Hubei, Sichuan and the Three Gorges of Yangtze River

[milton]

Day 9
We each had less than 3 hours of sleep, if you could call it that, and waited lying down from 4 am to 6:30 am for the daylight. My first glimpse of the surroundings in the morning after getting out of “bed”:



We got on the village road for a while. After 20 minutes or so, guess what, surprise!! We were greeted with 20 km more of these:





We really did not need this in the last day of the trip, especially on the wake of that hellish pass 2 nights before. Nevertheless, we managed to get over it safely. I was glad to report that I had only one fall in the mud, which bent the left engine guard again. I was amazed at how wholesome I was after riding through such a torturous road.

We brought our bikes to a car wash, totally covered in mud. The pressurized water jet presented the best cleaning option for both the machine and the riders:






Well, we were still nowhere close to completing our trip. Chengdu was still 150 km away and there were more excitements to come.

After the struggle with that terrible road, my bike developed a leak in the cooling system。 It turned out that one of the tie rods of the radiator hose went loose, which was easy enough to fix. It is nearly impossible to find coolant in the roadside motorcycle stand in the country, so I had to make do with local “spring water” for cooling.
At about 2:30pm, Chengdu was 100km within reach and we were content to just wind up the trip nice and easy via the boring G318.

There were many toll booths along the way. At Jianyang 简阳 tollgate, there was only a narrow gap for motorcycles to pass, which did not pose any difficulty for us. Then on the next fill-up at a gas station, to my greatest distress, my green GDW saddlebags had disappeared on me, with my camera bag and more importantly my passport in it. I booked my flight for Shanghai a few days earlier, which was scheduled for 7:40am next morning. Without the passport, I had to forfeit my flight ticket and would be pretty much trapped in Chengdu.

We went back to the motorcycle service stand 15 km earlier and couldn’t find them. Then the lifesaving phone call came in. My bags were found by the conductor of a local bus heading for Chengdu. My guess was that they were tangled up by the road block and stripped off without my knowing it at 简阳 tollgate. Fortunately my cell number was found recorded in one of the documents inside the bags. Since the bus was moving, going from stop to stop to collect passengers, the conductor suggested to us to try to catch the bus before its entering onto the highway for Chengdu, as we might not be able to reclaim it that night once it reached Chengdu and turned over to “the office” which was not clear how long it would remain open.

All that conversation with the conductor was assisted by a passersby showing great interests in our big bikes, as I wasn’t able to understand fully the local dialect and no ideas about those stations from which we may be able to catch the bus and retrieve my bags. In order to recover my passport in time for the air travel next morning, we decided to try to speed up and beat all the G318 traffic to capture the bus in less than 30 kms. The passersby was willing to be the guide, so I took him on as a pillion. 3 miles after hurrying onto G318, my pillion tapped on my shoulder and announced that we ought to give up on the attempt of capturing the bus, as my bike with me at the helm was too slow moving to have any possibility of getting ahead of the bus. He also offered to ride the bike for me instead if we still wanted to retrieve the bags that day. This was when I made the stupidest decision in my life and went along with his offer, reversed the role and made myself the pillion. The guy was quite happy to mount onto the driver seat and off we went. In no time we left R2 in the dust and managed to overtake all the buses, cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, goats, dogs, pigs and anything coming our way in both directions of G318. Later on R2 told me that he was averaging 120km on G318 and still not able to catch up, which reflected how crazy that chase was. I was on the back of the bike with my hands tight on the seat racks bearing down over his shoulder fighting for my life at speed well over 120km on a guodao in the busy afternoon traffic. Obviously there was no chance of picture taking for that joy ride. After 20 km riding like mad on G318, the chase went to an abrupt end, as his approach to maximize the speed of my poor Jialing, revving the gas hard and shifting between 4th and 5th gear unremittingly at high revolution, decimated the clutch. I wasn’t feeling bad at all for losing the clutch and just absolutely thankful for having survived the chase with all my limbs and head still attached to the torso. The guy apologized for not being able to have done any faster, blaming on his lack of protection of a helmet, hailed a bus passing by for Chengdu and disappeared on me. Later on R2 showed up like after forever, and continued on the effort of intercepting the bus in saner speed. Actually the bus was nice enough waiting at the entrance ramp of G42, with all passengers outside the bus chatting and waiting for us. I wasn’t there to thank them and R2 did the formalities for me. At around 7 pm my saddlebags were miraculously recovered and my passport on hand ready for the early morning flight.

Although there were train stations along the G318, they were not big enough to accept motorcycle shipment. So we called on all the logistics firms in Jianyang door to door and finally found a truck willing to ship our bikes to Chengdu. We put both bikes onto the truck, mobilized 5 guys on the other end in Chengdu to lower them down and parked at a friend’s apartment compound for the night. Later that night I also decided to leave my bike in Chengdu and fly back again from Shanghai in the upcoming 10/1 holidays for more excitements.

Throughout the course of that fateful day, the last day of the trip, I absolutely had no idea if I’d be able to make it to the airport for the flight in the next morning. It was the longest day of my life.