Day 15

The Final Day - What a long strange trip it's been.

It was an early 7:00 start for the last day of our most excellent adventure. We were roughly 300 kilometers outside of Chengdu, and had one last mountain pass we needed to summit before our final descent into the city. It rained hard the night before and there was a bit of a chill in the morning air. The roads were covered in slippery mud, so progress was slow. One hour in, we had only covered about 40 kilometers as we stopped for a picture by this interesting little town. I mentioned it was going to be another long day, we all just grinned.



We passed Dawei and began our ascent into the mountains. Daniel went by and that was the last I saw of him until the other side of the mountain range. A few moments later, Felix ripped past and I managed a shot as I fumbled with my heavier gloves.



I looked down at the town of Dawei through the mist and thought, damn, this is going to be an interesting 2000 meter (6,561ft) climb.



And climb we did.



A half hour later, I found Felix on the side of the road shivering and mumbling something about only having a t-shirt on underneath his gear. He decided that the dead cow lying frozen on the ground might be a sign it was time for some warmer clothing.



I snapped a pic and moved on, pondering what people might think passing Felix in his underwear next to a dead cow.



Higher and higher, colder and colder. At this point I could barely feel my fingers and I stopped every ten minutes to grab hold of the engine and let some heat sink in. I couldn't believe we were riding in snow.



Fortunately, there was construction traffic grinding the snow into a slushy mud mix. This provided just enough traction for moments of bravery during acceleration, yet sheer terror whenever applying the brakes.



The wind was howling across the peaks of the mountain, and every few minutes you could catch a glimpse of blue sky through the clouds.



I finally reached the summit at 4500 meters (14,763ft) and stopped for a little break. I never expected we would be on this kind of terrain only 180 kilometers from Chengdu.



A few minutes later along came Felix.



Shit man, this is awesome… cold, but awesome.



The weather continued to tease us with brief stints of sunshine followed by heavy, thick fog. Each passing cloud made the temperature drop from a balmy 0ºC to -5ºC almost instantly.



The scene looking over the other side of the pass. It's all downhill from here to Chengdu.



On the eastern side of the mountains we had much less cloud cover and finally got some magnificent views.









And eventually discovered Daniel on the side of the road warming up in the sunshine.



We also met a Chinese biker who was waiting for his friend to catch up while on their way to Tibet. We swapped a few stories and shared intel on the upcoming road conditions.



Check out his Yamaha YBR125. I couldn't believe he had so much stuff on such a little motorcycle.



We headed off and enjoyed about 25 kilometers of beautiful twisty blacktop. Daniel tearing up a corner.



With Felix in hot pursuit.



Felix enjoying the good life. We had almost forgotten what riding on regular pavement was like.



Around noon we stopped for lunch and Felix found a new friend.



Our usual feed of rice, oily vegetables, oily animal carcass with little or no meat, and egg mixed with tomato. Six days of Sichuan cuisine and you basically shit lava every day. Fantastic if you're really into spicy food, torture if you're not.



Our good friend on the YBR125 warned us that we were going to hit some rough spots ahead and we all just laughed. He wasn't kidding. The flatbed truck in front of us was actually sliding backwards and you can see the huge jam behind him. What you can't see is the power line hanging in the deep mud puddle near the orange truck with the open door. Daniel surprised us as he took off passing the flatbed with all of six inches to spare between the truck and the cliff. He just squeaked by, and then managed to hold the power line down with his foot while crossing the mud puddle. I looked at Felix, shrugged and then we went for it. People were shouting for us not to go and horns were beeping as Felix practically tore his saddle bag off passing the flatbed. Somehow we managed to make it, this didn't make one of the cops stuck in the traffic jam very happy and he tried to flag us down. We took off and stopped a few moments later to fix the saddlebag. That was exhilarating. I imagine they are still trying to sort that traffic jam out.



We continued on our way and the road gave us a good beating with trucks and construction obstacles at every turn. We were now in Wenchuan County, the hardest hit area during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that claimed over 68,000 lives. There has been a lot of rebuilding progress over the past two years as a result of massive government funding and the strong will of the Chinese people. Total respect for all they have accomplished and deep sorrow for the loss of life and destruction.



In the late afternoon we finally made it to good roads again and stopped about 40 kilometers outside of Chengdu. We would be making contact with a friend of a friend to arrange shipping our bikes home and we felt a little guilty about handing them over completely covered in China, so we found a small car wash and gave them all a good bath.





The last 40 Kilometers were a tedious maze of construction and chaos. Like most of China's big cities, Chengdu is upgrading all of the major transportation routes and my navigation and GPS skills were now over their limit. Somehow we managed to find the neighborhood CrazyCarl used to live in and we checked into the Ibis hotel at almost 7:00. The only thing we cared about was finding Peter's Tex Mex on TongZiLin Dong Lu for some frozen margaritas, cold beer and delicious food. We sat there for hours reliving little details of the last 15 days and many glasses were lifted over our safe arrival in Chengdu. It was mind numbing to think that just 7 hours ago we were freezing our buts off in snow covered mountains and now we were sweating in the summer heat of the city.

So… there you have it. I think the rewards far outweighed the punishment.

I will have one more post with the final route data, GPS tracks, etc. Hope you all enjoyed our little trip and thanks for coming along via this excellent forum.

Cheers!
ChinaV

Distance = 339 Kilometers - Time = 11:14 - Average Moving Speed = 44 kph