied with the last week. A car pulled up to the sidewalk and stopped and a man emerged from the warm innards of the vehicle. The man broke the mesmerizing spell of the Ural by asking which of us was Walther. I greeted the man and shook his hand and so did my friends. We went over to the bike that stood there in the carport and Magnus started to tell us all the specifications of it, doing his best to sell us the bike.
What he did not know was that we came prepared. He did not have to sell it to us; we had sold it to ourselves. I'm a petrol head so I had memorized most of the specifications of the bike and started bombarding the poor Magnus with advanced questions about technical details, Martin who was concerned of how much stuff you could load on it started bombarding Magnus with questions about the different luggage racks and other accessories and Egil was mostly concerned with how it was to drive, if it was comfortable and if it was safe. Poor Magnus had four enthusiastic youngsters asking him a million questions about stuff he did not know half about. But it didn't matter, we had a good time, all five of us. My girlfriend, which I have not mentioned yet, was also with us, and she probably had the most questions of us all, most of which me, Martin or Egil could answer, but she did ask a few really good questions which none of us others had come to think of. She was also the one of us that became most in love with the bike. She acted like she was a kid and she almost ran around the bike, looking at all the details. It took us almost two hours to look at the bike, start it, listen to it, pull all it's levers, sit in the sidecar, sit on the drivers seat, sit on the passenger seat, ask all the questions, laugh at the anecdotes Magnus told, discuss prices, discuss features, discuss models and all the things you do when you are about to buy a new motorcycle.
Egil and Martin got a ride with the bike down to the subway and my girlfriend and me took my moped car and followed them. It was poetry in motion to look at the Ural in action. After out little adventure with the nice Ural salesman we went into town and had a cup of coffee. The only thing we spoke about was the Ural, and all our friends who had listened to us for a full week thought that now we've really lost it completely. But that is not the case; we're just really determined to get one Ural Patrol each. After much considering we thought that we wanted the Patrol, as it would suit our needs the best. The best thing is that none of us got a driving license, so we're working on that as we speak, and we will get it so that we may drive our bikes when we buy them.
For we will buy one each.
A little more information about me who wrote this: My name is Walther K.H Brandl and I'm a regular guy living in Stockholm that is the capital of Sweden. I am just about to move in together with Egil and Martin that I mentioned in the story. We're going to live in an apartment that we have christened "The Ural collective" and I'm having thoughts about starting a Club for Ural owners that's probably going to be called "from Russia with love". I'm 25 years old (well, the 29:th on January at least) and I'm currently unemployed. I've always been interested in vehicles of any kind and I really look forward to owning my very own Ural. The reason why I want an Ural is because I can use it all year round, and it seems to me like it's a machine built to last forever.
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