Once Around : Four Bicyclists Set Off on Last Leg of Globe-Circling Trip

They figure they’ve almost got the record for an around-the-world bicycle ride locked up.

So four robbery-plagued members of a Soviet-American cycling team launched the final leg of their globe-circling trip Thursday in Los Angeles by looking for a way to lock up their bikes.

“I think our first stop from here will be at a hardware store to buy a steel cable,” said Steve Buettner, 25, of Roseville, Minn. “We’ve become more cautious as we’ve gone along.”

Buettner, his 30-year-old brother, Dan, of Minneapolis, and Siberian riders Volodya Kovalenko, 32, and Alexander Razumenko, 31, hope to reach Minnesota on Nov. 26 to complete the trek they started on April 1.

The riders said they have been attacked six times by bandits. They have also survived a surprise riot and a frightening earthquake in eastern Europe and menacing Siberian tigers and wolves in the Soviet Union.

So they were in no mood to lose their specially outfitted mountain bikes to passersby who stared at the machines as they pedaled Thursday through Hollywood for a West Coast send-off.

“We were robbed four times in Romania. That cast a nasty shadow over that country,” said Dan Buettner. Bandits struck twice in the Soviet Union, he said.

The loot taken included such items as clothing, water bottles, bicycle seat covers, Swiss army knives, a Walkman tape player and a bottle of wine--”things people there don’t have,” said Steve Buettner.

The four are experienced riders who met during a 1989 summer exchange program for American and Soviet cyclists. After glasnost spread last fall, they set out to become the first international team of bicyclists to cross through Eastern Bloc countries and then pedal the width of the Soviet Union.

They started their trip by heading east from Minneapolis. From the East Coast they flew to France where they picked up their land journey.

The 7,353-mile Soviet leg of the trek--which lasted 125 days and crossed areas that have been closed in the past to foreign travelers--is the part they hope will land them in the Guinness Book of World Records. Other round-the-world bikers have not traveled across the U.S.S.R.

Kovalenko, Razumenko and the Buettners are paying for their expedition through cash grants and gifts of specialized cycling equipment that total $46,000. That covered air fare.

Donations from such diverse organizations as the giant Minneapolis-based 3M Co. and a Communist Party youth group in Kovalenko and Razumenko’s hometown of Novosibirsk, Siberia, locked up the financing.