Update 7/27/2006

It's hard to believe that we have been riding around China for a month now.  Our 30 day visas expired yesterday.  Rodger and Andrew flew to L.A. from Xi'an the morning of the 26^th and will begin touring the states on bikes that they purchased over ebay.  They left their Chinese bikes with Yuan's family (in Da Li, China) who will help us by selling them in the near future.  In the mean time I am constructing one reasonably respectable looking "Frankenstein" bike, from the three severely battered and beaten Jialings.  Once this project is complete, it is eastward again for me.  Final destination, Shanghai...I hope.  So, you may be wondering how am I still in China if my visa expired.  Lets just say that if the Chinese government asks, I am a temporary Chinese resident living in an apartment in Xi'an.  Yes it was dumb because they could have rejected me and I would be banned from China, but I'm very stubborn about making it to the other coast...what can I say?  It took a full day in Xi'an to apply for temporary residency because of the convoluted way that all Chinese legal processes work.  It is unbelievable to see really. 

China is kind of like the "holy grail" of motorcycle tours because of the difficulty for foreigners to obtain permission to ride here.  Not to mention that it has some of the most amazing riding in the world.  We were lucky enough to have a friend that was a citizen who was willing to come along (only legal way), but there is still the question of being able to ride in the east.  China doesn't allow motorcycles on the highways and also doesn't allow motorcycles in the large eastern cities.  We started to see the beginning of this difficulty on our ride to Xi'an.  The toll both attendants for the highways just start to yell at you when you drive up.  You can play the "we don't speak Chinese" game, but then they just point to the giant picture of the motorcycle with a big "X" through it that hangs above their heads.  The alternative road is absolute torture.  In some areas it follows just feet away from the perfectly paved highways, taunting you.  It randomly changes from cracked pavement to mud and loose gravel.  We share this road with the other neglected vehicles of China such as horse carriages, bicycles and 3-wheelers.  In some areas the little road just stops.  It's this that has caused us to resort to everything from neighborhoods to sidewalks, down stairs, through construction, through crowd after crowd.  Of course all of this requires stopping at almost every corner to ask directions, and half of these directions are wrong.  It's very frustrating to put in 16 hours of riding and look to see 300 kilometers on you trip-meter at the end of the day.  It's more frustrating still to look at the map and see you've moved the width of a finger tip when your destination is still an arm's length away…road conditions are everything on a bike.  I hate to say it, but I see a lot of following the GPS in a general easterly direction in the near future. 

-J.