China is no longer the mystery it once was when it comes to getting around. There are plenty of decent maps and online mapping services today that provide good coverage of most of the available roads. Sure, it's a bit tough with all the new construction, but overall, it's quite easy to get around compared to five years ago.

There's a part of me that enjoys the discovery of "parts unknown", but there's also a part of me that has limited time and resources when it comes to travel, and would like to make the most of my time on the road. Tackling 65 kilometers of dusty construction might make for an entertaining adventure story, but it does take its toll on both rider and equipment. This is part of my "rewards and punishment" theory, that China punishes you with 1 kilometer of hell for every 10 kilometers of heaven.

During my recent 20,000 kilometer journey across America, I never experienced more than a few kilometers of bad roads. Not because America doesn't have bad roads, it's just that America has a brutally efficient information network with real time data on almost every kilometer of pavement. I used a piece of software called Microsoft Streets and Trips that was able to check my daily route, telling me exactly where construction would be and how to avoid it. My Garmin GPS would contact an online service before plotting any route and automatically avoid traffic jams and congestion.

Being that China hasn't even figured out how to program stop lights to keep traffic moving, I'm not holding my breath that this information network is coming here anytime soon. Yes, I know that MAP ABC shows traffic congestion in the big cities, but it's useless information if your GPS system isn't connected to it and automatically routes you around it. So there's not a lot we can do about bad traffic, but there may be a little we can do about bad routes.

While I was crossing the USA, I discovered a couple websites that really helped with my daily route plan.

www.sundaymorningrides.com and www.motorcycleroads.us

There are others available, but if you check those two out you will get the idea. Basically, people are building a giant map of the USA featuring great motorcycle roads. They use a simple, color coded, classification system like "scenic", "twisty", "sweepers", or "unpaved". You zoom in on an area of the country, choose a route, and with a couple clicks you can download it in various GPS formats. I discovered some fantastics roads that made our trip far more rewarding, and thought maybe we could work on something similar for China at MyChinaMoto.

I'm not sure about how much coding went into these sights or if there is some kind of existing software package that could be purchased to add this feature to this site. I do know that CrazyCarl already has enough on his plate to deal with, so I'm just putting this out there as an idea. I think it would be great if people would start sharing the route data from their journeys and helping each other avoid the crap while discovering the beauty.

Thoughts?

Cheers!
ChinaV