Braking Boundaries

We’re going to be camping a lot more this week as our passports are awaiting processing in the visa office in Urumchi. All hostels, guesthouses and hotels are supposed to ask for our visas and register all guests, foreign or local, into the PSB (Public Security Bureau) system. Since we don’t have the passports, and don’t want to spend several hours each evening explaining to the local cops of each little town the perfectly legitimate reason why, camping from here to Urumchi sounds like the most hassle-free option.

Camping has several distinct advantages. It will save some money as we’re avoiding accommodation costs, and we can do as many or as few kms as we like as we’re not tied to reaching a specific point on the map. The lack of rain and pleasantly cool nighttime temperatures are perfectly suited to a few nomadic nights on the road, and we should be able to get a hot meal or two in the little towns along the way (assuming they actually exist, but that’s another story). However, the lack of washing facilities means it’s going to be a pretty stinky week, so I’m glad we each have our own tents.

I’m a big fan of camping, desert spiders excepted, and am really looking forward to sleeping underneath the stars. I tried sleeping without my rain-fly the last night we camped, and the view of the night sky was nothing short of spectacular. Highly recommended.

Desert camping seems like a fun and carefree idea, until you consider the local wildlife.

On Tuesday afternoon, after one of our rest stops, I spotted a massive spider nestling on the back of Jared’s rear pannier. It was about the size of an open fist, legs included, and a bright mix of white and yellow. Definitely not mentioned in the Lonely Planet.

We didn’t want to kill a rare creature, so we found a long twig to shoo it away with. Rather than scurrying away, as you might expect from a regular household spider, the little bugger raised up its front legs and attacked the stick aggressively.

We spent the next 5 minutes trying to get rid of it, during which time it first attempted to hide in my bags, then latched itself to Jared’s tire. Of course, no one wanted to get too close to a potentially poisonous pair of fangs, so it was a delicate procedure. On the basis of our efforts, I don’t think any of us would have been great contestants on the insect round of Fear Factor.

Anyhow, lesson learned. Everyone vowed to check their bags carefully, and we decided to keep all shoes inside our tents, just to avoid any nasty surprises when putting them on in the mornings.

That evening, a shrill shriek from Katie announced the presence of another spider on Jared’s tent ( That’s 2 in a row. He seems to attract them, much as the bee swarms seem unduly interested in me).

This time, as it was in our camp and might return later, I took no chances. Spiders don’t understand the concept of ASBOs or restraining orders, a more direct approach was needed. A size ten bike shoe soon made short work of the angry little arachnid.

To satisfy my curiosity, and make sure I haven’t splattered one of the last of an endangered species, I’ve just checked out the spider on Wikipedia
Not poisonous, but capable of a nasty bite.

Play Video

To watch movies on the Braking Boundaries site you need to install Microsoft Silverlight. This only takes a couple of minutes.

Windows Media Video (WMV) format available here.
Spider

By the time this post shows up on the website we should be well across the Northwestern China thanks in part to what I will call “Storming Toll Gates.”

For the the past 5 days and most likely for the week ahead at the time I wrote this (written 27th of May) we have chosen to bend a few rules here in China and jump on the 312 Expressway which does not permit cyclists and where the cars can go at a speed of 120 kph. Now before you all get on your high horses and say “That’s dangerous and illegal” let me paint you a picture of roads here in Northwestern China.

**Side note – For the 2 days following the time I wrote this we were denied entry by toll booth attendants jumping out of their booths and getting in our way. That didn’t stop us today though as we found a whole in the fence and jumped on the expressway.

Tom coming out of the end of the expressway after a day of smooth roads

Given the facts what would you choose.

Smooth roads with shoulders wide enough to park a truck on and still not disturb the 2 lanes beside it. Traffic that may travel fast but is few and far between and generally change to the overtaking lane while passing us. Or would you choose a road (G312) that is bumpy, in some places unpaved, little to no shoulder and where the local buses and trucks barrel down the roads and choose to use their horns to get you to move rather than slowing down.

We chose to “Storm Toll Gates.” In tight formation ready for battle the Braking Boundaries teams rockets toward the toll gate. Toll booth Willy looks on too stunned with events unfolding know what to do. 3 strange bikes and one even stranger looking contraption speed through paying no attention to the barrier, through to the other side and up the on ramp before he can shout out a few words that (I guess) mean “have a safe trip.”

I’m not sure if that is exactly what the 6 toll booth workers were yelling the other day, but it works.

Katie lines up to go through the toll gate

Now I know that in any other country if a police/traffic car saw you on the expressway they would immediately pull you over for questioning and probably a big fine.

Not here in China they don’t!

I must admit that the first time a police car went by I thought “here we go, this will be fun.” But nothing. Even the 2nd and 3rd car had my heart racing, but after seeing a cop car every 20 minutes for a whole day I soon got used to the idea that they didn’t seem to mind that we were on the expressway.

Sure it has it’s disadvantages. For one there are no small shops for coca-cola breaks and that afternoon ice-cream in the desert heat is missed dearly, but while this stretch of the expressway continues to exist (it is supposed to end in the next few days) I’m sure we will continue to storm a toll gate or two ensuring big clear smooth roads that are honk free.

A few days back as we cycled into a small town in the Gansu province looking for the usual $8 a night room with a communal squatter and a sink that may or may not have hot water when we came across a fast food joint that was simply appealing as it had pictures of burgers on it.

It doesn’t take much to excite us at the end of the day especially when ordering food is such a pain in the ass, and here was this bizarre little place with pictures we could point at. So try combining Mcdonalds, KFC, Popeyes together, but half the price. Call it PALA (we think run by a Russian company) and use pictures that look like they have been stolen from McD’s and put English signs up that make Korean English signs make sense.

i.e

“Le Brown Foam” or “Osteosacoma connected” which translates to “bone cancer connected.”

And who could say no to such tasty dishes like “Coprinus Hamburg”

But hey, a chicken burger is a chicken burger and when you have been living on eggplant, noodles and rice for the last 4 days even the strangest fast food looks appealing.

So we chowed down with few complaints.

For the last 11 days or so you have no doubt seen on our Facebook status’s and also some of the previous posts that we have been doing a lot of uphill.

I have finally had a chance to sit down and take a look at the GPS data that I have been collecting and thought I’d share these to charts with you to give you some perspective of what we have encountered terrain wise

10 Day Elevation Chart

This graph shows our last 11 cycling days and the mountains we have gone up (and down) topping out at a whopping 2933 meters above sea level

This graph is the whole trip so far. As it shows we have literally down all the uphill in one big go. The first 20 or so biking days were nothing compared to what we have just encountered.

China Elevation Chart

Finally here is the GPS map of where we have cycled in the ShanXi and Gansu provinces.

Each flag represents the place that we stayed a night at. Alternatively the map can also be viewed using google maps here.

Bee trucks are one of my least favorite sights on the roads here in Gansu. I thought the itinerant bee farmers in Shanxi were bad enough, but at least they and their hives were stationary. The trucks are a mobile menace to navigation, leaving a steady stream of disorientated and disgruntled bees in their wake. While not a swarm, there are more than enough to cause us some trouble.

Each truck generally carries several dozen hives, uncovered and evidently unsealed. Bees get out. Bees get lost. And a homeless, soon-to-be-dead bee is an angry bee.

They fly right into our faces, bounce off helmets and goggles, and occasionally stick to clothes or bags lurking for later attack.

Jared, Katie, and I have all fallen victim to kamikaze stingers in the last two days: Jared on the nose and ear, Katie on the head, and me right on the throat. I hadn’t been stung by anything since I was about 6, and that may have been a wasp, so I spent a few seconds wondering whether it might have been prudent to pack an EpiPen in the first aid kit. My continued breathing, at least, answered the question of whether or not I’m allergic. Deadly or not, I still hate the little stripy buggers.

I’ll be the first to admit: riding the Dragon’s back hasn’t exactly been a cakewalk. I’m not sure what I expected, having signed up to cycle across a country notoriously recognized for its uncanny ability to baffle and befuddle even the most seasoned of travelers.

How could I expect anything less from a place that brings us the Three Gorges Dam and donkey-drawn carts, Mao and McDonald’s, Starbucks and squatters? Not to mention the glitter and gloss of an uptown mall, where giant posters of stylish models bedecked in the latest fashions throw sidelong smiles and come-hither stares towards streets dripping with shoddy street vendors, stray dogs, and more knockoffs and knickknacks than a caffeine-crazed package-tourist could possibly purchase in a lifetime.

At times, it seems entirely plausible that China offers more anachronistic adventures than the language has characters. And this, I’ve discovered, is what drives travelers to endure the constant bumps and bruises of culture-clashing through modern China. Like a splash of ice-cold water on the face, China is continually at the ready to enliven your senses with double take moments of harebrained hilarity and eye-brow raising ridiculousness.

And the key to surviving (and albeit, cynically, enjoying) the Great China Adventure, as I have been painfully slow to learn, is to stoically accept, and maybe in hindsight chuckle about over a cold beer with fellow survivors, those icy sneak attacks from China’s stockpile of the strange and unexpected.

I’m slowly warming up to the idea that ‘why’ is seldom a clarifying question in this place. I would like to blame my atrocious lack of finesse with the language, but I’m beginning to think that’s only half the story. Consider the following:

Having survived a day of cycling through all the dust and dirt China’s illustrious oil refineries had on tap, we found ourselves trudging up the stairs of a small-town, but curiously four star, hotel in desperate need of a hot shower. (Side-note: one of the plastic pentagrams on the reception wall hung slightly askew, perhaps a sign we should have taken less lightly).

Upon careful inspection (turning on the hot water tap) my roommate and I quickly realized that a hot shower was not, to our great chagrin, on the menu. Tails between our legs, we made the long trek two doors down to our other teammates, hoping to share our miserable story and take comfort in their similar sadness. We were more than a little bit miffed when we showed up and noticed steam wasn’t just coming from between our ears, it was billowing forth from beneath the bathroom door!

“Are you kidding me?!” I sob-screamed. “What’s up with that? You guys have hot water, and we don’t? [Insert four letter word] this is ridiculous, I’m going to talk to the manager!”

I’m not sure what I thought I would accomplish by ‘talking’ to the manager, but anger and utter exhaustion propelled me to believe I could scale the barrier of communication armed with little other than hand gestures and dirty looks. And if things got really bad, I could always muster up a few tears.

But, when I sauntered up to the desk of this three and a half star hotel, the manager, a rather young but remarkably dour looking creature, seemed unperturbed by the daggers I was throwing in her direction.

“Hot water mei you. Friends hot water. Okay?” she smiled excitedly, happy she’d resolved the situation so tactfully.

On principle, I decided to take a hard line with her. Of course it wasn’t okay. We were paying the same amount for each room. If we weren’t going to get hot water, then shouldn’t we pay less?

My feeble attempt to tell her what’s what quickly crumbled, rapidly descending into arm waving, more daggers, and eventually, sadly, silence. I gave up and stormed off to begrudgingly enjoy my cold shower.

I can’t say I was particularly delighted at dinner, when the inhabitants of the hot water room spent the better half of the meal extolling the life enhancing properties of hot water and soap. I was, however, ever so slightly amused when I awoke the next morning to a fully functional hot water shower. Apparently we did have hot water; it just happened to work at the convenience of penny-pinching proprietors rather than tight-fisted, but paying, travelers.

I was over the moon when I emerged from the steam and soap to find two slightly downtrodden blokes draped on the beds bemoaning the fact that their shower no longer offered the luxurious hot water they’d so enjoyed the night before. I guess what goes around comes around when you’re subject to the whims of Chinese customer service.

At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll say it again: Why is not a clarifying question in China.

If you don’t leave a bit more confused than when you arrived, then you haven’t tasted all the wildly different flavors of peculiarity this country has to offer. China is undeniably the Baskin Robins of cultural conundrums.

Little illustrates this observation better than the bewildering English translations that accompany many Chinese road signs. What’s the meaning of, “Refuse to forget fatigue driving,” or “Motor vehicles will be super strong”?

Perhaps, for anyone looking to maintain a shred of sanity in this land of perpetual perplexity, it’s best to just go with the flow. I haven’t even made it halfway across this country, but I’m quickly learning to acknowledge and adapt, to extend the parameters I’ve put around my understanding of ‘normal’. China is a beast that plays by its own rules. And, as one road sign so eloquently explains, we travelers should simply:

Follow these rules from time to time.

And maybe make up a few of our own along the way.

It’s been seven days now since we were sitting in the comforts of our Xi’an hostel (elevation 500 meters) surfing the net on our wireless computers trying to overcome the boredom of the 8 day visa delay and wanting nothing more than to ride.

That feeling has fast been replaced by the struggle to recall what happened over the past week, where I slept, what the weather was like, even what day it was. So I thought I’d do a quick review of the past week before I totallly forget.

We didn’t get on the road until well after 2pm from Xi’an due to David’s cracked rim (jokes welcome) but still managed to cover a decent distance. Having spent time studying terrain maps of the area we were heading toward meant that after this day the flat road would soon disappear – and that it did.

Our first day in the hills, while hard, was the most fun we had had all trip, especially when the adventurous side took over and we all hauled our bikes onto an unfinished expressway that (looking at the chinese map) would parellel the road we should have been on.

Cruising along now going through unfinished tunnels, around big holes in the road and past Chinese workers who would either stare or cheer and even passing through a checkpoint where the guard simply lifted the gate and let us on through – what could possibly go wrong?

Broken spoke anyone? Yep, David’s rear wheel that was respoked (very poorly) in Xi’an.

So Katie took a nap

This wouldn’t stop us enjoying our day. Not even rain was going to dampen our spirits. That was until the unfinished expressway took a turn in a direction that didn’t make much sense. Surely it was going to come back right?

Wrong! 20km of going uphill in the rain came to an abrupt end when Tom and I heard 2 dull thuds come from the unfinished tunnel at the top of the hill. They were still blasting the damn thing, so back we went slightly disheartened and cold to stay at nearest village back on the right road. (elevation 1200 meters)

Even though the last 20km ended up being fruitless we had still managed to avoid trucks and honking the whole day, so the day still went in the win column.

We were greeted the next day by a beautiful morning and stunning scenery and a full day of up up up. New record 1700 meters.

And again the next day – up, up, up. Would it ever end.

Pulling in to a small town after a long day of up (at 1900 meters now) and looking forward to the fact that we had been on the road 5 days and tomorrow would be a rest day we found ourselves being singled out again as the local police were called to the hotel and we were made to fill out registration forms – no biggie.

But wait. It’s 10:30 at night and now we look mexican. Break out the towns ministry of health and 2 masked nurses we must have the swine flu.

The advanced test of a thermometer under the armpit for 15 minutes soon proved that we were H1N1 free, even though we had been in China for 40 days now, long before the swine flu existed.

As you can guess a unanomous decision was made to get the hell out of dodge. Rest day would have to wait for another day of up up up through some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen and that says a lot coming from a Kiwi.

New elevation record of 2278 meters !!!!!!

As I sit here now smokey Wang Ba (internet cafe) of the small town of DingXi at an elevation of around 1800 meters I’ve had time to reflect on the past weeks riding and while it has been at times incredibly difficult it has definitely been the most rewarding part of the trip so far and I can’t wait to get on my bike and ride again tomorrow.

What will the next week bring? Stay tuned.

The sound of explosions has been a regular feature of our travels – hardly surprising, I suppose, in the country that invented gunpowder and fireworks. Barely a day goes by without the the machine-gun staccato of firecrackers, rockets and other pyrotechnics. Riding through some of the smaller cities was an experience akin to driving through Baghdad, though without the accompanying body count.

Unlike home, fireworks appear to be predominantly set off during the daytime, and therefore emphasize extreme volume and smoke over patterns and vivid colours you’d expect. There’s a lot of money to be spent and made in it. One morning in Henan province, we passed some brightly-hued jeeps towing what I can only describe as mortar tubes of a sort last seen on BBC reports from the middle east.

These guys in the above pic were professional pyrotechnicians on their way to some festivities in the next town. I couldn’t help but think they would likely be surrounded by soldiers and on their way to a 5-10 year stretch at Her Majesty’s pleasure had they driven through downtown Belfast.

Why so many whizz-bangs, you may ask? There are many reasons – celebration, good luck, warding off evil spirits. You name it: there’s an excuse for profligate use of gunpowder. Jared and I discussed this, prompting the following exchange:
“Ok, but every day? Exactly how many evil spirits are there?”
“1.4 billion people – that’s a whole lot of dead ancestors. You’ve got to assume some of them are pissed about something.”

We’ve been lucky enough to observe one of the good luck ceremonies up close, watching as a truck driver walked calmly around his lorry with a lit string of firecrackers, setting them off in a circle before leaving on a long journey. Wedding parties throwing firecrackers out car windows have also been a fairly common sight- though the carload of guests conducting a drive-by with roman candles would have been more comfortably appreciated from a greater distance than 3 metres.

I’m confident that we’ll encounter a fair bit more shock and awe before we leave China behind us. Time to invest in some earplugs, methinks.

Ok, confession time. I’ve got a serious coke habit. I thought I could handle it. It started off small; just a lunchtime hit to get me through the afternoon, but before I knew it, it was out of control. In the hot days before Xi’an, I was on 4 bottles a day. At 600ml a bottle, that’s a lot of cola.

The team, as a whole, have been knocking back a hefty volume of sweet, sugary goodness. I’d estimate an average of 2 or more bottles a day. Multiply that by the number of days for the trip, and you’d get quite a few bathtubs full of the black stuff. Anyone know the percentage of cycle tourists who become toothless diabetics in old age?

In entirely unrelated news, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my dentist mates for their years of unwavering, loyal friendship.