China Motorcycle Misaventures Update
Teresa and I have just picked up our Chang Jiangs from Jim's shop in Beijing where they were getting their checkups and fixes from the abuse we put them through mid-month on our journey north and west of Beijing. I'm leaving again tomorrow with Diny and her son Stephan, and maybe some others, to follow the Great Wall east where it disappears into the sea. I'll be sending dispatches when I can from the road to the usual place: http://carlaking.typepad.com. Teresa's wheels got badly bent from that last day of riding on dirt roads with humps and bumps and potholes. I don't know why mine weren't the same. Maybe her tires weren't correctly aligned or something. My battery was about dead, and my right turn signal in the back is missing from when Diny rear-ended me one day. Diny has this beautiful silver BMW with a Chang Jiang body; it's quite pristine. One afternoon were maneuvering through a small town, trying to get through on the potholed, dirt highway that was clogged with trucks, bicycles, and donkey carts loaded with corn husks. Chinese drivers are very impatient and will fill any tiny available space (also they wanted to get a closer look at the foreigners), so we we liked to travel as a unit so we wouldn't get separated from each other. Especially in these small towns where when you stopped you were surrounded by people, sometimes aggressive men. This meant that sometimes, especially in slow traffic, we were traveling too close together. My throttle cable on the left side suddenly got stuck and revved up very high, and I stalled. Diny was inches away and paying attention to a donkey cart that was getting too close and not me, so when I stalled I felt her bump me. Teresa heard it and looked behind, but since we were being swarmed with vehicles on every side, I just started it again and kept going. Teresa told us later that all the bystanders had gotten excited, anticipating a fight, and were astounded to see me ignore it. We found a restaurant and parked the bikes, fixed the cable, and saw that Diny had wedged her sidecar between my rear bumper and my sidecar, snapping off my right turn signal and putting a nice green streak on the outer front of her lovely silver sidecar. We thought it looked like one of those soft paintings the Chinese do of the southern mountains, and suggested that she leave it there. We were happy to get back to Beijing in one piece--traffic was thick and snarled and dangerous with bus drivers who were determined to go around, over, under, or through you to get just those precious inches closer to the red light. It's absolutely insane. And the pollution is overwhelming. It's 20 km between the 6th and 5th ring roads, and Teresa lives on the 4th. It took us hours to get there. I took a flight out the next day to Shanghai to report on a technical conference for Sun Microsystems. If you're interested in Java or NetBeans or Web 2.0, see my Sun Tech Days blog entries at http://blogs.sun.com/techdaysevents/. I did get out one night in Shanghai's Bund area and you can see a short mpeg video here. It's a beautiful city. I stayed at the Shangri La hotel--highly recommended--enjoying my fabulous room, the gym, the pool, the amazing breakfast buffet, and its proximity to the conference center and the tourist sights. I returned to Beijing on Thursday night, anticipating that a group would leave on Saturday morning for a ride but it rained and it got cancelled. It's dangerous to ride in a first rain anywhere, and since we would also be climbing on dirt roads it just didn't seem worth it to head out. But we plan to head out tomorrow morning (Sunday) no matter what, to follow the Great Wall east where it falls into the ocean. http://www.carlaking.com/china2007/ThePlan/ I hear you can easily get there in a day, but I'd like to take the scenic route through the mountains and around some reservoirs, so we'll take four days. I'll be blogging when I can in the usual place. Here's a Google Earth shot of the plan, in case you want to browse the terrain, see the roads, the wall, and photos people have uploaded from various sites. http://www.carlaking.com/china2007/Shanghai/MVI_0015.AVI Thank you so much for all of your encouraging emails. I'm glad you're enjoying the dispatches, and I look forward to hearing from you via email or, better yet, on each blog entry's comments area. Best, Carla ------------- Thank you for choosing to subscribe to: Motorcycle Misadventures Newsletter! If you wish to remove yourself from this newsletter, please visit this link to unsubscribe: http://www.MotorcycleMisadventures.com/eNewsletter.cfm?cid=3&id=1537&email=submit@theautochannel.com. Thank you!