The rewarding us with punishment tour

**ChinaV** · 06-07-2010, 12:50 PM

If I don't start, I'll never finish. Here goes.... this is our "rewards and punishment tour of China 2010". I've told many a fellow rider that China offers some of the finest motorcycling on the planet. However, she will make you pay for those kilometers of sweetness with an equal amount of hardship. This 15 day tour lived up to that expectation in every sense. Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed each minute, and I'm sure everyone agrees, even the worst day on a bike is still better than any day at the office.

So, here are the players, from left to right.

Me / Lorne (aka ChinaV / Mr. Black), Felix (aka Felix / Mr. Yellow) and Daniel (aka twowheelsRTW / Mr. Blue).

Sometime during Chinese New Year, Felix and I came up with the bright idea of making a tour up the Nujiang river into Tibet. We quickly realized this was a pipe dream and would never happen. We weren't born into the clan of the Han, and those areas are off limits to us round-eyes. So we pondered other routes that would still allow us the opportunity of burning petrol and consuming piss warm beer. The main goal being, at some point we wanted to gaze at the snowcapped mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. I suggested a route through Yunnan and Sichuan, and thus a plan was born.

Here is the original idea for our Dongguan to Chengdu route. Things never go as planned.

In the meantime, Daniel, a veteran round the world motorcyclist, was making his plans for discovering China. I suggested tagging along with us, as it would be a good eye opener for riding here without the stress of navigation and dealing with all things China. Daniel accepted and headed for Dongguan from his home in Puerto Rico.

I won't bore you with the preliminary details, you can read about the bike prep in my Galaxy thread here. I will put out a quick thanks to the people at Galaxy (Tiger, John, and Lydia) for letting me into the factory to gather parts. I also want to thank Pfaelzer for giving me the motivation to think outside the box and create my own stuff. When I grow up, I want to be like Pfaelzer

Oh, one last thing... this story starts off really slow, the first section is rather boring, but once I crash, and the bike slides off a small bridge, it really does get rather good.

Day 1

Felix and Daniel have arrived, and bike preparation is in full swing. Everyone is busy trying to figure out how they're going to strap so much crap on to such little motorcycles. We plan on doing some camping, so tents, sleeping bags etc. are piled up on our 223cc wonderbikes. We're all riding the same model motorcycle, thus we split up the spare parts and manage to a carry a fair amount of extras "just in case".

Prep time.

Felix, ready for action.

Heading across the pearl river poo poo pit on the ferry from Humen. We're anxious to get the cities behind us, but there's much diesel to be inhaled before we will finally break free of the factories. A couple onlookers comment on the bikes and are surprised to learn they are made right here in Guangdong.

It's a rather unenventful day as we had a very late start so we only covered 200 kilometers. A nice gentle ride to get us familiar with the bikes and carrying all the gear. We reached the town of Zhaoqing, checked into the Hai Tao hotel and headed out to find some cold beers and food. Luck was with and we managed to find both and then called it an early evening. We wanted to cover serious ground the following day and planned on an early start.

Distance 203 Kilometers - Time 5:00 Hours - Average Moving Speed 54 kph

Cheers!
ChinaV

**ZMC888** · 06-07-2010, 01:21 PM

Waiting for the whole story..............subscribed!

**moilami** · 06-07-2010, 09:56 PM

Finally some road report, thank you very much! Please keep up the excellent photography and story telling

**chinabiker** · 06-08-2010, 12:29 AM

Sounds like something great is coming up

**SabineHartmann** · 06-08-2010, 12:48 AM

please go on !! I am waiting for more !!

**ChinaV** · 06-08-2010, 03:23 AM

Day 2

Before I move on, I just want to mention that we put all of our photos and videos together at the end of the trip. So everybody gets credit for having some great shots. Being that I almost always travel alone, it was nice having the other guys capture moments that I missed or pics of each other riding by.

Off to an early start and I'm hot in pursuit of a Kingway beer truck.

The morning passes quickly as we make our way to the west side of Guangdong and we finally pass the border with Guanxi around noon. Felix and Daniel crossing the border.

Having worked up a bit of an appetite, we stop for lunch and are a bit surprised at what's being offered. Deciding to pass on fido as the main dish, we manage to get some tofu, veggies and rice.

Outside the restaurant, some locals are doing a brisk business in selling and transporting pigs. I thought my panniers were rather cool, but they have nothing on these guys packing pigs. Think of how much weight they're throwing on those little bikes and how much fun it must be when they move around.

The eastern section of Guanxi is rather flat and boring and we cover ground zipping along G324. Our plan is to spend as much time as possible in Yunnan and Sichuan, so we rarely stop for anything other than food or fuel. I'm not a big fan of the "G" roads, but G324 is in fairly good shape and it's the fastest way for a motorcycle to get across Guangdong and Guanxi. The bikes roll along comfortably between 90-100 kph, I'm pretty relaxed on one of the many long straight sections.

We start rolling through some of the karst mountains and the road gets a bit more interesting. We also get hit with our first rain showers of the trip and dodge between pockets of dry and wet.

A gentle reminder from the local traffic police to pay attention. Felix and Daniel both missed seeing the wreck as they were paying attention to me taking their picture.

Getting tied up in some heavy rain and a really bad traffic jam, Felix and I go motocrossing around the pack and stop to wait for Daniel who is slowly getting the hang of the "anything goes" road rules in China. It's getting a bit late, and I check the GPS for major towns ahead. It looks like we have about 50 kilometers to cover before the next place with a hotel and Felix's bike is acting a bit strange. Hoping that it's just a bit of water in the carb, we drain the bowl and it seems like we're good to go again.

I make it to the small town of Litang and decide this will be a good spot to end the day. After a long wait, I realize something must be wrong, as the boys should be right behind me. I backtrack about a kilometer from town and see Felix messing with his bike which won't start. We try draining the float bowl again and the bike almost wants to go, but just won't catch. I'm thinking it would be strange to have a fuel problem as we all get gas from the same pump each time. I tell Felix it's about 1 kilometer to the hotel and we should tow the bike there so we can get settled and work on it in better conditions. It's starting to get dark and the side of the road during a rain shower is not a great place to work on a bike. A local guy sees us and comes over to help, first he rips off the spark plug cap and exclaims that the problem is spark. I sort of agree, but the bike does seem to have some intermittent spark, so I rule out anything major and assume it's probably a chaffed wire. He's already decided that it's the kill switch and starts ripping into it. I'm loosing my shit because I've seen these well intentioned "mechanics" before, and quite often they do more harm than good. Again, I'm also thinking that it would be nice to be in a well lit area that doesn't have container trucks zipping by every two minutes. After destroying the kill switch, the guy realizes that it might be something else and recommends taking the bike into town and waiting for the motorcycle shop to open the next day. We thank him for his "help" and manage to tow the bike to the hotel. First we fill up on food and beer and then prepare to tear into the bike. As soon as the gas tank is off I immediately see the problem, the connector wire that should be on the front of the coil is hanging. Tighten the crimp, attach, and presto, bike is fixed. What looked to be a long night of electrical diagnostics turns out being a ten minute job. We're happy and decide to drink more beer in celebration.

Distance 462 Kilometers - Time 12:00 Hours - Average Moving Speed 67 kph

Cheers!
ChinaV