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I went topless today on the way home from work. White guy in China with bright blonde hair pacing cars outside the bike lane.

I felt great but kinda like a foreign douche at the same time...

Anyone here play EVE? I'm looking for a new corp to join...

She gave me some free touch-ups on my leg too since she had all her gear set up already.

We are borg. Resistance is futile.

I got some more work done:

To be fair, the meat tends to shrink quite a bit after cooking.

I've been eating a lot of hot pot at home lately.

Special peanut sauce...

In front of the comp:

Playing games while chowing..

a couple hours later...

You can be, and are incredibly and extraordinarily lucky.

Have you seen the way they handle it? I've caught a glimpse of my bike bag being thrown around like a rag dolls to the plane's hold.

Were the people who have had their bikes ruined using dropout spacers? That's the most important thing. No amount of bubble wrap in the world will stop your frame or fork from getting bent if they decide to throw a heavy suitcase on top of your bike or something.

I know my bike gets thrown around, doesn't bother me much as everything on it is heavy and made of solid metal...

I'm sure it goes without saying that not every bike can handle this treatment. Anything with cables/gears/nice paintjobs requires quite a bit more protection.

I must just be incredibly lucky then..

My bag weighs less than .5 kg and rolls up into something smaller than a sleeping bag. It offers no protection but I've taken it on more than a dozen flights and suffered nothing worse than scratches.

Bikes aren't really thaaaaat fragile..

I've flown with my bike in a soft bag a few times. I've even managed to check it as normal baggage with no fragile tags or anything. It's gotten a little scratched but that's it and I couldn't care less about scratches. Just make sure you use drop out spacers and put the bike in upside down so the chainring doesn't tear out the bottom.

What I like about it is that if you pack light enough you can throw the bike bag in a rucksack/messenger bag and ride away from the airport. That's a feeling that just can't be beat.

Having said that I ride a brakeless steel fixed gear. If I was traveling with a bling carbon racing machine it would be a hard padded box all the way.

Not really my thing, but nicely done imo:

Sweet. I love bio-mech inside the machine style tattoos. Here's my machine leg...similar idea.

I'll be doing another similar piece around my right shoulder, that I separated a few years ago. The machinery will have some visible damage to it..

run high ratios i.e. something 47 and above up front and 15 or below in the back. Ride up some hills, get stronger, adapt, and enjoy not spinning like a wheedwacker going down hills.

Was the donkey sandwich tasty?

I loooove donkey sandwiches. It's pretty much my favorite breakfast now.

Because it comes with a free anti Communist Party message encouraging people to read this book?

This was really cool to read, thanks for posting it. I've been considering doing some touring in China this year (maybe) so it gives me some inspiration seeing someone else do it, and on an even more inappropriate bike than I was planning too.

I owe you a tenner!

There are more than a few things wrong with those 9 comments. Don't really want to get into it in detail. Especially number 7. You only have to spend a few days here to realize that the cultural revolution completely failed at that goal and that traditional culture is more than alive and well over here.

Not saying the CCP isn't brutal, they are, but they don't have nearly the stranglehold over people that some think they do.

Also number 9, Most of the cases of injustice you find over here are simply caused by rich Chinese people being greedy. Not the CCP. The government actually comes down hard on people who put melamine in baby formula and whatnot. They would do more but the system of corruption, gaffe and bribery makes it difficult to control these kinds of people.

I've been living in China for four years so I've mostly just picked it up as I've gone along. I studied pretty hard for a few months at the beginning to get the basics and from there just learned the rest through socializing and keeping my ears open.

reading for me is usually an agonising slow process where i have to look up characters in a dictionary but I can speak well enough to get around and get to know people.

I have read this thread with voracious interest. Might be time to see what kind of custom construction I can source out over here in the way of frame bags.

I thought there were loads of bikes over there so a cyclist wouldn't be that out of the ordinary, no?

Bicycles are not rare but to see a guy touring on a bicycle is extremely rare. Then add to it the fact that I'm a foreigner who is doing this alone and I become a story people will tell their friends for weeks.

A lot of the people I met had never even seen a foreigner let alone one traveling China on a bike.

Hot cups look painful. Some great hospitality you got there.

It was just plain silly how nice people were to me absolutely everywhere I went. More than once I had cars pull up beside me so they could pass me a bottle of water!

and hot cups are less painful than they look. They're not really hot..they just use fire to create a vacuum inside the cup and then when they put it on your back it makes a circular hickie.

No worries. Hope it's okay that I posted another 20 pics haha..they're way cooler.. ;)

I posted a second half to it, just waiting for mod approval I think...

Next day they escorted me out of town to the highway where we said our goodbyes but not before treating me to some donkey sandwitches!

more random pics...

a tenner to anyone who can say why this 5 yuan note is so interesting..

A restaurant...

I ate there..

more..

crossing the provincial border from Hebei province into Henan province. The province names literally translate to north of the river and south of the river. The yellow river being the natural border.

Riding through the Henan countryside was great! More than 90% of China's wheat is grown in this one province. No room for industry, so I could finally remove my pollution mask.

Best story of this trip.. my gps isn't working on my iphone cuz I'm out in the sticks..I have an offline map but I don't know which village I'm next to..I know I have a turn coming up but I have that bad feeling that I've already passed it. then this truck pulls up and starts installing a sign with the village name before my eyes while I'm sitting there! The turn is 200m ahead! ... I'm back on course!

Almost reached the next city but it's getting dark!

Kaifeng city gate at night ..

Then disaster struck. Woke up with a throbbing pain in my achilles. It also felt kind of dry...like I could feel it rubbing around the surrounding muscles. I saw a doctor and he told me I had strained it and to continue cycling long distances could be very dangerous. After some online research I figured he had called it right. Kind of made sense too as I hadn't really trained for this trip. I figured it was flat and I could get in shape on the way..m'bad. Anyways I was gutted cuz I'd only been at this 9 days I was hoping to see how far I could get in six weeks but I had to call it off. To risk a ruptured achilles would have been dumb. Anyways it's all good. I'm already preaparing for another tour next summer and I'll be making sure I'm bettered prepared physically.

This time I want to ride directly west into Xinjiang province and try to reach Urumqi in a month. Can't wait!

Hey guys,

Since I met a lot of you over the last week while I was in the UK and came to the conclusion that you're all pretty rad I decided to share my all-too-short bike tour through a piece of North East China with you.

This was the route (sort of)

http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Beijing,+China&daddr=Kaifeng,+Henan,+China&hl=en&ll=37.779399,116.773682&spn=6.363193,11.634521&sll=37.352845,115.349455&sspn=6.399676,11.634521&geocode=FdbjYAIddTzwBim5LBTnllLwNTGKqQ-vIFZiuQ%3BFbf2EgId_jHQBik38rY4IJnQNTGMSYG7f9bvbQ&vpsrc=6&dirflg=w&mra=ltm&t=m&z=7

Some pics...

Yummy food was cheap and plentiful!

Little shops every 20 k or so. Always easy to get bottled water.

Some places were really nasty. This town had oily roads and burning piles of garbage everywhere. Huge coal plants and smog made my eyes burn and by the end of the day I had a sticky, oily residue on my skin that took ages to wash off. I wish I had taken more pics but I was too disgusted. It was a disaster area..

Resting... a few minutes before I took this pic I saw some farmers drive by on a truck covered in flowers with a dead body in the back. They were driving slowly and dropping firecrackers as they went.

Shortly after this pic of an accident two friendly guys pulled up beside me in their car and asked if they could buy me lunch. I agreed..

Hot pot. On of my faves..

The two dudes I met. 1st one is the restaurant owner, 2nd one is a party member who works at the local government office. I'm still friends with them and have been back to their town a few times since the trip. Neither of them can speak English.

After dinner one of their friends came. Local police chief.

I got traditional hot cup treatment for my back pain while drunk...

I stored my bike in the restaurant and the drunk police chief drove me to a hotel. Which he insisted on paying for.

Next day the restaurant owner picked me up and drove me out to his village. He first took me to an ancient burial mound of a long dead lord and then I had home cooked lunch at his family's house. I'm so bad about not taking enough pics! His grandma lived in a brick house with a dirt floor and a stove heated with lumps of coal. Her grandson lived in a brick house with heated floors and all other modern conveniences. His grandma repeatedly refused his offers to have her house renovated.

Multipurpose farming+oil extraction!

^ yeah food was amazing. Best of luck to Luca (is that his name?) in his new venture. Good to know Uk pubs aren't all beef pies and bangers with mash.

I'm flying out in a couple hours. Once again thanks to all the cool peoples I met and your welcoming and hospitable nature. Hopefully I'll be back again next year for more of the same!

Mike

Don't worry about the bears. They ain't as scary as all that. They only become aggressive if you suprise them or get between them and their young. Fall is also the only real dangerous bear season too as they are desperate to fatten up for their winter hibernation. I recommend dangling some jingle bells from your bike somehow so they will hear coming and fuck off.

I've encountered the odd bear walking around in bc forests and as long you don't act like a spaz and carry on with your business (I.e. Calmly put distance between yourself and them) they will ignore you 999 times out of a thousand.

Cougars are the real dangerous critters but they never really go near roads.

If you're camping in the woods DO NOT keep any food in your tent. Safest bet is to hang your food bag from a tree branch. And if you do see a bear DO NOT run! Just slowly back away.

This has been bear safety 101. Bear attacks are rare and usually preventable. Just hope you don't come across a honey badger. They like to eat your testicles first before moving on to your toes and fingers.