Bye Bye "V"

[ChinaV]

Tuesday, 5 June 2007 - There's a giant smile on my face because I just rode home on my new Suzuki V-Strom 650. Fast forward 6 years, 3 months, 4 days, and 50 thousand kilometers later.



...that giant smile is now on the face of felix, the new owner of the bike.

It's a tough thing to let a loved one go, but I'm moving in a different direction these days and don't have much time for the Wee Strom. The slow creep of the concrete tiled monster has filled much of Guangdong over the years, and I find it takes more and more time and distance to satiate my lust for new adventures. I still intend to hit plenty of mountain bike and enduro trails when I'm in China, but my focus now is on growing my business and moving my family to the U.S. I'll keep the Galaxy TGR and the QingQi QM250 here, and probably look at the FJR1300 or Concourse 14 for a bike in the states.


So felix and I made this deal while I was spending two months in the U.S. this summer. It was all making perfect sense to me at the time, but when I got back to China and actually had to put the plan in motion, well, let's just say I wasn't feeling so great about letting my baby go. It's been pretty tough looking at the big hole she left in my garage and the thought of felix fondling her everyday is still a bit unsettling.

Anyway.... a deals a deal so I had to run her over to Guilin last week. A six hundred kilometer trip that turned into a two day 1300 kilometer farewell tour.



Loaded and ready. I was up far too late just sitting with her in the garage but still managed to get on the road by 6:00 am.



I tried to map out a lot of X roads and goat trails on Google Earth, as usual, China never disappoints.



X383 near Yangshan.



Last "selfie" with my girl.



Rice... imagine that.



Lot's of rain this year so it's very green in GD.



First time I've seen windmills down here in the south.



Still plenty of rural life in northern Guangdong and Guangxi.





I like the wooden architecture, a pleasant change from the concrete boxes.





Clean water... beautiful.



65 kilometers of this. Guangxi has a lot of bad roads.



1 hour delay while they cleared up this landslide. Two choices, wait an hour, or backtrack 2.5 hours on 65 kilometers of road that looked like a bombing run on the ho chi minh trail. I waited.



The very last stop and picture of my baby. I called felix to let him know I was running late and plowed through the last 100k. My last trip had been just like every other... fascinating, frustrating, beautiful, ugly, you know how it goes, and you can also understand why I think the V-Strom is one of the finest motorcycles you could possibly have for the ever changing conditions of China.

Enjoy every minute felix

The stats:

Day 1
Distance 709 kilometers
13 hours 15 minutes
Stopped: 1 hour 22 minutes
Moving: 11 hours 53 minutes
Average Speed 59.63 km/h
Ascending 7862 meters
Descending 7728 meters

Day 2
587 Kilometers
12 hours 54 minutes
Stopped: 1 hour 46 minutes
Moving: 11 hours 7 minutes
Average Speed 52.81 km/h
Ascending 6533 meters
Descending 6485 meters

Cheers!

[zhu]

how long before felix fits a chair to the poor thing

[ZMC888]

You'll have to change your name to China "?". I was always so envious of your ride but I could never understand why you dabbled about with other inferior bikes. It's true that for exploring China you be hard pushed to find a bike even half as good bike as a Strom.

[modron]

Back in May when I met Felix he mentioned that hes waiting for a day when youll be ready to let her go. Patience is a virtue.

Great bike!
sorry for your loss ;)

Felix 幸运的猪

[Lao Jia Hou]

... my focus now is on growing my business and moving my family to the U.S.

Best wishes to you! A wise choice, for many reasons, in my opinion.

I am sure Felix will take perfect care of the "V", although perhaps never equaling the meticulous & fastidious Mr. Clean approach. By the way, the second pic ... is that ChinaV dirt from the trip? Or is it Felix dirt after running it around the block?

And if Felix puts a CJ bucket on the V (as Zhu suggested), just email a few of us - we'll track him down and set him straight.

FJR gets my vote, not that it matters.

[ChinaV]

Any of you Southerners looking for the most indirect way to Guilin/Yangshuo can try this route.



This is a direct Google Maps Link

This is a link to the KML file.

Cheers!

[felix]

Holy shit i can't believe it's mine, hasn't sunk in yet. I own a V-strom, no, i own THE chinaV-strom. Sitting in the garage gawking at how much bike it is, am i worthy of this machine? Did i earn it?

Literally years of wearing chinaV down trying to convince him to sell, damn right i earned it.

I know parting was emotional, i felt like i was stealing your child. I'll do my best to do it justice masterV. I'll get it dirty and keep it clean. I'll try to show it parts of china it hasn't seen yet. I'll wash my balls before every ride.

Just kidding, it already smells like my crotch.


Ok now let's talk mods. Obviously a 250kg chair on the right with 1930s suspension to 'stabilise' the bike. I've also seen a lot of kids with blue led light strips on their bikes and that's pretty cool so i'm definitely covering it in those if i can afford them. For the seat i'm thining either snakeskin or green dyed snakeskin.


Here are some pics from the last few days. It's gobbled up everything from rocky single track to fast sweepers beautifully. I haven't had time to go very far yet but luckily i don't need to go very far where i live now.



I love my new back yard.






Longji rice terraces. (notice how clean it is?)



Her head didn't even reach the tank.



Spot the odd one out.

[futianshenzhen]

Congrats Felix! I was gonna be up next week but this typhoon has put the brakes on that. That route ChinaV did looks like fun, maybe we could do a vstrom vs jialing comparison RR. Speaking of my jialing the thing nearly killed me yesterday as it overheated and when I was messing around with coolant I got bitten 150 ish times by ants and found out i'm allergic! im sure that wouldn't have happened on a susuki!

[Serpentza]

The end of an era! Wow... didn't expect you to actually sell it... the bike always was fantastic and you kept it looking as if it was brand new! You've pretty much set the gold standard for looking after bikes, congrats Felix! And condolences to you Mr. V

[modron]

Felix, does this mean that your old qingqi is out for grabs? I was thinking of buying a second hand off road bike :)