Welcome MZD, and good luck with your trip! It is wonderful seeing more & more female riders joining in with this recreation!

This website is chocked full of valuable info, resources and knowledgeable people re riding in China. I wished I had found it earlier, rather than stumbling around in the dark for so long. I'm indebted to the folks who've helped me over and over.

A few observations, which are not meant to be critical, just cautionary ...

1) Most of the members of MCM are inside China and therefore cannot access Facebook (it is blocked inside China). Please keep that in mind if you plan on sharing updates during your voyage. Please post pics, videos, ride reports here;
2) It is poor etiquette in a forum to say "hey look, I am doing this cool ride, but if you want to see it, you have to go visit my self-promotion website". People don't like that in a free forum. In fact, people get quite turned off by it; and,
3) In China, you can plan too much, forcing yourself into oblivion - flexibility is the key, in terms of time, direction, roads, food, repairs, etc. Simply saying "we're heading West, hopefully getting to X" will generally work best.

OK, enough cautionary preaching. If you're still in Hong Kong, search out the MCM member Franki (he lives in Hong Kong, and has a lovely teenaged daughter who is following her father's biking steps). Like CC, ChinaV, Felix, Euphonius, AW, Bigdano, Chinabiker, and countless others, he's a great resource for romping around China - and he knows the Galaxy XTR quite well. And if you find him, tell him we miss him.

Cheers
Richard