Day 100           8/6/2006

I was about 60 km outside of Shanghai when my drive chain snapped.  This is the second time in two days that the little Chinese bike tried to die.  I'm so close, I thought.  Can't you go just a little bit farther?  The broken chain resulted in me pushing the bike down the road for about half a kilometer to a gas station where I started looking for a new master link.  Lucky for me, every Chinese motorcycle is practically the same and I bought a master link off another motorcyclist. It wasn't 10 km later when the cops pulled me over.  This made 29 total stops by the police.  I'm sick of it.  And this guy wanted to see everything.  Paper work (don't have it).  Chinese driver's license (nope).  Receipt for the bike (it's fake).  Yeah, i tried to get the bike legal but China wasn't having it.  I gave up after 4 days of total wasted time, wading through miles of red tape.  I instead opted for a forged receipt.  A receipt gives 30 days of legal riding in China.  However, this time is supposed to be used for you to get legitimate paper work and plates...not to ride across China.  The policeman was not too happy to see that I had nine thousand kilometers on my bike, and that I was still using my receipt in place of my paper work.  He threatened to impound the bike.  I knew he wasn't bluffing because of the huge rows of chained up motorcycles next to each toll both near Shanghai.  Long story short, he let me go but said that the cops in the city will take the bike for sure if I get stoped.  Reasoning that the bike was worth no more than 100 dollars in its current state, I decided to press on.  It had been 100 days and I was so close to the end.  What happens, happens.  It was about 9:00 p.m. when I made it to the city limit of Shanghai.  I took some pictures and went to sleeping dreaming of the days when I never have to sit on a Chinese built motorcycle again.  Tomorrow I just have to sell it.

-J.