Portrait of an LBX

By Andy

2010/06/16 — 79 km

Fresh, wild mushrooms for breakfast. Photo by Andy

Some days just make you feel privileged to have the opportunity to be out riding a bike instead of in an office, at home or just about anywhere else.

We crawl out of bed to the alarm at 6:30 in order to try a new strategy of biking for a few hours, taking a couple-hour break mid-day, and then biking a few more hours in the afternoon. All three of us are bouncing up and down, fighting the urge to pee our pants. You see, after we moved all our stuff into the hotel the night before, the hotel owner informed us that we would have to go to the bathroom at the gas station next door and locked the bathroom in her own hotel. We all peed off the balcony and into the parking lot at some point in the night, but without the cover of darkness we aren’t so bold now.

We step out under a brilliant blue sky. It has rained all night and every trace of the haze that followed us out of the city the day before is gone. The air is crisp and cool and the golden morning sun makes even the dreary old truck-stop town of yesterday a sight to behold.

A group of ethnic Miao women is gathering along either side of the street, selling wild mushrooms from the mountains in baskets. We pay 35 kuai ($5.12) for a sizable portion and bring it with us to breakfast to have done up in local style as we watch more and more women and children come down from the mountains with baskets of fresh wild mushrooms for sale.

Breakfast otherwise is fried noodles as usual. The mushrooms come out a bit later, sliced up and fried plain in copious amounts of oil. So maybe the local style isn’t all that great. Nobody starts hallucinating from the wild fungi, so after some stretching we begin down the road.

We climb at first, finishing the ridge separating two valleys that we began the night before as we sprinted into town ahead of the rainstorm. Cresting the ridge, short, rounded mountains stretch off into the distance on either side, and we descend into a long, green valley. (more…)

By Andy

2010/06/15 — 95 km

Getting out of a city blows. Photo by Andy

The day before we leave Kunming our friend Aaron flies in from Shanghai to spend a week biking with us on his 20” wheel, folding Dahon bike. A number of us own these things (including Evan and I), which are great for getting around in the city and occasionally folding up and taking on a short trip. Evan and I have both sworn off doing anymore long trips with them though. They’re just not quite meant for it.

We wake up in our 10-person dorm at The Hump hostel in Kunming and grab one more big breakfast of french toast, eggs and fresh coffee before heading out into the wild. We make another run by the bike shop in town to pick up some last minute things for Aaron, and then we’re off.

Despite its many charms (and we’ve decided we do quite like Kunming, especially after discovering the nifty restaurants and bars in the university district), getting out of the city is a soul-sucking experience just like getting out of any other. It starts out with just too much traffic and people, but soon we’re lost in the numerous overpasses and interchanges and wishing that for the love of all things good and holy couldn’t China just  put useful things on street signs, accurately? (more…)

By Andy

2010/06/11 — 149 km

Big day. I wake up abruptly to the alarm at 6:45 after the best sleep I’ve had over the last three nights — and that’s not saying much. I just can’t sleep in a tent. I have a hard enough time getting a good sleep in a comfortable bed these days, despite the daily physical exhaustion.

We get things packed up and get a reasonably early start down the wooded mountain corridor, where we pass dozens of “food and lodging” (食宿) places no longer offering either food or lodging. It’s amazing to think how much commerce used to go up and down this little, two-lane road (national road 國道320), which stretches from the Burma border near Ruili the whole way east to Shanghai, over 3,000 km away. It’s nearly empty now, unless the expressway that has since supplanted it is closed in one direction, in which case it’s a miserable, dangerous mess.

I can only imagine that’s what it was like back when G320 was the main trade artery between Lashio and Kunming, which would explain the dozens of now-derelict eateries.

Still a ways to go, although you never know with these signs, by Andy

After a breakfast of noodles at a Muslim restaurant (they make the best boiled noodles by a long shot when boiled noodles are all there is to be had!), we continue down the road. The valley gradually widens and we are on a wide highway of sorts. We pass two signs that seem to indicate that the expressway that parallels our national road can be reached to the left and that we should continue straight (have a look at the picture to the left and see if you agree with that assumption).

I continue ahead while Evan stops to take some pictures of local architecture and the murals on the walls and climb up a steep mountain for nearly a kilometer. When I get to the top though the road dead-ends at a toll booth. I approach and ask the woman at the ticket window, “This isn’t the expressway, is it?”

Oh, but it is.

“What happened to the national road toward Kunming?”

She gives me a confused look and calls another worker over. After a moment of consultation the man tells me, “You have to go back down the mountain and turn right.” (more…)

By Andy

2010/06/10 — 117 km

Little Weirdo, by Andy

This time we get out of our tents and packed up an hour earlier, although we still get on the road half an hour later than we would if we were in a hotel. Before we climb down from our plowed, planted perch, I check the altitude and find we’re at 2,390 m (7,841 ft). By the time we get on our bikes and climb to the top of the pass, we’re over 2,400 m (7,874 ft), the highest we’ve climbed on the trip, and possibly the highest we’ll get until we’re climbing up onto the Tibetan Plateau in Sichuan province.

We find breakfast 18 km later in the valley, and I’ve already gotten my head in a steam about the insane traffic that still plagues us. Fortunately, when we pull into the restaurant I notice that the long strand of trucks, buses and SUVs is originating from the expressway exit in town, and breathe a sigh of relief that we’ll be free of the awful traffic and numerous near-death encounters until the next time they decide to close off the expressway in one direction for a hundred kilometers or so.

The day turns out to be fairly easy and uneventful, consisting of long cruises through green, rice-covered valleys and the occasional climb over into the next.

We stop for lunch around two, but Evan doesn’t eat. We’ve got metabolisms about as opposite as they come. When we continue after lunch, we find the Yunnan architecture that we’ve been marveling at so much (and which I’ve failed to mention to this point) has grown even more interesting. (more…)

By Andy

2010/06/09 — 82 km

After packing up and scampering down from our parched perch overlooking the national road, we climb the remainder of the mountain on which we camped and cruise into the next valley.

As soon as we hit the bottom, the air is filled with gray dust and I pull out my sunglasses. It doesn’t take long to discover the source of the dust: in the short valley and proceeding up the road for at least two kilometers on the next slope are tombstone-carving factory after tombstone-carving factory. Never have I seen so many hokey lion statues and dragons carved into mausoleum-sized rock structures. I guess the rock must be good there!

We find our first town and “breakfast” at the top of the next slope. When we first started camping on this trip in Hebei, we were pretty jittery about how it would work out. There were no natural forests to speak of, and we had no choice but to climb into one of the many tree farms, with trees planted in long, straight rows. No matter how far in we walked, we could still see the road. Given the strict residence and registration rules for foreigners in China, we were worried about being discovered. I don’t think Evan slept a wink the entire night. The next morning we were gone and on the road at first light.

Oh how things have changed. Now we sit in the tents until the sun gets unbearable and then lazily go through all the numerous motions of packing up all the gear and finally getting on the road.

At first we’re a little confused when the lady at the restaurant tells us there’s no breakfast, but it all makes sense when I see that it’s already 11:30. Well, that was a good 10 km before lunch! (more…)

By Evan

nomad |ˈnōˌmad|

noun

• a member of a people having no permanent abode, and who travel from place to place to find fresh pasture for their livestock.

• a person who does not stay long in the same place; a wanderer.

– New Oxford American Dictionary

The nomadic lifestyle, by Evan

Although the only things we seek that might pass for “fresh pasture” include fried rice noodles with eggs and maybe bottles of oil (or whisky), we do quite neatly fit the definition of classic “bike nomads.” This, of course, is a very difficult concept to convey to most Chinese, who typically after hearing the entire spiel about what we’ve done over the last nine months and will continue to do for the next four will then ask, “so you both live in Beijing, and you’re students there?” “Home is where your (sore) butt is” will probably mystify most until we get onto the Tibetan plateau in a month. I digress.

Back to the point, more often than not on this big, ridiculous trip of ours, we fall short of our forecasted feral-ness. We had planned from the beginning to stay a majority of our nights either in the homes of LBXes or in the wilderness, but this man-like plan has like many others gone mice-like. So it was decided, after several days of self-pampering à la European backpacker in Dali in the walled-in hippy nest of Andy’s college bud Rick, that we should man up a little. We also wanted to live cheap to recover the old wallet from our spending frenzies. Up to $20 USD in a single day — madness, madness! (more…)

By Andy

2010/06/08 — 72 km

Dali is a treat, although not in the most relaxing way, since there we meet up with a college buddy Rick who lives there. Our original plan calls for two days in Dali, but a stomach bug keeps us there for three.

After one last Western breakfast, we finally get on the road around 11:30. The combination of a day and night of spent sitting on the toilet and trying to hold my food in has left me utterly exhausted, but we need to be on toward Kunming, where our friend Aaron is coming in from Shanghai to meet up and ride for a week.

"Accumulate wealth for the nation; carry out the law for the people." Pay your taxes (more each year) or the law will be carried out for you, people!

Immediately upon leaving the Dali old town, we remember just where we are. After three days of snoozy little streets and cafes, the national road out of town is a rude awakening. Horns blare, the “hallos!” are back in full force, and there’s even a good strong wind blasting us in the face to welcome us back to the road.

Eventually, and this is like 25 km in, which is a tribute to Dali’s suburban sprawl, the four-lane concrete road narrows down to two lanes of bumpy asphalt, and we begin climbing into pine-covered mountains on an easy grade. (more…)