Bread, guns, and tanks

[SA2003]

Call it cultural differences, but I still have issues with kids playing with assault rifles and live ammo.

Those same kids have to wait to turn 18 to get a driving license, right?

16 year old for motorcycles, 18 for cars.

There is actually a weird rule everyone in Russia is griping about: you have to have a licence to drive a motorcycle. But not a motoroller, a scooter as it is called in the West.

You don't need any licence for those.

They have become very popular... and dangerous.


They think they are very cool. Until this happens

or that

Silly and dangerous. There is whole movement now, to licence scooter drivers, same as motorcyclists.

[Pedicabby]

[QUOTE=SA2003;832216]

Next candidate, Igor

Can't remember his age. Served with a Border Troops Coast Guard unit. Helped take down a gang of poachers in the Black Sea. Him, they looked at with a bit more respect.

Whats up with the hats?

[Doktor]

These are traditional Cossack hats. Just dunno about black/white variants, what do they mean.

Same goes to blue/red uniforms ;)

[omon]

see, guns and tanks are safer than scooters.

[Doktor]

Yep If you drive the tank and the other guy doesn't have a RPG

[Pedicabby]

see, guns and tanks are safer than scooters.

Well done.

[SA2003]

These are traditional Cossack hats. Just dunno about black/white variants, what do they mean.

Same goes to blue/red uniforms ;)

It is regional color code. Kuban Cossacks, like Igor and Ulyana live around the Kuban river, near Sochi and on Ukrainian border and wear white papaxa (hat) and red+white cherkeska (coat) for men, and red+white dresses for women. Terek Cossack, like Pavel, who live on Terek river, near Chechnya, Dagestan, Ossetia (they all name their regional groups for rivers they live on, you get the idea), wear black or grey papaxa and black-blue cherkeska. Don Cossacks, like Pyotr, are less Caucasianised, so they do not wear cherkeska, just a military-style parade jacket, dark blue or white, and a Russian Army/police furazhka hat. Uralian and Siberian Cossacks dress like Don, but on their furzhka where Don is red, Ural is blue and Siberia is yellow. But, that was in the good old days, when the color code was strictly enforced and so strictly adhered to...

These days, much Cossack history has been lost, including, really, the old code. Today, people there dress every which way they feel like...

It is kind of sad...

[SA2003]

see, guns and tanks are safer than scooters.

Fair enough :)

[Parihaka]

16 year old for motorcycles, 18 for cars.

There is actually a weird rule everyone in Russia is griping about: you have to have a licence to drive a motorcycle. But not a motoroller, a scooter as it is called in the West.
Silly and dangerous. There is whole movement now, to licence scooter drivers, same as motorcyclists.

I got pulled over recently by a cop with a whole row of twenty or so scooter drivers lined up on the side of the road. "Bugger" thinks I, "my warrant of fitness isn't current". I make the usual excuses before he can open his mouth and he just says "I don't care, I've seen you riding (my bike and my gear are pretty distinctive) I just want you to stand in front of these kids and show them your safety gear"

So I pulled off my fleuros and explained which ones were good and which ones were bad, pulled off my armour and showed them the non-flamable kevlar inserts and why they were placed where they were, gave them a look at my new $2,400 helmet and explained the cushioning, compositing and air flow.
I showed them those battle scars I have without commiting a public indecency then told them about the three friends I've lost to being dismembered by cars or sanded to death on bitumen roads and why it didn't make a blind bit of difference whether they rode a 50cc scooter or a 1200cc superbike, the injuries would be the same.
Afterward the cop took my details and quietly implied I had a free pass for minor infringements for year. I love getting older and smarter.

[Doktor]

Warrant of fitness? Bugger says I

[ace009]

Awesome story!!
Those cops are nice - wish cops were like that in India. There, the cop will make you go through your story, then take you aside and ask you for 20 bucks bribe for NOT giving you a ticket for "warrant of fitness".

Hey - Tanks are much much safer than a scooter, a bike or a car - ever seen a tank driver dead from a head-on collision from anything(not counting with an APFSDS round)?

[Albany Rifles]

I didn't get to ride on tanks as a Boy Scout but I did get to fly in CH-47s and UH-1s.

When I was 13 I was a memebr of the Order of the Arrow in Scouts in Washington, DC. That summer I worked with a Scoutmaster/Asst Scoutmaster of an inner city DC Scout troop filled with handicapped Scouts. After I went to camp with my troop and completed the Junior Leader Training I went back to camp with this troop. And instead of taking a school bus we were flown to camp with all of our gear on UH-1s out of the Military District of Washington's 12th Aviation Battalion. They picked us up on the Mall in DC and flew us to camp out near Staunton, VA. A week later they picked us up at camp in CH-47s and dropped us off on the Mall.

This was in 1971...a little different Army!

I didn't get to play with tanks and automatic weapons for several years.

[Albany Rifles]

Yep If you drive the tank and the other guy doesn't have a RPG

Which is why a) tanks have coax machine guns & b) you fight as pairs with infantry in support.

1 guy with an RPG against a tank equals 1 dead RPG gunner.

[Dreadnought]

You've never seen a Cossack girl before, have you? lol

Enjoy :)

Nope but have seen Russian.