Second best couldn't be better

[Serpentza]

Best thing to do is open a flickr account, pretty easy to do upload and then copy and paste the bbcode from there, that's what I do for my ride reports

[slabo]

use [IMG] around the links ending with .jpg..

[ IMG]http://i.imgur.com/KHiqF.jpg[/IMG] >> full size

[ IMG]http://i.imgur.com/KHiqFs.jpg[/IMG]>> thumbnail size, notice the extra 's'

[euphonius]

Slabo,

Something ain't working with those tutorial links!

Say, aren't you supposed to be blasting toward Beijing right now?

cheers!

[slabo]

Slabo,

Something ain't working with those tutorial links!

Say, aren't you supposed to be blasting toward Beijing right now?

cheers!

brr,, im on the way, refueling the rider in Dali now.. I should be in Lijiang tonight.

[euphonius]

Shit, dude! That's awesome!!! If possible, please leave us a little trail of popcorn or breadcrumbs every day so we know you've not gone off some precipice! A picture or two now and again would be sweet too.

Considering that this voyage ultimately will end not in Beijing but in Beirut, I'd love to know how you are appointed on the Shineray, what you are carrying and, given your past experiences, how you are keeping stuff from disappearing en route!

Wishing you a memorable and safe ride, Naim!

cheers!

[corporal_clegg]

Day 2: Anji To Lin'an (almost)

We arose early(er) to a beautiful day. Our plan was to make 200 km a day minimum at a leisurely pace so we set off soon after on the 201. Before long we were itching to get off road again and did so at the first opportunity. Baited by bamboo trails we made for the mountain from a few different angles but to no avail. The bamboo trails, tempting as they were were all dead ends. There were some thin trails up through the woods but they were made for someone of more grit than myself (or bamboo harvesters). Buttreflies began arriving one by one like in the Birds. Although I didn't see the end of the movie I remembered poor Dan and we beat a hasty retreat.

Back on the guodao, perpindicularly, for two seconds and we were off again in search of trails without much luck. We stopped at a shop to find some mosquito repellant and asked the locals where the nice riding might be found to which the reply was an offer of a guided tour. I don't know his name but I'll call him Mr. Zhu because somehow the conversation always returned to bamboo. Mr. Zhu took us on a nice (small) road up the mountain where we chilled out for a while and I thought him how to say hairy molly. He told me all about the bamboo, which types we better in which seasons and what for and where the best spots on the mountain were, price per jin and so on. I have to say I couldn't really follow what he was saying, nevertheless we were invited us to his house for lunch. Here he plied us with alchohol, it started raining and he beseeched us to have a nap at his house and sleep off the drink. It was 12 already and I think he was more in need of the nap than we were so we set off during a break in the rain.

After some time (checking for more trails along the way) I had the feeling that this road could not be the fabled Anji twisties as it had gone a little too long and was way too straight. We turned back towards Anji and back into the rain. Passed an overturned truck which we're pretty sure wasn't there when we came out and went to a petrol station to check their maps which were impossible to make out. About 45 minutes later we were back on the road (same original direction + useless maps, still raining) and just figured we'd get to LinAn and figure it out from there. 207 off the 201 and then some country roads and we found ourselves in GaoHong a very nice little village outside LinAn and decided to call it home. My co-pilot was experiencing some technical difficulties so I left her in the hotel and set off to make my bones in the twisties.

I didn't go far into them when, following the usual pattern I struck off to the side and was rewarded by a very steep twistie route up into a village in the mountains. In the first (main) stage of the village it was dinner time and everyone was outside and very surprised to see this all black astronaut roll through. Further up I stopped to give some guy a lift up to what he reckoned was the top (the second stage) then found a trail which took me almost to the very tippie top. By then it was almost dark so I went back, going down was more fun than going up (but not as much fun as the next few days were going to be) and all in all I wasn't very impressed by what I saw of the twisties. The view was great but the corners were a bit too tight so I couldn't go as fast as I would've liked, I assume they get better deeper in.




Was quite sad to watch this duck struggle to escape, he was just part of the dinner shopping we saw when we went for breakfast.


One of the bamboo trail dead ends from the morning


Me giving it a go


"The Birds"


Mr. Zhu, The Zhu Machine and the QQ Enterprise


Some pics of that area



The dragonflies out there are mad. All different colours, blue, green, yellow. We had enough of them after the next day.


Dinner with the Zhu's


Mr. Zhu's dog was good for a laugh


We were pretty desperate to find some trails but most of the time there was nothing. This one was ensuite


This is the end of another one


And just over that mound...

.. a stream. I figured I could jump across but if I failed we'd never get the bike back out so we moved on.



He seemed alright...


Anji...












You can see the trail I followed to the tippie top there on the opposite side. The views were amazing. My camera doesn't really do it justice






The end of the road

[euphonius]

......My co-pilot was experiencing some technical difficulties so I left her in the hotel and set off to make my bones in the twisties.
...

This is one of the most memorable lines I've ever read in a ride report.

The QQ Enterprise looks extremely well suited to those gravel roads and trails. I love those bamboo forests and look forward to getting out there again soon. Your report inspires me to do so soon!

Edit: Also, it's nice to see that imgur.com is working well for hosting your pix. I'm not sure if it's my computer and (smallish laptop) screen, or your choice of image size, but some of the pictures you've posted are so big they don't fit the standard MCM screen so I have to scroll back and forth, and up and down, which lessens their impact. On my host, Smugmug, I can choose various sizes when linking a picture into MCM, and I typically choose something less than the full megilla, usually "medium". Does Imgur allow you to downsize a bit for a better fit?

thanks!

[corporal_clegg]

To Huangshan (almost again)

We had a slight run in with the police the night before on our way back from getting (a firkin amazing) massaje in Lin’An. The called us over but we just powered on through. You can imagine my nerves when we awoke the next morning to find a squad car pulled up outside out hotel with the driver looking unhappily at my bike. I tried to play it cool and rolled my bike out and set her warming up. The officer in question did the nothing out of the ordinary for a Chinese police (ie. He did nothing) and we were on the road again.
We had been dicking around a lot so today we swore we’d make it to Huangshan or die. Already we had to make modifications our trip to accommodate our voyages of (in)discovery and didn’t want to make too many more. Our side-bags (200rmb on taobao) unfortunately had had enough. One had been snug against the exhaust pipe and melted through (edit: burning holes in Ms. Cleggs pants in the process). Stopped in Lin’An and Macguyvered the bag using a hard wooden clipboard cut into shape with a 5mao saw blade to keep it off the pipe.

To get to Huangshan from Lin’an you could take the expressway all the way. You might save a whole day but then you’d miss all the fun. The s102/304 presents lovely, long smoothly curving roads, you rarely had to slow down at all except for the odd sleepy village, it was the best riding so far. On Monday afternoon traffic was light and the weather as wonderful as the road. Then all of a sudden something changed. There was a sign for a tunnel, followed by no tunnel and crappy roads through the mountains. We thought we may have taken a wrong turn but it was still nice so we didn’t even care.

On one of our off route forays we drove through a timewarp. Found an old village built around the top of a mountain. It was absolutely amazing. Felt like we were walking through an issue of national geographic. The people weren’t friendly or unfriendly. The watched us, we watched them. We needed water, the shop only had warm beer which we accepted. We snapped us some pictures and drove back down.

By the time we got to SheXian it was dark and we had planned to finally make use of our tent even though it was a warm night. Pitched it in a school playing field and chatted to the principal and security guards who duly arrived to find out what these crazy white people were doing camping on their land. Was no problem in the end. When they left we had a few beers and hit the hay. And sweated, and sweated in our tent for about 15mins then packed the whole thing back up and found a hotel.
The hotel had a garage for the bike and airco (of course) and they even brought us a quarter of a huge watermelon and we quickly forgot about or camping experience and let us speak no more of it. They next day we would be going to some lake hidden in the mountains and I would pretty pathetically drop the bike a few times.

First a few pics of the road













I really like the curvey affect you get with panaoramas of roads


Ms. Clegg having a lie down


Me happy after my five meter excursion off road. Moving on these rocks is a real pain. Especially turning


View from a bridge


And on the otherside some naked children. I saw a woman peeing behind facing the road. I got a full frontal, it was a first for me. Liza saw a naked guy too rinsing himself under a bridge too, no pics tho. Sorry guys.


Liza with a bridge


Check out the awesome mountain in the back, looks like Mt. Doom. We stopped to take that pic then noticed the little road on the left which took us all the way up the mountain into the village. You never know what you're going to find up these little roads. More often than not it's nothing but sometimes....


This was on the way up to the village. It felt ike Elysium, I don't think it could possibly have come out as well on camera




The village:














Mt Doom again from higher up


This girl just stood and stared at us, particularly Liza, just like this for almost the whole time we were there, between half an hour and an hour.


Bed time

[corporal_clegg]

Next day we planned a little trip up to what appeared to be a lake surrounded by mountains and that's exactly what we did. Also begun to realise what a pain in the ass it is to make a ride report. Big respect to pat (and others) who posted pictures almost everyday and wrote. I have never been much of a picture taker or blog writer and it was beginning to grate, like having to do homework. We were also a bit tired (we're pretty green remember) so we went to chill out by the lake for a while. Took a wrong turn onto this road which was class, its marked D on the map, if you're in the area it's worth doing the same. It was Kind of hard to turn back, eventually we did tho, refuelled (bellies and tanks) and rode up into the mountains. The ride up wasn't great, too many villages and people milling about and the road was small and too shrubbery-yiy so you only caught glimpses of the views.

Before we got properly on the road I low-sideded (dropped might be more accurate, low-sided sounds better) from a standing start because of some little piece of bamboo I didn't see. Luckily my passenger was not on the bike and she had a good laugh at my expense. We found a bit of a lake/river thing below some villages built into the side of the mountain and went for a swim (after being assured by the locals that there were no monsters in there). We got a ride to the otherside too which was cool. After swimming we went back the way we came. Much more fun, more speed as we rushed back before sundown, tailight came off again after takin some minor air and I dropped the bike again trying to take a picture, pretty sad I know. We got our 200 km anyway but were really missing the offraod bits around Anji. Further into the mountains there's nothing (that we could find). Here's a few pics. Today and tomorrow were pretty dull days, getting lost, demotivated. Massages in the area were a bit shyte too.

Here's a few pics anyway

First map.
This is the awesome road we took to shexian and into the mountains plus the little wrong turn is marked D I think


Views just before entering the mountains





About ten meters worth of cool trail. It's a steep drop off the side



Village by lake from above



Liza's face from side


This was from the other side of the water. It's kindof hard to get a really good picture of the place because it's mountains all around. But even with panorama you can only get half of it. Admittedly I didn't really try that hard.


Heave ho!


Was trying to turn the bike around to get this picture when I dropped it

[zhu]

Just had one of the worst days ever driving back into Shanghai .

hey clegg looks like a cool trip

your worst day on a bike is better than your best day at work