Yesterday I signed off of these live dispatches thinking that my adventure was over, that I’d reached the east coast of China where the Great Wall begins, and that I’d be riding a long boring highway the 250 km back to Beijing. But noooooooooo . . . what would a motorcycle misadventure be without the unexpected? There’s no chase vehicle, we’re on our own, and that’s what it’s all about, so what happens when things go wrong, like the right side of the engine starts to lose power, and you think the throttle cable is too slack and fix it, okay, whew, and get back on the freeway and then you lose power again and there’s a knocking sound that gets louder and so you stop and take the cover off to check that the tappets haven’t come lose or a rod hasn’t broken. Nope, all is good, maybe a jiggle here, a jiggle there, will do it. But nope, it’s still there and getting louder by the second so you switch off the key and strap the tow rope to Diny’s bike and chug along in the emergency lane (new highway, smooth emergency lane, nice), to exit at Toll Booth Number 17.
Now, this is a BMW engine, darn it, so what could be happening? The thing has been using oil — the dipstick usually shows it at the halfway mark when I check it each morning before taking off. That’s expected with a CJ, and Teresa’s CJ always needed to be topped up, Diny maybe used about two tablespoons in her BMW this whole time. Maybe it’s the piston. That’s what the mechanic at Toll Booth #17 thought, and then he ran off to find a truck to load me up and take me back to Beijing.
I said goodbye to Diny and Steff, who bundled up for their long boring ride home on the freeway, and I was swooshed into the white tiled building that was the toll booth workers office and housing, given a hot lunch of rice and stir-fried vegetables, and was then ushered into the exercise room where the exercise equipment was piled in a corner in favor of a few chairs and a big-screen TV.
An hour later my mechanic returned with a truck and driver. We found some metal ramps and pushed the CJ up into the truck bed, tied it down with rope, got directions to Beijing, and were off. My driver wasn’t one of those people who were willing to try to converse in a language I didn’t really understand, so the four hours back were spent largely in silence, except for a period of time when he turned on the radio to Chinese country rock and rave.
I spent my time looking at the cars, the freeway signs, and the passing countryside. As we flew by farmers inspecting their autumn fields I wondered what they were thinking. Possibly wondering if they had enough for winter, what would they plant where next spring, resenting the noise of the highway, or grateful for any money the government might have given them for their land–if they were paid anything at all. Were they paid? I’ll have to ask Teresa. As former Agricultural Attache for the USA in China, she knows just about everything about farmers in China, food safety, and exports.
I was also still trying to figure out the Rules of the Road. Now here I was in a truck with a driver who knew all of them, and I noted carefully his behavior. There are four lanes on the highway. He mostly stayed in the second lane, and passed on the left or on the right, whatever was convenient. Most of the big slow trucks stayed in the second land instead of the first lane, largely, I believe, out of habit. On smaller roads people come jumping into the road from the right, so the bigger vehicles just hog the left lane, making everybody else pass on the right.
But the highway people were trying to get them to behave differently. They put big signs above each lane, from 4 to 1, labeled:
PASSINGLANE CARRIAGEWAY CARRIAGEWAY EMERGENCYVEHICLES
Sometimes these signs were changed to read:
120 90 60 PARKING
At dusk, few vehicles turned on their lights, in order to save the bulb, and when it got dark, only reluctantly. Brights were used momentarily to see better or to flash somebody that you want to pass or to punish someone who had their brights on in your face. It seemed a lose-lose situation.
Entering Beijing at night is a trip. First, there’s the toll booths where you pay 80RMB ($10) for using the expressway from its origins in the east–which we did. There are about 20 booths stretched across the highway–on each side! It’s truly massive.
Then there is the massive expansion. When you enter Beijing today, you see hundreds and hundreds of dark, unoccupied apartment buildings, cranes from every third rooftop, and thousands and thousands of drivers who have been driving only as long as they have owned their cars: Hondas and KIAs and Toyotas and Audis and more, specially made for the Chinese market.
It’s 20 km between the 6th ring road and the 5th ring road, on which we exited to make our way to the Airport Expressway. Now, I was following along on my map and one would think that a city would have clearly marked signs at each exit to the airport, but not this city. You just have to know, I guess because foreigners aren’t allowed to drive in China, and until recently, people just didn’t have cars, so maybe the highway sign planners didn’t think of that. We paid tolls twice more to get onto the city streets, which were crowded with pedestrians, construction zones, tractors, all with no lights, riddled with potholes, and absent of signage. (Yes, this is the time to thwack somebody in the Beijing city planning office
upside the head and say "Hello? Let’s past some big white airplane
stickers on some of those exits, okay? And make it happen before the
Olympics.")
Finally I recognized a big garden and pottery shop that I knew was very close to Jim’s motorcycle shop, and pulled over to make a clarifying call. I would have been able to find it in the daytime, but at night, all bets are off. We turned out to be about 100 yards away, thank goodness, and the driver backed into the courtyard where the dogs just went crazy. (Everybody has a chained up shepard trained to bite, here, for security. Not happy creatures.) We unloaded the bike, and I paid my driver (about 100 bucks), and got a taxi to Teresa’s (about $2.50) just in time for a lasagna dinner with her mother and her dog, just arrived from the states after a few days of false starts due to the dog’s vaccination papers. They both looked tired, and so was I. It was an early night for everybody.
Here are a few photos for the October 30 Photo Album.
Congrats on finishing up your adventure, Carla, but I’m surprised from your photos how cold it all looks. If I ever tour china on a bike, I’m going in the heat of summer! And what was the problem with your bike?