We’d been planning this a while..   A couple of guys and myself from one of the china bike clubs.  Why not ride from Beijing?  Why not ride to Guangzhou or Hong Kong ..  We talked about this last year over drinks and noodles .. It can be done;  its not hard .. just takes some planning ..   There were 12 of us then,  all full of ourselves and how were were going to train up and do this. We made an email list, a wechat (think facebook in china) group, and started planning ..  talking about how we would do it. the route. the food, etc.    
 
June 13 there were 4 ready to start the other 8 or so cowards had made up excuses not to go. One guy even had the nerve to get his wife knocked up to keep him from going .. I mean really the things people do to avoid a little bike ride.    So here we are .. 4 of us . between us we might have a passable working knowledge of  language .. 3 upright bikes and a recumbent.  Ones from The Neatherlands, another came from the south of France,   the third from Germany and myself from the US of A ..  The only thing in common is that we were bike riders and we were going to do this thing or break something trying.  
 
In china, you have to find a hotel that will accept foreigners ..  It’s a strange registration process that the people of the US would go bonkers over due to the invasion of privacy .. but – it’s the way things are and you follow them or sleep outside ..  So our route planning months before consisted of finding a hotel that was marked as “accepting foreigner” on the chines booking apps.  Then calling them to *make sure* they had the little terminal and were still qualified to accept foreigners .  They have to stick your passport and visa in this little machine that OCRs them and reports to the authorities your whereabouts ..    You can also go to the local police station and register your location.  Failure to do this can result in fines, deportation and other unpleasantness heaped upon your person ..  So chasing this down became the prevue of the chinese wife of one of the remaining riders ..  She would call ahead and double check the hotel for us – we had to change destinations 4 times; once resulting in an unplanned 350k day -  because the hotel we'd picked couldn’t handle the process for whatever reason.    
 
It rained on us about 1/3rd of the days .. well every day it rained ..  “rain” became relative ..  A lot of rain was a rain day .. getting hammered by a little storm for 20-30 minutes was a dry day.   You just dealt with it.    It cooled you off .. or warmed you up  depending on the altitude you were at when the soaking occurred.   We had wind too .. but it would shift around during the day as the little fronts came through that brought the rain ..  A couple of days we had “mostly” head wind  and a few more had “mostly” tail wind – there were far more tail wind days than head wind days .. not that it mattered all that much to me, but the guys riding the wedgies appreciated it.  
 
We broke one  bike ..  I saw it happen .. we are loaded down with our gear so these bikes are weighted and you don’t do things like jump curbs or ride off embankments or any of the other things you might do on a bike to avoid slowing down, stopping or otherwise getting off to handle the obstruction ..       I stopped and was walking my bike across a particularly bad piece of road, the kind of road that makes Beirut after the bombing look like a soft sandy shore.   When this guy goes bouncing across the craters exclaiming “try this on your recumbent”    no sooner did he get that last syllable “bent”  out – I think things even slowed down at this point – Re-Cum-BeennnnnnnCRACK his frame broke off at the bottom bracket ..  It was a loud snap, unholy .. the sound of metal not wanting to be part of other metal right now and being angry about the whole situation.      The good news is we found a welding shop in the town we were in,  the old man that owned the place was out, his wife and kids were there and while they didn’t know what to do, they were more than willing to let us borrow the welder and I ended up welding the thing back together – more or less ..  mostly less.  But it held and that’s what mattered .. It won’t win any awards for “pretty” or “nice” or technique .. but for a stick weld from a tattered old welder in the middle of BumFuk china it was a beautiful thing.
 
Back to the rain, did I mention rain?     Multiple times it rained so hard we simply had to get off the bikes.  The traffic on the road was seeking shelter too so it wasn’t like we were the only vehicular cowards out there. No sir .. There was some serious frog drowning downpours at time.     We got a lot of opportunity to meet locals this way .. usually because we would take shelter under the eves of some store or shop and they would find us there huddled up, waiting for the rain to subside.      I’ve often said “governments have politics, people have a nature”   More than once we were invited inside to share tea, fruit or even a meal (or in one case a bed)   Here we are 4 very foreign people in towns that might see a foreigner ever 2-3 years and people were going out of their way to help us.    A lot of times we’d be handed scores of 荔枝 (Lychee) to eat ..  Nothing tastes better than fresh Lychee when you are sitting in the rain waiting for your chance to go ride again.          We talked to a lot of very curious kids in these interludes and a lot of disbelieving  adults ..  While china might be the bike capital of the universe the thought of actually *traveling* more than a 10-15km in a day is a concept that is almost impossible for them to comprehend.    Loaded down bikes with panniers and racks and still we had to explain that this was “fun” and no we didn’t loose our money or transportation and the whole thing was planned .. yes really planned ..  Yes our family knows we are doing this,   no the doctors are not looking for us as we didn’t escape from the hospital  (though that might be called into question)    No we were not drunk when we decided to do this (this one came up several times as it seemed to be the catch-all for any kind of odd behavior)   No we don't need ambulance we just want to wait out the rain thankyouverymuch.  
 
In Zhuhai (outside of Nansha) We met a model,  a honest to goodness Chinese supermodel.   It dawned on me after a few minutes I'd seen her picture in posters in the stores before.     We rolled up into this service center (what the USofA calls a truck stop)  about mid afternoon one day to refill on drinks, food etc and this stunningly beautiful woman was behind the counter.    This is BumFuk china . you don’t expect that anymore than you expect it in BFE Texas.    Sure -  there are  pretty woman everywhere but this woman was amazing ..  Of course, being 4 middle age (ok more older than middle)  guys in the face of this lovely person -- we all wanted to practice our chinese  ..    In the process of getting food, forgetting things, having to get more food, then getting drinks  and going back for more drinks we found out her history.  She was a model, she’s been on the cover of multiple magazines and even a couple of movies.   Almost a  year or so ago though her father had passed away leaving her mom the service center and mom can’t run it alone .. so she came home .. throw away her whole career to take care of her family and be with her mom in the family home.     Shes proud of this, it’s a very Chinese thing to do and you can hear it in her voice that this was The Right Thing for her.    A very somber moment to consider this cultural difference.    We said our goodbyes and road away in silence  each lost in thought.  
 
 
 
June 14  Beijing  
June 15 Cangzhou  218km 901m climbing  average 28kph
June 16 Jinan 229km 803m climbing average 29kph
June 17 Weifang 208km 111m climbing average 31kph
June 18 Linyi 246km 923m climbing  average 25kph
June 19 Xuzhou 224km 151m climbing average 22kph (rain)
June 20 Suzhou 105km 1104m climbing a average 14kph (rain)
June 21 Hefei 270km 183m climbinga average 32kph
June 22 Tongling 186km 466m climbinga average 23kph (rain)
June 23 Huangshan 124km 8361m climbing average 15kph (hot, then cold, then hot)
June 24 Shangrao 109km 9050m climbinga average 16kph (rain, hot, rain)
June 25 Nanping 282km  221m climbinga average 35kph
June 26 Sanming 83km 4501m climbing average 33kph
June 27 Meizhou 351km 95m climbinga average 38kph (downhill day)
June 28 Heyuan  200km 711m climbing average 31kph
June 29 Huizhou 85km 482m climbing average 15kph (rain all damm day long)  
June 30 Nansha 185km 1036m climbing average 28kph
July 1 Macau 102km 183m climbing average 32kph (rain 10 minutes after we were done)  
 
Total : 3207km (1993 miles) 25629m (84085 feet)  climbing
 
 

Quote from MrWizard on Jul 3^rd, 2018, 1:42pm:

A thrilling read of your literally chilling ride.  But you're just going to leave it without telling us (men) the name of this stunningly beautiful woman?  THANKS!