What's this white stuff?

May 31—680 km--A good long ride today, about 680 kilometers. It was cold (mid forties) and raining when we set out, but it stopped raining after an hour or so and gradually warmed up as the day went on, until it reached the mid-sixties in Ulan Ude, our destination.

At first the ride was very flat, but during the course of the day we rode though a couple sets of low mountains, maybe 900 meters high. There was quite a bit of snow in one of the passes, even on the last day of May:

Right where I took this shot, the shoulder was sloping, loose dirt. TJ also stopped to take a picture and was fiddling to get this camera out of his bag when he lost his balance and the bike toppled over down the hill, and he rolled down into the field. To make it worse, this happened just as I was pulling out to leave, and I didn't see him and just rode off and left him. When TJ didn't appear after a while, I pulled over and waited, and eventually, after he'd wrestled his heavily-loaded bike upright, he pulled up. He wasn't too happy that I left him; I had actually looked at his bike when I pulled out and saw his headlight, so assumed all was in order, but maybe I didn't notice that the headlight was on the ground. Never heard the end of that one...

Here's a picture of Terry's bike near the same spot; it would not be running too much longer, so no more shots of this bike:

The last part of the road near Ulan Ude was fairly curvy, including a beautiful stretch near the Selenga River as we approached town. This shot doesn't really do it justice--couldn't find a spot to pull over in the really pretty spots:

Roads were again much better than I expected; fairly bumpy and a fair number of potholes, but overall not bad at all.

We ate lunch at a Russian truck stop with a funny sign on the wall:

“Attention: Due to continual conflicts with locals in a drunken condition, we no longer serve local residents. This establishent serves only long distance transit drivers.” I bet there's a story there...

First Day in the Motherland

May 30—500 km--Finally, after all this time, the first real ride with no convoys and no borders. Took some pictures pulling out of Zabaikalsk--its a pretty dreary place:

The main street in Zabaikalsk:

Here is a shot of their rather desolate "Victory Park":

Here's a shot of all of us in the hotel parking lot:

Very flat and open terrain at first, but gradually became more forested. Here's a scene from the morning:
Roads were suprisingly good for the most part, only had one muddy constuction detour of maybe ten kilometers. Had beakfast at this Russian truck stop:

The view from the parking lot:After the hearty breakfast, we skipped lunch. We met these guys when we pulled over to fill up:

Here's a shot showing a bit of the road (good) and a typical Siberian village. We must have seen thousands of villages like this, although the ones in this neck of the woods were less prosperous-looking than later on:

Here's a nice shot of the terrain:
We pulled into Chita at around 18:00 after riding exactly 500 kilometers and stayed at the Panama City Hotel, a sort of replica of a US motel. The grounds also had a couple of restarants, a bowling alley, and a casino. The main group went out to some restaurant, but TJ, Stuart, Ed and I had dinner in the restaurant at the motel, where there was some kind of kindergarten graduation party going on. They dragged us out to dance, we all had fun. Later went to the bowling alley for a few beers with Sasha and Victor, the Russian guide and driver, respectively.

Russian Border

May 29—17 km--Spent all day crossing Chinese and Russian borders; didn't seem to encounter any real problems but had to wait and wait and wait...

Finally got to the hotel in Zabaikalsk around 22:00, went to a beer tent outside the hotel for a few beers, then off to diner at a pretty good restaurant. While at dinner, a group of the Russian boder guards that let us across the border were celebrating a birthday and gave us a huge bottle of Jack Daniels. I had a few shots with them and then we had to rest up for the next day's ride to Chita.

It really felt good being in Russia after all that time in China, where I couldn't communicate with the locals and wouldn't have understood them if I did. I felt right at home in Zabaikalsk!

Manzhouli

May 28—Manzhouli--274 km--Brief ride again today to Manzhouli. Weather a bit better, no rain, and it warmed up a bit. Pretty scenery, with open plains and low hills:Here is an excellent shot of TJ:
Not much too see, stopped at some tourist joint with concrete yurts and a lonely-looking camel:

Here are some shots in front of some kind of Mongolian prayer mound or something:

Got into Manzhouli early afternoon, Russian signs everywhere, Russians everywhere. Stayed at the Intourist hotel in Manzhouli. At the gas station in Manzhouli, we had to fill the bikes with this rusty old bucket:

A rainy, miserable day

May 27—295 km--Fairly short, miserable ride today to Yakeshi. Though it was in the mid-fifties and cloudy when we left, soon it started raining and the temp started dropping. Before long it was a steady rain and in the mid-thirties, with a strong wind. It was really cold! Stopped at a gas station to add more warm clothes, and it was very windy—so windy that it blew TJ's bike over. If nothing else, every time from now on that I ride in crappy weather, I can say, “Gee, this is almost as bad as the time I was in Inner Mongolia…” Here's a photog to help paint the picture:

At about 1330 we pulled into Yakeshi, to a very nice hotel with some kind of Mongolian welcome ceremony with fermented yak’s milk--way too touristy for my taste, I had to pass:
As we filled up at a gas station on the outskirts of Yakeshi, I received confirmation that the Duke and I had very different outlooks when he said "Isn't this just great?" Maybe it was the hypothermia, but I didn't really think so. He is one upbeat dude. TJ, Stuart, and I had a very nice lunch with beer and some delicious deep-fried chinese food. Here is MTB in the restaurant, he looks happy to be there as well:
Went for a brief walk about town, froze my ass off. Bought some food and motor oil and went back to the hotel to try to dry out my stuff. TJ melted the room's hair-dryer in the process of drying his stuff...

A Rong Qi

May 26—489 km—We left Harbin at about 08:00 through very heavy traffic. Rode by a Chinese marching band on the way out of town, maybe practicing for the Olympics? We had a long ride to A Rong Qi, site of the worst hotel so far. Riding was OK but we couldn't stop because we were in convoy, so no pix other than the no-frills noodle joint we found for lunch:

Again arrived as darkness was falling.

Quiet Evening in Harbin

May 25—555km—We left early on Sunday for Harbin, where we also arrived late and were “escorted” from the edge of town by members of the Harbin Motorcycle Club. Apparently one of the founders of the Organizer, has some kind of relationship with these guys. Here are some pix of some of their bikes:

We had been regaled for weeks about how good of a party the Harbin MC threw for us in their clubhouse, so good that many people were hung-over for days afterward. Well, we arrived at the hotel just after dark, and the Harbin MC took lots of pictures, particularly with certain people, and then we were told to meet downstairs in thirty minutes for dinner. I went down, expecting to be escorted to some wild party, but instead we went to a hotel restaurant next door and had a quiet dinner (with a round table, of course). It turns out that the Leader went out with the Harbin MC and invited the Duke & Duchess, but no one else. No explanation was ever given as to why no one else was invited. I didn't care much, but thought it was a little odd...

At Long Last

May 24—Finally, the bikes were released from the port and from customs and…promptly disappeared. They should have arrived by 0700 or so at our hotel, but they didn’t, and the Leader had no idea where they were. Apparently the truck drivers claimed to have needed fuel and had to wait all night in a fuel queue, but we think they spent their time otherwise.

In any event, no one seemed to have any idea how we would be unloading the bikes from the containers, or seemed to be doing anything about it. A couple of us walked around town to find an unloading ramp, without success. Sim, our Chinese guide, picked up on the issue and picked us up and drove us to a vacant lot he’d found with a big earthen bank on one side where we could back the trucks up to, open the containers, and unload the bikes.

The trucks finally showed up around 15:00 on Saturday, May 24, and we started unloading the bikes. Here’s how it went:

We attracted quite a crowd of locals. Here one has picked up some of TJ's stuff, TJ's expression is priceless (the guy was just curious and neatly replaced TJ's stuff once he'd examined it):

We filled up the bikes around the corner, and gathered across the street from the unloading site to leave town.

We finally left on our bikes for Shenyang about 1600, and we got there way after dark, thus giving rise to the Organizer's first “iron rule”: “We absolutely never ride at night, except when we do.” More iron rules would follow…

Here are some shots as we line up at a toll booth that first night:

The Long Wait

May 12-23—Ugh. A very long wait for the bikes, which were two weeks late getting into port. Very unimpressed with the planning or lack thereof for the shipping process. So we were in Beijing for a few days (in hotel in the middle of nowhere), then to Chengde (nice town, nice hotel in center), then…drum roll please…Shanhaigueng, a dump town where we stayed in a dumpy hotel in the middle of nowhere for a week waiting for the bikes. Basically, the first two weeks was a very expensive, second-rate bus tour of China, here we are:

Everyday, we heard, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, etc. Lots of recriminations about where bikes were, when released, etc. I don't want to get into the gory details, but the bad blood that arose during this part of the trip did much to spoil the trip, I think. The expressions on our faces in this shot says it all:I should very briefly describe the folks on the trip, so you understand more of the context:

Guides: We had two permanent guides, who I will call the Leader and the Assistant. Both very knowledgable about bikes. The Leader had led several trips for the Organizer, the Assistant was along as sort of a trainee guide.

Participants: There were ten of us paying participants on the trip:
--Me--no further explanation necessary!
--TJ (aka "Slick")--a year older than me. Good guy from Traverse City, Michigan. Sold his business a while ago, so he's basically retired. Travelling around the world on his bike, and travels in Airstream. We were roomies, got along pretty well. Really well, considering how hard it is to travel like this.
--Stuart--Retired Kiwi accountant. Not as boring as that sounds! Great guy, lots of fun. My main drinking mate on the trip. Here are TJ (left) and Stuart (right) with a new friend:--Ed (numerous aliases)--retired Navy guy from Seattle area. Very good guy when in a good mood, but kinda moody. Lots of funny and rather bawdy navy stories. Typically rode on his own.
Here's a picture of Ed (left) and TJ (right):--Mike (aka "Mike the Bike" or simply MTB)--Insurance agent from Atlanta. Good guy. Generally rode on his own, sometimes with unfortunate results. Had to admire his willingness to just get out there. Nicknamed "Mike the Bike" because during our prolonged wait in China he bought a bicycle and rode it around the town. Helge praised him for his great attitute (haha, that would change, stay tuned)! Here is Mike the bike at a Chinese gas station:--Terry (aka "Radar")--A retired banker from Minnesota. Remarkable resemblance, physical and behavior-wise, to Radar O'Reilly from MASH, hence the nickname. Here is Radar at the same Chinese gas station:--Henry (aka "Roadrunner")--Henry is a retired accountant from the Bay area. Probably the most well-travelled person I've ever met, much of it on motorcycles. Rode very aggressively, swooping in and out, braking hard, etc., so we called him "Roadrunner," usually accompanied by "beep, beep." Here is a picture of Henry (left) with the Leader (right):--Harrison & Debby (aka the "Duke & Duchess of Morton"). Very nice couple from Morton, Washington. They own a couple of motels, a gas station, and a subway in that small town, so as the major landowners (as far as we could tell) we called them the Duke & Duchess.

To give Stuart hi s due, I think he came up with all of the above nicknames (other than Radar), he had quite a gift for that. I think all of the nicknames other than "Roadrunner" were in place before we even got the bikes.

One unfortunate consequence of our long wait in Shenhaigueng was the formation of various cliques. The initial split was between those of us pissed off at being stuck in some crappy hotel in some crappy city in China without our bikes for so long (Me, TJ, Stuart, Ed) and those who thought that the poor planning for the shipping was a perfectly acceptable part of the adventure (everybody else).

These cliques were reinforced and exacerbated by the way the meals were organized in China--every night all of us sat around a giant round table with a big lazy susan in front of us, on which were placed all of the various dishes, beers, etc. Sounds petty, but just having to sit at one table with everyone and only being able to take the food as it came around to you led to some bad blood. People snapped at each other fairly often over the silliest things. Didn't do much for the team-building.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

Here is glamourous Shengheigueng:

A seamstress making a bandanna for me during our long wait for the bikes...

OK, here's some of the Chinese stuff we saw during our wait:

Here is where the Great Wall of China meets the sea:

Here are Stuart and I having beers where the Great Wall meets the sea:

One of the most treasured experiences from the trip: our hotel, appropriately enough, was for some reason the site of numerous "Chinese Fire-Drills":