CSC Blog

We had a very full day today, including a ride along the ancient western end of China’s Great Wall, the discovery of a lost civilization, making a major motion picture (love those old gladiator movies!), and a late afternoon thunder shower as we arrived in Wuwei. It’s another one of those cities of several million people that seem to pop up in China every 40 or 50 miles…a city of several million that we’ve never heard of. China is indeed an amazing place.

It’s easy on us…I’m just following Master Sergeant Zuo’s lead…

Here’s one of Gobi Gresh on the Silk Road, paralleling the Great Wall!

And check out this photo I grabbed late today on the ride into Wuwei…

More good stuff…a stop in Yong Chang with a story about a lost Roman legion that is another one suitable for the plot of the next Indiana Jones movie. Several teenage girls came over to chat with us when we stopped. One even asked me for my phone number!  She wanted to practice her English.  The guys and I got a big kick out of that one!

And hey, it turns out that our expedition organizer, Sean, is China’s very own answer to the movie biz. We’re calling him Cecil B. De Ming!  He even looks like a movie director!

Yep, Gresh and I are the stars of a new major motion picture, portions of which the boys filmed in China this afternoon! You’ll want to read Riding China to get the full story, but as a teaser, here are a few photos from this afternoon…

We’ll make Lanzhou tomorrow, and we’ve done about 2200 miles in China so far. It is an amazing adventure.  The bikes are running great and so are we.  More to follow, my friends…so stay tuned.

Tonight we’re in Zhangye, which is near the western end of China’s Great Wall.  There’s probably a joke in there somewhere about Donald Trump trying to get the Mongols to pay for the Great Wall, but I’m tired and I’ll let that one go by.  Today was mostly freeway miles, but we are following the route of the old Silk Road.   Heady stuff.   Today was another day with no rain, and that’s good, too.

I’ll include just a few photos from today.  This is one of Gobi Gresh in front of what the sign says are the Yadan Physiognomy landforms…

It looked to be interesting stuff, but we are seeing so many interesting things that at some point we need to just move on.   You could spend a lifetime exploring all of the interesting things in China and still not see it all.

We took a rest stop under a bridge during our 500-kilometer day today and I saw this interesting graffiti…bear in mind we are in western China when you look at this…

I grabbed a cool shot of Dong smoking a cigarette during our break.   He looks like a Chinese Peter Fonda…

At 65, I’m the oldest (by far) of any of the members of our team.  Surprisingly, at a lot of our stops people know all about Arjiu and Dajiu (Zongshen has publicized this ride well).   I’ll tell you all about that in Riding China.   For now, I’ll mention that a lot of people in China are making a big deal about me being 65 and being out and about on a motorcycle exploring their country.  To me, being 65 is not a big deal, but one lady told me (through our translater, Tracy) that in China people who are 65 would not do what we are doing.   I’m not too sure what to make of all of this, but I will tell you guys that over here, 65 is considered “elderly.”   Shoot, back in California, at 65 I am usually the youngest guy in the group I hang with.   Anyway, when I saw this sign in Zhangye today I asked Gobi Gresh to grab a photo of me standing by it looking contemplative.  I have no idea what the rest of the sign says or means.   But you get the idea.   At 65, these folks think I’ve passed my “sell by” date.   It’s kind of funny.

We’re going to try to make Lanzhou tomorrow.  For the record, the bikes are performing magnificently, and we are not being gentle with them.   Both the RX3s and the RX1s are doing a great job.

That’s it for tonight’s installment of the Arjiu and Dajiu show, folks.   Stay tuned.

Last night, I wrote the Riding China chapter about our day entering the Gobi Desert. In it I mentioned that the Gobi looks a lot like our eastern Mojave Desert, and then I suggested seeing a few camels might make it a bit more exotic.

Well, folks, guess what we encountered this morning….

I’ve been receiving many emails from our CSC blog readers, and one in particular said she enjoyed seeing the food photos. Well, Dr. Gippee, here’s what was on the table for our light lunch this afternoon…

And here’s what was on the table for dinner this evening!

More good stuff…Lu having fun with one of the RX1 motorcycles in the soft stuff out in the Gobi dunes…

And how about these photos of “Gobi” Gresh…

Here’s my selfie with Deng, our expedition photographer…

Here’s one from the saddle of my RX3 on our ride through the Gobi…

We’re in Dun Huang tonight, the western-most point of our ride across China. This is the wrap map on our chase vehicle, with the red arrow denoting our location…

And here are a few photos riding around Dun Huang this evening…

That’s it for now.   You can tell we’re having fun.    More to follow, so stay tuned…

Gresh and I were joking last night about having left the Tibetan plateau. “I like the sound of it,” he said.   “How many people can start a story with  “When I rode my motorcycle on the Tibetan plateau…’”

I agreed.   We both wondered what we would ever be able to do to top that.

Today, we found out.

Try this on for an opening line:

“When I rode my motorcycle in the Gobi Desert…”

Okay, enough babbling…on to a few of today’s photos…

Helping the chef at breakfast this morning in Ulan before she shooed me away

On the highway leaving Ulan…the Chinese police use these to encourage drivers to keep their speed down

Very clever, I think

The best tofu in town, if you’re about to enter the Gobi Desert

This nice young lady served us lunch today

And we’re off…riding my RX3 into the Gobi Desert

Motorcyclist magazine’s Joe Gresh rides an RX3 into the Gobi Desert

Tearing across the Gobi

Two powerful machines…one to move the soil, the other to move the soul

We’re continuing our trek through the Gobi tomorrow.   This is one incredible ride, folks!

Whoa, blessed relief…we are in Linxia (not Ningxia, as I reported our destination yesterday).  The spellings of Chinese things in English are easy to get distorted. We’re down from the Tibetan plateau and its elevations of 12,000 to 14,000 feet.  Linxia is at an altitude of “only” about 6,000 feet, so the altitude-induced lightheadedness and headaches we were experiencing are gone.

I’m not complaining about that, though.  In fact, I’m not complaining about anything on this ride.  What we are seeing and what we have been experiencing on this grandest of all adventures has been beyond incredible!  I’ve been receiving lots of emails from our readers, and my good buddy Tom’s comment was spot on the money.   Tom said I was one lucky (you can fill in the blanks, folks).   You sure got that right, Tom!

For starters, here are the photos on the road to Tangke yesterday that I didn’t get to post last night….

Up on the Tibetan plateau at 12,720 feet

A Tibetan motorcyclist

Lu on his RX3…Lu is an incredibly-talented rider

The nine bikes we are riding on this adventure

Chasing Zuo on the Tibetan plateau

A Tibetan Buddhist monk on a motorcycle

The Nine Curves region of the Yellow River

Lu helping a Tibetan woman make tea

Next, the photos on the ride to Linxia today. It was a long day followed by another spectacular dinner. Just a quick rundown tonight, folks. Linxia is a city of two million people. We’ve left the Tibetan Buddhist area and we are now in a Muslim region. We rode 370 kilometers today, which may not sound like much, but factor in that it rained for half the day, we did another 80 or so kilometers on dirt, and Linxia the traffic is something right out of a YouTube video.  It was a challenge.

Here are the photos on the road to Linxia…

My photo of the RX1 on the Rouergai marsh lands

A Buddhist monastery roof on the road to Linxia

A Buddhist monk

Entering the Gansu Prefecture

Joe Gresh enjoying a chicken head after placing second overall in last night’s chopstick contest

An epicurean exercise in excellence fit for an emperor…our new normal…a 19-course dinner! The food on this adventure ride is spectacular!

Master Sergeant Zuo enjoying the noodles

The bikes are all running well and so are we.   To be blunt, we are beating the living daylights out of our RX3s and RX1s, and these motorcycles are tough.  The RX1s are proving to be very capable (this is Zongshen’s first endurance test of the RX1), and you already know the RX3 is a proven performer.    We’ve done about 1300 miles so far, and we haven’t heard a whimper from any of the motorcycles.   It’s just a given that they are Zongshen tough.

It’s 6:00 a.m. here, and that means it’s time to start packing the bikes.   Our destination tonight is Xinin, about 260 km down the road.   You’ll know more about today’s ride in tomorrow’s blog, folks!

Greetings from the Tibetan Plateau, folks!

We’re up here on top of the world, and we’re staying the night in a town called Aba (it’s pronounced “obbah”).   We rode beautiful mountain roads, and then we rode another 100 kilometers on a dirt road (and it was mostly mud because of the torrential rains during the last several days).  Our entire day has been between 12,000 and 14,000 feet, and we are feeling it (any exertion at all and it feels like you just ran a marathon).   Internet connectivity here is terrible, so I’m not going to post too many words.   The photos seem to go through okay, though, and here they are!

The real deal, folks! We’re riding China!

We saw lots of cattle. Most were just wandering loose on the road.

Two Tibetan Honda riders

This fellow happened by during one of stops. It had just stopped raining.

Wong took this photo of me with a Tibetan woman

Riding in the mountains was spectacular

We were delayed by numerous landslides during our run on the dirt road

Master Sergeant Zuo

My muddy RX3 on the Tibetan Plateau

Another beauty shot

Arriving in Aba after 100 kilometers of mud

A young Tibetan boy

The riders…Dong, Lin, Tso, Joe, Zuo, Lu, Furem, and Wong.   That’s Aba in the background.

It’s 6:00 a.m. here, so it’s time to start getting ready for today’s ride.   Until tomorrow, my friends…

Yesterday was a challenging day. It started easily enough with a breakfast in Wenchuan and a great ride through the Chinese mountains headed toward Seda (it’s pronounced “Seh-Dah”) but by late afternoon the skies opened and it poured cats and dogs.   Couple that with roughly 60 miles on dirt, lots of detours around washed-out roads, and a long, long day, and I was just too tired to write or post last night.  This morning wasn’t much better.  It rained all night and it was cold.  My Olympia raingear does a better job holding rainwater in than it does keeping the rain out, and when you put all of that together, you have a pretty good feel for what yesterday afternoon and this morning were like.   But the sights and the riding…folks, it’s the adventure of a lifetime.

We had breakfast at a sidewalk café in Wenchuan yesterday morning.  The food over here has been incredible.   It is so much better than the Chinese food we have in the United States.   Every meal is a feast (more on that later).   Yesterday morning’s breakfast allowed me to photograph the people wandering by.   Here are just two…

After breakfast we were on the road.  Here’s a shot from the saddle of my RX3.   That’s Joe Gresh in front of me, the guy who writes the Motorcyclist magazine “Cranked” column.

Check out Master Sergeant Zuo and Mr. Tso at a rest stop.   These guys are fun to be around.

Here’s a shot of my bike at a fuel stop.  You might think it looked dirty yesterday.  You should see it today.  On our ride on that long dirt road in the rain, we went through mud puddles that were a good foot deep.  I named my bike “the Yellow Submarine.”

Joe Gresh at lunch in Ma’erkang.  That’s Fu Ren (it’s pronounced Foo Zhen) behind him.

We were headed into Tibetan Buddhist country.  This was my last shot before it started raining.  I guess I should have got some shots of that weather, but I had enough on my hands just keeping the bike up.

It is incredibly remote in the parts of China we rode through yesterday and today.   At the end of the day yesterday, we were cold, wet, and beat.  It was raining, the temperature was plummeting at our 9000-ft altitude, and we were nearly out of gas.   We finally found a hotel in little village outside of Seda.  We had dinner at this little hole in the wall place next door.   Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones entered the bar to hook up with his former girlfriend?   That’s what this place reminded me of.  It was great.

We entered the Tibetan Buddhist village of Wu Ming this morning.  It was a scene out of a dream.   I didn’t get great shots because it was raining so hard, but I will remember this place for the rest of my life.   What an experience!

By the way, that little village you see above is 3700 meters above sea level.  It was an incredible experience.  I’ve never seen anything like this.

Here’s a cool shot of a guy on a diesel tractor.  I waved to him when he went by.

This young lady was hanging around where we ate lunch.  I asked if I could take a picture and she shook her head no, but then she relented…

The people in this area are ethnically different than the other Chinese people I have seen.   Tracy, our interpreter, explained to me that people of Tibetan descent live in China.

The rain stopped around 1:00 p.m. today, and at one of our stops I grabbed this photo of the northern China countryside.

Here are a few more photos from this afternoon….this one is of the bikes parked in a Buddhist village.

My bike next to some Buddhist artwork…

…and yours truly with a Buddhist monk…

One of the grand surprises on this trip has been the cuisine.  I’ve been to China many times, but I’ve never traveled like this.   The guys we are riding with have this uncanny ability to find wonderful restaurants.

The Chinese know how to eat.  Every meal is a feast.   They don’t serve everything all at once (the restaurant brings dishes out as they prepare them), and our lunches and dinners have been tremendous fun.  At our dinner this evening, we had all 15 members of our expedition present.  I counted the dishes the restaurant brought out…there were 14 separate dishes and a huge bowl of rice.

I shot the above photo about midway through our meal.   We were served several more dishes in addition to those you see above.   The Chinese know how to prepare a dish, too…even plain stuff is exceptional.

Check out the spicy chicken…

I’ll bet you’ve never seen potatoes prepared like this…

After another great dinner, I stuck my head in the kitchen and the chef allowed me to snap this photo…

So we’re in a town called Rang Tang (it’s pronounced “ZhongTon”), the bikes are parked out front, and I’m about ready to call it a night.   One more thing, and that’s a quick update to give you an idea of where we are…

We’ve ridden about 750 miles so far.   It’s been great.  Stay tuned…there’s much more to follow here on the blog, and there will be a lot more in Riding China.

Ah, the Pandas…what a thing to see!

It was brutally hot and humid, but the pandas were cool (literally, as they are kept in an air conditioned enclosure with all the bamboo they can eat).   In the afternoon, we rode through downtown Chengdu…that’s a heck of a story I’ll get to later.

Master Sergeant Zuo told us we had another 390 kilometers today, which is different than what the itinerary shows. Maybe we got the translation wrong.  The itinerary shows our destination today as Wenchuan.   Top (the Master Sergeant) told us we’re going to see the site of a massive Chinese earthquake and an ancient dam.  We’ll see and I’ll let you know.

More fun, more photos…

Texting and riding…surprisingly, we see a lot of this

Through a thick glass window…there they are!

Lu ignoring the sign with a very friendly peacock

This gal was fascinated by the Nikon

One of our dishes at lunch yesterday…this is the “before” shot

…and this is the “after” shot

Check out this previously-unknown Zongshen 150cc Sportster-themed bike…I want one!

Time to get ready to roll, folks.   We’re headed to Wenchuan!