Where we left off, we'd all gone back to warm up at the hotel and escape the horrid cold... later at some or other hour at night I was woken up by the phone in the room ringing.. I ignored it and then heard the phone in Tom's room ringing (which he answered).. a moment later there was a drowsy knock on my door and Tom saying something about them wanting us to move our bikes...

Thing is, we'd chained our bikes up nicely in the alley under a roof and out of the rain.. This dozy security guard was insisting that we park them on the street in front of the hotel so that he could keep an eye on them (he'd be asleep the whole night anyway I'm sure). So after some half asleep deliberation we finally moved the bikes out of their nice cozy covered parking onto the wet pavement in front of the hotel (it wasn't raining at that moment).

Morning came and I was greeted by this sight:


[A biker's hotel room]

During the night I'd made a decision, after looking at the weather reports things were only going to get much worse, our destination was going to be basically days of raining (no sunshine as we'd hoped) and the temperature was going to keep dropping.. basically it was going to be an awful useless wet trip with nothing to look forward to other than dangerous slippery roads, crap weather and a whining/complaining Beer girl... I decided that I'd salvage what was left of my holiday and go back to Shenzhen the next day as at least the weather looked reasonable (10 Degrees C and semi-visible sun).

I let Tom know and he agreed, I met him early in the morning as he was going to head out at 8am and try to get to Yangjiang which was about 400kms away... only thing is he didn't leave at 8am.


[I love being prepared... Charge away little battery!]

Our bikes were soaked as it had rained through the night.. and Tom's bike wasn't starting, that was because he'd left his heated grips on and for whatever reason they'd been connected directly to the battery and not through the ignition.. (not a good plan), this caused them to completely drain his battery... good thing my CB has charging issues and I always carry a spare battery (it's a little smaller for carry convenience 5Ah rather than the usual 7Ah.. but does the trick), a bit of cold/wet morning bodging and Tom was on his way, I took his flat battery up to the room to charge on my fast charger (which I took along just in case).

About 2 hours later and after packing everything nicely we headed downstairs, while Beer girl was sorting out getting the deposit back from the hotel and generally faffing around as she does, I got the CB started... being out in the rain and cold didn't make her too cooperative (my choke lever is broken so I couldn't use the choke..) I eventually got her started by giving her a push start, and she looked more like a steam powered bike due to the cold, either way she was ready to be loaded up.


[This was the best the weather got the whole day]

[Coming up... the shortcut home]