First Spring ride - Southern Zhongshan, Dalian

I had an errand this morning which took me to Olympic park in Zhongshan district, in Dalian. After I was finished I went to the Walmart to look around for a decent hat. While I was there I spotted a decent pair of gloves (the ones I already had were styled like winter gloves but had poor insulation) for 15 kuai which I grabbed and once again I left Wally world with something other than what I went for. I was happy to have some decent gloves and it was only about 11:00 so I figured I would make today the day I finally checked out Binhai road. Binhai is a coastal road and goes between a few more developed areas. Binhai has a few scenic overlooks which are really nice, and would be quite beautiful with clearer weather on a spring day (soon?) and I stopped to shoot some bike porn. There are some nice little curves and the roads are pretty well maintained but the fun parts are really quite short. The occasional car poking along wasn't too bad. I finished up with the middle section of the road and headed toward Xinghai square. On the way I stopped and checked out a road to the "Dalian Forest Zoo" and was a little disappointed to see that it was closed less than halfway to the end. Today I skipped the eastern end of Binhai because I didn't want to go through the traffic to get to the other side, and also it leaves me something to do later.

The only event of the day was when I saw some traffic police grouped up on the other side of a large intersection and decided to take a right instead of heading straight forward, past them. I waited a minute or so and turned around. Going back past them I saw they had pulled over about 4 cars seemingly just to check paperwork.

I'm also planing a trip around the mountains to the west of Zhongshan.

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Alright, I took another ride yesterday and rode around the east side of Binhai Rd. and also Linhai Rd. I had been eyeing these roads since I first checked Zhongshan on a map. They look like great roads to ride on and as is turns out they are. The weather is still pretty chilly here but I left around 1:30 and got back around 4:30 so it wasn't too cold. I first got down to the entrance to Linhai Rd. and found it blocked by metal posts and full of senior folks out for a stroll. I figured it couldn't hurt to head down a little further and found what is marked as "Haizhiyun Park East gate" on google maps, but I believe is also the south eastern side of Linhai Rd. I came to an intersection and spotted some guards chatting in the parking lot. Once I said "hi" they asked me about the bike (I didn't understand most of it, except "how much did it cost?") and the guard started saying and motioning that I could ride past the posts here and on to Linhair Rd. I double checked that he was OK with it and I happily rode on through! Binhai and Linhai are both designed as scenic roads and have lots of overlooks and long nicely built walkways down into the areas where you can get right up close to the beautiful but very rocky shore. I didn't explore a tenth of these but it's a great excuse to go back. My route, sorry about the map, I cant seem to connect properly in google maps.
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Attachment 6231 I'll admit the compass has a dork/boyscout factor but I've already found it to be very useful. Often I know where I am, just not exactly which way I'm going, at a crazy 9 way roundabout intersection for example. Also the compass on my Samsung GIIS reliably points in almost exactly the wrong direction ;\ At first I had the compass mounted on the tank, but it was a little too low to look at, and also I noticed it was always pointing the same way. I'm not sure what was always causing this, I'm guessing there is a permanent magnet it my gas cap area because it sticks whether the bike is running or not. Is a magnetic filter in the gas cap area common? There certainly is not one on my BMW.
The rest are just some pictures.
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Great report!

I used to visit DaLian for business,of course no motor with me,I like that city,especially the sea food.Last time,my colleague took me to a small dumplings restaurant which is famous,lots of customers who drive BMW\BENZ luxury cars,but I forgot the name.

Cheers.

Thanks Lion, I'm not a big fan of seafood but what I've had here is very good.

I also wanted to mention my limited impression the EN150J. The bike is still very new, not even having had it's first oil change yet, which is about due. I've been very happy with the riding posture and position of everything. The shifter is a heal and toe and needed to be adjusted up just a little because I guess my ankle is just not very flexible and I've mostly been shifting up with the heal. I also found the shifter linkage was not even hand tight when I first looked at it! Otherwise all the levers and switches are in a very position, no real surprise there. The breaks seem just a little spongy, I'd like to get some more break fluid and bleed the breaks to see if there might be a little air in the system. I would like to get the rear break peddle adjusted because it's a little high for my liking. The bike shifts great and I've been really happy with having a gear indicator on my instruments, again, maybe I'm a little easy to impress. I have found that shifting gears is smoother if I pay attention to preloading the shifter just a little before clutching. If I'm careful about it I can shift from first to second and third without the usual "clunk" I would get if I simply hit the shifter with the clutch in already.
After taking it around a few roads I can say I'm happy with the EFIs performance but I'm not sure what to compare it to. It responds to throttle just fine and doesn't have any problem keeping consistent power. Of course it's happier above 4k but between 4 and 6k I haven't noticed that there is any lull or spike in the motors response, again on a new bike this shouldn't be any surprise. As far as power goes I think one up touring on this bike would be no problem for me.
One thing I've noticed is that there is some kind of rattle while accelerating and I *think* it's under the gas tank, so I've been thinking of pulling it off and just poking around to see if something is lose or if there might be a missing mount or bumper or something. This would be a REALLY simple process on an R/65 which would involve disconnecting the hose, raising the seat, and literally just pulling the tank off but there seems to be a few bolts to remove and when I was looking at the bung area I didn't see any way to turn the gas off, so that gave me pause. If I know everything is tight and safe I don't mind the rattle, I didn't really notice it until I recorded some of my riding and the camera picked it up much better.
I'm happy with the bags and it's nice to be able to run up to Walmart or Metro and not have to worry much about what I'm buying or having to take a backpack. One concern I have is that the saddle bags top seems to just flop open at 180* and even though I haven't had any issue with it, it doesn't look good for the hinges. I was thinking of how I could get a cable attached someplace to limit the range it has and prevent damage to the hinge. The quality of the saddlebag plastic also doesn't seem to be high quality but that's a little subjective. I'd like to see how they hold up with "a hefty load on a bumpy road" which always sorts out questions like that.
The rest of a usual report, reliability and durability are yet to be seen. The impression I have is that it's generally a quality bike and if someone wanted a bike in this cc range it would certainly be worth 11k to 12k kuai, though I was assured that 13k to 14k was a more usual price and I would consider getting something else if I were going to spend 14k kuai, with an EFI bike I'm happy to have the Suzuki name on it and so far it's worked great.
I've just filled up the tank (not quite to the brim, though the fuel gauge registers it as full) and I'll let you know what I'm getting by the liter around town.