Disaster Planning for your MC ride in China

[euphonius]

Sheesh, Richard, started reading your thread and thought you were writing your last will and testament ("I'd like thank my mom and dad, crazykarl and all you other swells....").

Great thread.

First thing that comes to my mind is that a lot of us tend to ride solo. Here in Shanghai, Motokai, Milton and I have all done long solo rides through backcountry, and two of us (we know who we are) have had pretty serious getoffs. In my case I had the great fortune of being with none other than young Slabo and his sweetie, and I effed up while we were riding across Kunming (in the rain, at night) to try their favorite fungus restaurant. OK, there are a couple of levels to this. Had I not befriended Slabo through MCM, I'd likely not have been making that night ride that night, but had Slabo not been there during that getoff it would have been a lot more traumatic for me. Within minutes his friend Mike the Paraglider was swooping in to help get my bike to safety, while a doctor friend of mine helped me get directly to medical help. I shudder at the thought of having that getoff while truly alone up on the dark side of some Himalayan foothill between Lijiang and Zhongdian, which were to have been my next destinations.

Of course CrazyKarl's misadventure was so awesome he made a movie about it, but it seems to have scared him off China for a few years...

ChinaV is an inveterate soloist, but he was damned lucky to have had Felix and Daniel present when his Galaxy skipped out from under him and off the face of the earth down in Guangxi. Had V been unaccompanied and slipped the bonds of tarmac with the Galaxy and been injured or knocked cold, well, the mind reels...

Ditto for ChinaV's puke-stained getoff in Fujian. What if it'd been after dark, and no one had seen him and his foot had remained pinned under the Weee? Would he have had to chew off that appendage to get free?

So I guess there's a message in here somewhere about the special risks of soloing, and how to minimize them. I'm as guilty as anyone, but I love riding alone. MCM certainly has a role to play. When riding anywhere in China, share your itinerary with members in areas you'll be traversing. Even if you don't need someone to scrape you out of a canyon, it's at least good for a beer or seven and maybe lifelong memories of comradeship.

I also think we as a list could do a better job of organizing group rides, whether daytrips or long ones. I always feel envy when Richard reminds us of his regular riding group in Beijing, and I stand in awe of the personal responsibility Richard takes while riding as sweeper. O! that we could have group rides like that here in Shanghai ("hey, let's go burn donuts in the World Financial Center ring at Lujiazui!"). Well, we have. MotoKai and I had a blast slabbing out to Moganshan last fall, and Felix and Wrangler did a nice overnighter to Suzhou. Milton rides with some non-MCM buddies from time to time. We could do better to make these rides known to others so the percentage of riding that we all do alone is minimized.

The MCM network is available even when members are not nearby. I was cycling through Shanghai when Slabo rang me a short while after his hard encounter with a brittle humerus attached to a moron in Kunming, and we were able to calmly talk things through so he felt a bit less alone. Had there been a need to talk to someone in Chinese, or to translate, I was fully prepared to do that. And I'll make that offer here and now to anyone else: If you find yourself in a pickle and don't have your nubile translator nearby and need to clear your head about your options etc, I'm ready to take that call -- with the caveat that I am not a doctor or lawyer.

In other words, those of us who are resident in China can and should use MCM as an important resource not just for gearhead stuff and route selection but for group organizing and safety and contingency planning and, in that fateful hour, emergency advice and handholding.

So where's that kumbaya smiley?
Here it is