A day out! - 2012

Alright, I had heard from a friend that Binhai highway was a nice ride and it certainly turned out to be.

Binhai Highway starts just north of a little town called Jinzhou, which is about an hour ride from my apartment in Zhongshan and about half of which smelled awful as I went through.

I didn't try to take the G11 expressway because it's a toll road and I figured I would just get stopped at the gate. Later I'll check it out and let y'all know how it goes. I just took Dongbei road north from Zhongshan and got on the 202 from there, it basically turns directly into Binhai highway once is crosses west of G11 further north.

The highlight of the trip was finding a really nice little beach. The beach is littered but otherwise the nicest beach I've seen in Dalian and apparently open for camping because I saw that someone had a tent there, with some other evidence of campfires.

It's a nice ride, but it's a scenic highway, not the small twisties I'm realing looking for. It's also pretty out of the way. Still, I'll go back again, and I'm also thinking of getting myself a tent on Taobao.
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Just some more pictures.

G'Day,

Moganshan weekend (4-6 May) and great biking around Moganshan, Huzhou, Anji (Moso Bamboo Park) with brilliant twisties and awesome new roads (800k's total during the weekend).

11/05 Friday afternoon at the Tianma Track, mini bikes getting prepared for the weekends races......

Visited a mate at the "China International Exhibition On Police Equipment (6th.Event)" in Beijing yesterday and some interesting exhibits incl. some police motorcycles.
No Jialing or Chang-Jiang.........

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Had a nice weekend trip with the wife two weeks ago around YiXing. The fastest color blue JH600 only had the obligatory kick stand safety switch cock up. (As a time saver to others, If anyone has this failure, cut the wire and simply tie the green and the black wire together. Just cut the white wire short. Final picture is the cave you have to see to cool down. YiXing is only about an hour and half from Nanjing on the South West side of Lake Taihu. Only a couple hours from Shanghai. Once you get out of the traffic nice twisties in the mountains and the forests of bamboo are pretty cool.

Drinking & Riding

Have over 1,300km on the new Continental Escapes but haven't had the chance to test them off-road until today.
Went out riding past Songjiang (Shanghai Suburbs) where I was able to find some farm country: Dirt roads, grassland trails, and mud.

Tarmac: Took a bit of time for me to get used to the Escapes on the road (JH600 comes with the stock Chengsins). Biggest difference with the Escapes is the transition from Center to Shoulder. The Center is designed to be wear-resistant, while the Shoulder is more flexible. And the profile of the Escapes is very different than that of the Chengshins (compare here). When you start to lean for your corner, the Escape pulls you thru in a way where your input is simply different compared to the Chengshins. But once you start to feel the Escape's Shoulder action, you can begin to nicely carve in ways that outperform the Chengshins.

Off-Road: Most of thes roads/trails in the Shanghai suburbs are simply short runs which are adjacent to or cut thru fields. But they did serve the purpose of trying the Escapes on some off-road surfaces. Needless to say they grip much better than the Chengshins. It was most notable on hard-dirt with the front tire more aggressively grabbing the terrain in front of you. As you are moving thru 2-track roads. The Escapes easily move from the right track over the hump and settle into the left track without issue. Biggest differences are: 1. Extra knob 2. Better suited profile of the tire which more aggressively reaches for the dirt/gravel.

Thru mud you simply get less slide (unless)....and this brings me back to the title of this post: Drinking & Riding.

After tooling thru some grass tracks and dirt tracks with a bit of dry mud, I saw a dirt/gravel road extend thru a field that had extensive wet mud. It was a straight path (approx. mianbaoche-wide) with a small irrigation ditch running along the left side. After riding thru the first stretch of wet mud I moved from the right track over to the left track without any hesitation from bike or tires. Speed was low to moderate. But then, when entering thru the section of deeper mud the front tire started to slide on what was a hidden steep incline rising up towards the hump. I tried to adjust for this sudden slip, but the front tire kicked out to the left too quickly and I couldn't find the traction to keep my straight-line.

As I was adjusting imput and tying to correct, the load was also moving forward as I was trying to slow the speed down - but it was all too late and down she went (on the left side). I did a quick let-go and since my forward motion was now moving left as well, into the drink I went!

The JH600 was sitting pretty (high and dry) but since I slid into the ditch on my ass I was now fully soaked. I climbed out of the irrigation ditch stinking like stagnant muddy water. After hitting the kill switch I took a quick survey of the event: Only issue was broken plastic around the left turn signal, but the signal itself was fine. I then focused on the wet HTC in my pocket. Powered it down and took the battery out to let it dry (so sorry no pics).

Afterthoughts:
- I'm damn lucky I didn't go into the drink with the bike (the ditch had about 2 feet of water, with a muddy bottom).
- Love the Escapes, but when riding a somewhat heavy dual-sport bike (no matter what the tire), you have to respect wet mud.*
- Need to take extra precaution when riding solo off-road. Like I said, it's a good thing the JH600 didn't join me for the swim.

* Better description of the JH600 off-road is clumsy.
If there were more and better off-road tracks around Shanghai I'd join the cool kids and get an X2X. But there aren't, so I'm just plain happy with my JH600.

Oh the stagnant waters of china
just the worst place to land
Bad luck motokai

10th.June = 250k's = Shanghai - Kunshan (Yancheng Lake / Lunch) - Suzhou Industrial Park - Dianshan Lake - Canal Road (HuQiPing Highway parallel road) - Shanghai to test a Schuberth C3 helmet with SRC-Bluetooth System.....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TB-Racing

... to test a Schuberth C3 helmet with SRC-Bluetooth System.....

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I have the same helmet, also with the SRC ... even the same hi-viz color. Love it, although I have mixed feelings about the SRC (great sound, nice auto-volume, good mic ... but not quite as easy to use as other BT systems I've used). Schuberth C3s are outstanding helmets if your noggin' fits ... if it doesn't fit, they are misery.

Nice bike!