Day 44: Near the China-Kyrgyz border – 4829km

We had a dream run accross Xinjiang. Reaching the western-most city of Atushi 39 days after Beijing.

Our new record stands at 230km in a single day. On that occasion we could go no further as we rode straight into a ferocious dust storm. We camped in a ditch beside the road, sheltered from the wind.

As we were four days ahead of the start date of our Kyrgyz visa we took a rest in the beautiful town of Atushi. We found this place much more relaxed than Kashgar (where we stayed on a previous expedition). The police still force foreigners into the two most expensive hotels, something to do with “terrorism” they say. But with hind-sight, $12 per night for a three star hotel isn’t really worth whinging about.

From Atushi we headed up into the Tienshan range. Here the temperature plummeted and it poured with rain. Our desert clothing was woefully inadequate. All I had to keep dry was a PVC poncho I had bought in Inner Mongolia. We managed to find an abandoned mud-hut to shelter in for the night, before the final push into Kyrgyzstan.

Day 31: Somewhere in Xinjiang

We’ve gone 3700km, just clinging to schedule. After Gansu we rolled down the mountains into the heat of the Hami basin. We clocked up our biggest day yet, 225km. One km short of my own personal best! Thwarted in the end by a roaring head wind. The last 20K took about 2 hours!

After we left the desert Hami wasn’t actually so hot. The real test came later as we rode through the “mountains of fire” down into the Turpan basin, 150m below sea level. Here it was hot even at night time. Legend has it that you can cook an egg just by leaving it on the sand in those mountains.

From Turpan the team split in half. It was great while it lasted, but Ting and I were of to Kyrgystan, and Frank and Su Chun headed directly for Kazakhstan.

We ran into trouble immediately, in the form of a 45 knot cross wind, right when Ting and I opted to take a short cut accross the basin on an un-sealed road. We spent three hours fighting the wind to get less than 20K before reaching shelter, by which time all our water was exhausted.

From here it was quite good riding, though we struck cross winds from time to time. The bikes actually worked quite well when it was less than 40 knots and the road was sealed.

Day 15-20ish: Gansu

Racing through the “Hallway”. This is a narrow strip of irrigated land hemmed between the Gobi desert and the towering Qilian Shan range, which guards the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.

We had one day of excellent tail wind here, on which we set our new record of 190km. We also ran into some serious heat for the first time. Temperatures getting well into the high 30’s on a couple of occasions, and the road starting to melt.

We finished the hallway at a place known as the “reservoir of wind”, then struck out accross the gobi, then into the mountains that seperate Xinjiang from eastern China.

Day 12-15ish: Ning Xia Province

From inner mongoia we race along a narow strip arible land between the Mu Us desert and the Gobi. Or plans were halted on day 12 when the heavens opened up and flooded the roads. We decided the time was right for our first rest.

On reaching the capital, Yinchuan, and fluffing about looking for a hotel we were told of two mysterious Chinese searching for us. They had been alerted to our presence by one of the many bike shops we had stopped at while looking for spare disk brake pads. They turned out to be Dingbingning and his friend. Dingbingning was one of the first Chinese to sign up for B2P! He had dropped out later to start up his own bike shop.

The following day we were given a rowdy send-off by Dingbingning and his local bike club, who rode with us for the first 20K out of town. The also helped fix a couple of bits on Frank’s bike, and set us up with a list of contacts in bike shops for our future destinations.

Ning Xia turned out to be a pleasant interlude between the relatively harsh environments of inner Mongolia and Gansu. Combined with the friends we made there it was one of the highlights of the trip.

We turned off route 110 for the last time near Zhongwei, and took a short cut across the Tengger desert, to Wuwei, in Gansu.

Inner Mongolia

As my diary is still in Taiwan I’m not actaully sure of dates and KM. Basically we found our way out of Beijing along bike lanes, then headed up into the mountains. We somehow got lost and took a series of small roads, eventually rejoining route 110.

Initially there were periods of heavy traffic, and we alternated between riding (illegally) on the highway, and peaceful stretches on 110, which was closed for re-surfacing. At a couple of points we found ourselves riding on wet tar, and on one occasion the entire team managed to race accross freshly poured (hot) asphault! It took about 2 hours to pick it off our tyres!

The coal trucks got bad at times, and we were using daytime riding lights, but they dissappeared, and the air cleared after Jining. From then on it was glorious flat cycling along the valley of the yellow river. We made 1200km in the first 12 days, dispite rain delays, and a slow start.

More pictures in the China photo gallery

Day 1: The departure, 10 June 2007.

Assembled outside our hostel, then all together down to Tienmen square. Stopped for pictures outside the Forbiden city, then made a lap of the square, secretly filmed by a Taiwanese news crew.

Our plan of having a speach outside the olympic countdown clock was foiled by nearvous police, so we kept on going right out of the square.

A couple of blocks later I gave a little speech, first attempting it in Chinese, then resorting to English. From there the Greenway team headed south, Brendon Chou went back to sleep, and the rest of us went north for Inner Mongolia.

Welcome to the kindom of bicycles

We spent the next three days being regular tourists. The rest of the team dribbled in, all of us staying in the old huotong district. We visited the forbiden city, made plans for the departure day, and took many pictures from my Carfree Asia collection.

Beijing was much more relaxed than I was expecting. Despite all the media hype about this place being over-run with cars, it is still a big improvement over say Sydney or Auckland. Wide bike lanes lined the streets, shaded by big leafy trees, and the banning of petrol motorcycles made it much more pleasant than most other large Asian cities of similar size.

The only trouble we had was finding food. The government seems to have taken a disliking to street stalls. Which means that there was no longer anywhere simple to eat. The final night however the entire team assembled, and we were taken out to a fancy Xinjiang restaurant, by a kindly jounalist from America.

Beijing at last

Alas I was unable to sleep well on the daytime flight from Australia. So I arrived in Beijing still missing two nights sleep. Ting’s flight was delayed, and it took us about 2 hours to assemble the bikes, so we didn’t get out of the airport until midnight.

It was my the first time to ride Fēng Huǒ Lún fully loaded. I disocovered the pannier was rubbing on the rear wheel. Much of the ride into town I tried to hold it up with one arm, or some string wrapped under the bottom of the pannier.

Otherwise it was surprisingly nice. Little traffic at that time of night, and we were on nice wide bike paths most of the way.

Finally we reached the huotong district, in the centre of Beijing at 3am. It was my third night without sleep, I was almost falling off the bike. We checked into our hostel and collapsed on nice clean beds.

The mad rush to 6 June

The final six months leading up to Beijing were an epic struggle against the calender. Coming home from my “real job” each day to spend all evening working flat out on the bikes.

There was lots of welding, sanding, filing etc to do on the frames, seats to make, and panniers to design and sew. I had both main tubes bent at once, no time for mistakes. While the tubes were at the benders I worked on first prototype seat.

I made a couple of serious mistakes. The first was to set my “thinking chair” on fire with the welding torch. That was brought undercontrol fairly quickly. The second was to not to use good enough safety glasses. I ended up with a piece of steel enbedded in the surface of my eye. It required a specialist with a needle to remove it. After this I bought better safety goggles, with rubber seals around the edges that push up into my skin.

Toronado was completed a few hours before Ting caught her early morning flight to Taipei in March. I slept for a few hours, then got stuck into finishing Fong Huo Lun. Fong Huo Lun was finished about 10 hours before my flight to Beijing, without any time for testing with full load.

This left me with just enough time to pack up my flat and take a five minute rest before Bruce came to take me to the airport, at 0300 on 6 June. I had missed two nights sleep already!

See more building pictures in my photo gallery

Back to the drawing board

The next plan was a short wheelbase recumbent. Ting already had one of these, after a chance meeting with Kevin Kao on a Taipei bicycle track. We bought a second one, which became FHL-1, the final Prototype for B2P. It was a great learning curve, I made several seats, and fiddled about with geometry and front cowling ideas.
Then I was ready for the serious design work. Many long hours every evening on the computer before I ordered the tubing.

There was much panic as I learned that the cromolly tubes I wanted were out of stock from the supplier in Sydney. It wasn’t until January 2007 that they finally arrived. Just six months left to build two bikes.