Now I know that many of you do not have kids yet and some of you think you may never will, but we did and one of the big phases of having your first kid is the stroller purchase. At first I thought what’s the big deal a chair with some wheels. Maybe a seatbelt. Boy was I wrong. There are so many “features” that you don’t even know, which way is up and they make you think you are a bad parent if you don’t get the best. It is kind of like getting attacked by bunch of used car sales men, but it is actually crazy ladies in the bay who love their strollers. Needless to say… I bought the best one, but at least the Bay had 40% worth of discounts… that are probably available everyday, but we wont think about that.
Well, we had one more day in Wu Tai Shan. I took off before the boys got themselfs outta bed and into the cool morning. It was so nice to wander the town and hillside by myself. I like travelling with people, but I need to be alone too take my time making pictures and musing. 
I headed through some temples and found the path we would need to take up the mountain. I met a few road workers and snapped pics, till I went back and found the guys in a reasturnat.
We did get one white mountain that morning. We hiked up the mountain to the sounds of Cigaros (sp?) playing off Yaya’s ipod speakers. They’re an icelandic band which has added itself to the list of reasons I should visit Iceland. You can spot Ziggy through the doors here. He’s the one that gave me the first listen to the band.
We had to rush down the mountain to make it to the bus, but we did it with minuets to spare, got back to the bikes and the next day made it here to the capital, Taiyuan.
Hope you’re feeling great today. Why not, eh?
Cheers!
Ahh Jer, your house is so sweet that even an anti-land owner like myself would want to buy it. They’d all be fools to leave your door quiet of fantastic offers.
The tricycle crew continues on. We’ve lost one of the super group “Fun Boy Five”. Juan has gone for a solo career. He wanted to see what China could offer his mind as he went off alone. We plan to meet up again somewhere in the south.
(Many pics need to be inserted here, but I’m out of time. I have to get back to the hotel before they lock the gates)
We had a great time in Datong, checked out big ol’ cave carvings, a hanging monastery and the local clubs. The Icelanders were more than they’d seen. There was a circle of chinese folks cheering on as the tricycle crew showed their silly moves. We split as we left town. The four of us continued south on the wrong road. We sorted it out, but didn’t make it far that day. We ate at a road stop and slept on the floor of the resturant.
We we were setteling in for a quiet night then we found Yaya in the next room drinking with the truck drivers. We joined and dug into the food and Bi Jao (a Chinese drink that people insist must be downed in one go). It ended up with Yaya sleeping and me playing card games. I taught them poker and lost badly. Luckly we were playing for almost nothing.
The next day we explored a really old peice of the great wall made of rammed dirt and headed up for a mountain pass. My bike was going really slow and I was peddeling t
o hard, so when a coal truck passed, going just a little faster, I held onto the back and it towed me past the rest of the boys. All of our bikes held together which warrented mighty hoots from all of us.
We stopped in a village to check out some of the houses after we came out of the mountains and made great time that day with no bike break downs, but as we neared the town we were going to stay in I hit a big rock with my muffler. Someone was drying rice in the bicycle lane and blocked it off with a row of big rocks. It was dark, so I didn’t see them quite soon enough. I was only going about ten km/h, but it was enough to bend the exhaust pipe 
away from my engine half a centimeter. My tricycle now sounds like an old lawn mower trucking down the road, a Harley compared to the rest of the boys. On the upside I’m no longer the slowest one. So the green turtle has mutated. It’s new name is Raphiel in honor of the other stoic mutant turtle.
The next day Yaya’s peddle slipped as he was trying to kick start start his bike. It ment there was no more peddeling to be done on his bike. We took it appart but quickly I saw we would have to open the engine to fix it and that scared me off. We found someone to fix it up (another welding job) and we all got our bikes spruced up with break reapairs, oil changes and new batteries.
We took a bus up to Wu Tai Shan to check out Mountain tops and temples. It’s an area that is sacred to Buddhists and is somewhat succluded so it missed the worst of the cultural revolution when communists were destroying religous sites. As we were wandering through a monastery we met an English speaking monk. He was super friendly and invited us to his cell, made us coffee and answered our questions about what it was like living up here.
Today we hiked up to a temple on the mountain beside town. Johnny and Yaya didn’t feel like bush waking up to the peak so Ziggy and I headed up on our own. We found a different path down and walked through a few more monasteries. I chatted with a few sweet ladies lighiting candles in a nunnery, who were easy on me and my bad chinese.
These are a few pics from today…
Here’s some of the old dudes I’ve met wandering around this last week.
I just stepped outside and it’s starting to snow. I’m hoping for white mountains come the morning. Hopefully you get a bit of the same.
Cheers!
As many of you know we are moving and with moving comes selling. So… are you interested???
Refinished hardwood floors on the main floor and pretty much new flooring through out the whole home. Large 400 sqft master bedroom with walk-in closet on the top floor. New two bedroom basement suite. This, that and the other thing… If you are interested let me know. Special deal for you as their is no real-estate agent yet…. 🙂
Ok enough selling.
Have a look and see if you can figure it out…
That’s right Steve asked and she said yes. Here is how he asked…
Well it was a note, but she did say yes. 🙂
Hey guys,
Well, our moto-tours don’t have the same bang up, bash ’em style as yours, but we’re pushing on. We’re moving at a rediculously slow pase, but we haven’t seen any other travellers since we’ve left Beijing, so we’re accomplishing our goal of a different trip. I spray painted the back of the green turtle with our pirates trade mark.
This is the crew the day we left Beijing in front of the Olympic countdown clock. I’m convinced China is going to amaize everyone in 2008.
Starting from the left is Johnny from England, Yaya from Isreal, Yuan from Iceland, me then Ziggy from Iceland.
I’m showing Daoda how to use my camera in the muslim resturant we stopped in everyother day in Beijing. They have awesome cabobs. Dan, it’s too bad, I found all the best food after you left.
We’re breaking down every day, so I’m getting to know the tricycles pretty well. Most of our repairs have been on brakes and chains, but we had our first welding job done a few days back.
You can see the beefy size of our motors. Needless to say we peddle pretty hard to go up any of the mountain roads.
This was our first camp in an apple orchard. We met the friendly owner in the morning.
A picture break halfway up our first mountain pass. We were debating weather our bikes would actually make it out of Beijing county let alone to Vietnam.
Unfortuantly my pictures are locked away on a CD that I can’t view in this shop. These are all from Yaya’s (the Isrealie) camera.
Ziggies tricycle broke irreaperably shortly after conferming our fears or realizing our negative self proclomation.
We shortly left him to languish with his bike alone. This is us sitting around and debating weather it was worth the 5 dollars the road workers wanted to go get him and bring him into town. In the end we caved and we went back to get him.
His was the bike that needed to get welded back together.
I love the Icelanders (Yuan and Ziggy) that are with us. They keep us singing and whenever there are a few drinks they get people dancing, whether it is at kerioke or in our small hotel room in the mountains. We were much to cold to camp.
I’m trying one of their really strong Chinese smokes, while dancing with Johny and Ziggy.
We only made it about 17 kms the next day because the guys met some students in town that wanted to take us to dinner and they just couldn’t say no.
Dinner was great though and we did our biggest day the next day a total of 167 kms! We had to make it to a big town so they could extend their visas.
A group shot.
Me on the mighty Green Turtle, which is living up to it’s name. He’s the slowest one.
Here a couple of shots from last weekends adventures.
Here we are ready to go. All three cars were painted and ready for action.
A quick shot of Nicole before she gets into the mix.
And a picture of Travis running over a car that got in his way.
We didn’t get to many shots of the cars flying through the air or some of the big crashes that took place while racing through the trees, but maybe next time we will bring the video camera.
So, it really is happening. We’re leaving in a few minuets. We’ve got the tricycles packed up, the route planned out and we’re camping beside the great wall tonight, even if it takes us half the night to get there. It’s pretty slow getting 5 guys moving it seems. I woke them up at 8 and it’s half past two. ah well it don’t matter.
Here’s a couple of shots from Tianamen square. I didn’t have time to get the tricycle pics onto cd yet. Cheers,
Steve
Hello,
Still in Beijing. Each day we say we are leaving and each day we’re still here when the sun goes down and we tell people tomorrow… So, we’re leaving tomorrow.
About a week ago we payed a deposite to see what a cheap tricycle fitted with an engine would look like. It took a few days and when we saw it I wondered if it would make it out of Beijing let alone Vietnam, but when we told the guy we didn’t want it he insisted that he made it for us and we had to buy it. I insisted that we payed a deposite to see the bike. I never promised to buy it. He could keep the deposite and the bike so what’s the problem. After hours of arguing I said lets go to the police station, because I was convinced I was in the right. We went to a police office and they seemed to be leaning our way, but they didn’t want to really want to get involved, so the said they are just an office so they sent us to a police station. At the police staion the shop guys got to speak first and just went on and on. We had a shinese friend with us (my Chinese is getting better, but still sucks) and she tried to get them to understand but it seemed they were siding with the others. It was exactly like the sceen in Lost in Translation where the director spoke for 5 minuets and the translator said one sentence and he asked one question and she talked for another 5 minuets. We tried to work another deal where we buy different bikes from them, so they don’t take a loss, but the deal kept changing, so we ended up paying the deposite again to be done with them. The owner still wanted to throw a mouontain bike at me and swing a chair like a WWF wrestler for embarassing him, but his worker pulled him buy the arm away. He was a bit unhinged though. He started yelling at everyone his worker and the cops, so we looked justified in the end even though we payed more. Oh well.
The next day we ordered fancy new bikes from a catalog at a shop with a nice friendly owner who gave us a good deal threw in loads of extra repair gear, gas tank and lock, because we were buying 5. We’ve been testing them the last few days a few things need to get fixed, but they’re running good and the slow bums I’m going with finally have all their gear, so I think we might really leave tomorrow, even though we’ve had great times hanging around the hostel. Nobody around here thinks we’ll make it out before New Year, but we’ll show ’em.
We spray painted fancy new paint jobs. My green turtle, pirate of the open road, is looking pretty stylie. I’ll post a pic from the road.
Cheers,
Steve
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