With thanks to MyChinaMoto's community...

Hi All,

Szu-ting and I were on here initially seeking assistance in travel preparations for a ride across China. We have used this amazing resource and three of the most helpful and experienced riders, Carl, Lorne and Colin have been assisting us through many steps. Just wanted to give an update that we were very lucky to have received sponsorship from Galaxy who will loan us bikes and parts if needed, for our south to north journey (thanks to Lorne on this one). You can take a peek at our journey on this site...where we recognize mychinamoto.com on our 'Friends' page: www.2wheelwriters.com
Szu-ting is the programmer and placed the site's banner on there and some words from the both of us.

Apologies that we haven't been on the forum lately - it has been outrageously busy between our day jobs (which we have more than one of!), building the website, preparing our trip and trying to get real-time in even with friends and family. We plan to contribute some trip reports and feedback when we start rolling and thereafter and would love to hear your feedback!

Thanks for the inspiration and the endless information. We hope to meet you somewhere along the road - would be pretty cool. :) And now I'm going to do the typical modern networking, shameful-plug thing and invite you all to "Like" our page if you would like to show your support in what we're doing: http://www.facebook.com/2wheelwriters

Glad to hear from you again, congrats on going ahead with the plan! This MCM is a nice little community indeed so it's cool that both of you, as i and so many others, have found help and maybe even friends here. Best of luck on your adventures, we'll be following closely!

Love your logo by the way, really pretty.

http://2wheelwriters.com/wp-content/...ages/logo5.png

Welcome MZD, and good luck with your trip! It is wonderful seeing more & more female riders joining in with this recreation!

This website is chocked full of valuable info, resources and knowledgeable people re riding in China. I wished I had found it earlier, rather than stumbling around in the dark for so long. I'm indebted to the folks who've helped me over and over.

A few observations, which are not meant to be critical, just cautionary ...

1) Most of the members of MCM are inside China and therefore cannot access Facebook (it is blocked inside China). Please keep that in mind if you plan on sharing updates during your voyage. Please post pics, videos, ride reports here;
2) It is poor etiquette in a forum to say "hey look, I am doing this cool ride, but if you want to see it, you have to go visit my self-promotion website". People don't like that in a free forum. In fact, people get quite turned off by it; and,
3) In China, you can plan too much, forcing yourself into oblivion - flexibility is the key, in terms of time, direction, roads, food, repairs, etc. Simply saying "we're heading West, hopefully getting to X" will generally work best.

OK, enough cautionary preaching. If you're still in Hong Kong, search out the MCM member Franki (he lives in Hong Kong, and has a lovely teenaged daughter who is following her father's biking steps). Like CC, ChinaV, Felix, Euphonius, AW, Bigdano, Chinabiker, and countless others, he's a great resource for romping around China - and he knows the Galaxy XTR quite well. And if you find him, tell him we miss him.

Cheers
Richard

Thank you Felix......I actually posted your review on Galaxy's bike (crediting you, of course) in my latest blog. It was very detailed...although it was on the '08 model.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lao Jia Hou

Welcome MZD, and good luck with your trip! It is wonderful seeing more & more female riders joining in with this recreation!

This website is chocked full of valuable info, resources and knowledgeable people re riding in China. I wished I had found it earlier, rather than stumbling around in the dark for so long. I'm indebted to the folks who've helped me over and over.

A few observations, which are not meant to be critical, just cautionary ...

1) Most of the members of MCM are inside China and therefore cannot access Facebook (it is blocked inside China). Please keep that in mind if you plan on sharing updates during your voyage. Please post pics, videos, ride reports here;
2) It is poor etiquette in a forum to say "hey look, I am doing this cool ride, but if you want to see it, you have to go visit my self-promotion website". People don't like that in a free forum. In fact, people get quite turned off by it; and,
3) In China, you can plan too much, forcing yourself into oblivion - flexibility is the key, in terms of time, direction, roads, food, repairs, etc. Simply saying "we're heading West, hopefully getting to X" will generally work best.

OK, enough cautionary preaching. If you're still in Hong Kong, search out the MCM member Franki (he lives in Hong Kong, and has a lovely teenaged daughter who is following her father's biking steps). Like CC, ChinaV, Felix, Euphonius, AW, Bigdano, Chinabiker, and countless others, he's a great resource for romping around China - and he knows the Galaxy XTR quite well. And if you find him, tell him we miss him.

Cheers
Richard

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Richard, yes, you are correct - I should have been more conscious of most of the users here not being able to access facebook. Pardon for that mistake there!

As I had stated toward the end of my post, our site may seem to be "shameless promotion", however, it will be available to share information which is one of our goals - whether on riding in China or in documenting the lifestyles/photos/experiences with ethnic minorities we come across...or simply the dynamic and relationship of rider to rider. Everyone can have their own perspective of what it means for us to share our website. I also mentioned that we will be posting some of our experiences on this site to share and get feedback. But if someone is interested....especially a young girl who wants to learn more from other women, then they also have the option to seek us out directly on the website.

And yes, our plans are generally flexible. That's been my whole life pretty much. I almost never plan....to a fault at times but my partner is better at it than I, which is very complementary.

Szu-ting and I have been talking to Franki now for a few weeks - he's a really wonderful man. We hope to meet him in HK. Thanks to Lorne for sharing that contact....

Thanks for your words and safe riding!

Christine

To Richard,

Right on! Franki is the man. I can't describe how grateful I am to get to know him. He knows so much and he is so willing to help. I'm glad that I'll have a chance to meet him in person in HK. When I see him, I'll tell him that you said hi.

We'll definitely share our trips here and we will also share our trips reports in two major Chinese motorcycle forums as well. A good thing to have a website is that we can share our stories with our friends and family who will not be here and consolidate both Chinese and English reports at one place. It's also easier to share photos as well. :)

Yes in China being flexible is the key! that's why I always think cell phone is my best friend in China. Everyone has it and everybody uses it! My philosophy is to plan for the worst and hope for the best!