Motorcycle Misadventures in China: October 21, continued

Continued from previous entry…

The military cops said we couldn’t pass. They said our license plates weren’t legal in Beijing province which was ridiculous because all our plates had the Beijing pictogram and they were the special "go-everywhere" black plates, not the province-specific blue plates.

"I live in Beijing, I came from Beijing, so I have to get back home," said Teresa, but they weren’t convinced. Also, they said, the road had collapsed, so nobody could get through. Then they asked for our papers.

"Show them your passport but not the bike registration," Teresa told us. The cops only looked at the cover, didn’t touch them, didn’t open them.

Meantime, a Chinese couple in a car were waiting behind us to go through. "I’ll bet that as soon as we leave they’ll be able to go through, no problem," Teresa said. She was furious.

Finally she called her driver who talked to the military police, who basically told him that there was no way they were going to let us through. Her driver said that we’d better follow their instructions or risk being arrested and having the bikes confiscated. The law was fuzzy on whether or not we could be driving. The cops would be escorting us personally out of their territory, in fact, because they were lying to us, it was a military installion, or so said the woman in the car behind us.

"Well why don’t they just say that, and tell us to take another road?" I asked, eyeing the soldier with the gun. It was short and round and looked like a pop-gun.

"I know I know… my driver, he always talks me down, I get too reasonable, but he’s right, we need to just do what they say, no matter what."

No time, no arguing, we just had to muster up the gall to smile and face the least of two fates, being escorted out rather than arrested for being in a place we weren’t supposed to be, even though we didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be in it . . . then we were following a cop car, sirens blowing, on a secondary road through amazingly beautiful mountains at 40 km per hour, a painfully slow speed on twisty smooth roads.

Finally, after about 20 km of this, I rode up next to Teresa and yelled, "What if I race ahead, pull over for a pee, and that’s our excuse to stop? Then you can explain that we can go faster."

She nodded, and I revved it up, overtook the cops at about 80km per hour, found a turnout, and crouched down behind the bike for a pee.  The cops and the other two caught up, pulled over, and Teresa used my excuse to have a conversation with them.

"You know, those Chang Jiang motorcycles the other two have, they have BMW engines, and they need to go fast," she said. "Me, I just have the CJ engine, and I’m okay, but they’re overheating."

"Oh?" the cops said. "We were afraid you all couldn’t keep up."

"Oh no," Teresa said. "You can go as fast as you want to. We can definitely keep up, and their engines will stay cooler."

Then those cops took off like crazy people, sirens blaring through the towns, scaring people half to death. Of course 30 seconds after that my fender started rattling like mad — a screw had jiggled lose and I knew I was going to lose the whole thing under my wheel unless I stopped to tighten it. I did, and it took a long time to catch up but I did, grinning as I tested the BMW engine on the straightaways at speeds that topped 110 kilometers.

I passed Diny who had been lagging worrying about me knowing that the fender screws had probably come loose again but who felt uncomfortable with me out of sight, and then we both raced to catch up to Teresa, who was doing a respectable job keeping up to speed on her CJ 750 engine. Maybe 40 horsepower? I might have 60, Diny more. The main difference between the CJ and the BMW engines is in the throttle response. They’ll all go over 100, but overtaking can be a problem with the CJ as it doesn’t respond as quickly, where with the BMW’s they just blow by the trucks, which is critical on these roads unless you want to be breathing diesel fumes for miles.

Finally we crossed over out of the cop’s jurisdiction. "Say thank you to the nice policemen," Teresa told us, and we smiled and shook their hands. They grinned. We said good bye. Thank you much, thanks.

Relieved we sat at the side of the road for a while wondering what to do next when an old man rode up on a scooter and said there were two big lakes down that road there, a dam, an American resort, and all kinds of interesting stuff.

"It’s on the way to Badoling," said Teresa, so we can stop by the Great Wall and get back to Beijing before dark."

I was all for that and so was Diny.

The road (path) around the lake was about paved and not in equal parts, and was nice riding if you didn’t mind the rough spots. There were farmers selling fruits on the roadside: squashes, persimmons, dates, apples, Asian pears, and small crab apples both fresh and dried.

There were many wineries, too — a new industry for China. Chateau de something. We’d tried Chinese wine during our trip and found it surprisingly palatable. "Get the later vintage," Teresa had advised. "They’ve had more experience."

The closer we got to Beijing the better the roads were, but then we were faced with the Expressway, upon which the tires of mere motorcycles are forbidden to touch, and the secondary roads, poorly maintained and clogged with donkey carts, three-wheeled diesel tractors and other such inferior vehicles.

But soon the Great Wall appeared in all its carefully restored glory. This is the stretch of wall that 99% of tourists — Chinese and foreign — come to visit. We planned to have a cup of tea, maybe climb some section of it, and head back to the city, but arrived to find that the place had morphed into a veritable carnival, with souvenir shops, a wild animal zoo/safari park, and about 100 times more tourists we’d planned on.

We circled the parking lot, gawking at all this while being gawked at, and I got this awful feeling that what happened in the Genghis Kahn mausoleum ten years ago was about to happen again — that is, Chinese tourists from the provinces rushing at me with cameras, tearing at my clothes, pulling my hair, and yelling hello! hello! hello!, then running off screaming.

Teresa, largely immune to such experiences as she has the language skills to hold it off, looked back at me with a frightened look that frightened me and said, "I have a feeling that if we stop we’re going to get mobbed."

"Let’s get out of here," I agreed, and so we circled around and exited, contenting ourselves with the view of leaving the Great Wall. It didn’t matter all that much. We’d seen such lengths of it — rather worn, but more authentic — many times before, and we didn’t need the gift shops, the tourists, the camels and astrologers and souvenirs and gimmicks.

Leaving, we passed an American or European family, all blonde and being harassed by tourists. Hello! Hello! Hello! <giggle giggle snap snap>

They looked at us zooming by with expressions of astonishment and envy.

Descending towards the city the wall was visible for miles continuing south on a good road in fresh clean air and beautiful fall colors. Then we hit it. Traffic, smog, cars, trucks, taxis, busses hell-bent on killing us, or at least pretending they might. We were stuck in one of the worst traffic snarls I’d ever experienced in my whole life, an ambulance screaming its way through and being purposely blocked at every effort to squeeze by, when my engine quit.

At first I figured it had just become too hot with all the stopping and starting. I was sweating in my heavy leather jacket with its down snap-in vest and a sweater under that, not to mention the helmet, tights, boots — but no time to shed clothes, I quickly unlocked the trunk, took out a screwdriver, and experimented with the idle screw and the air screw as Teresa and Diny looked back at me in their mirrors, with no little anxiety.

The starter button had given me a little trouble for a while, and I suspected that the starter motor might be wearing out, but that was of secondary concern as the motorcycle had a kick starter. I fiddled with the air mixture screw, figuring it might have rattled loose on those bad roads. I twisted it all the way in, then one and a half turns out. Then I noticed that the idle screw was twisted almost all the way in, so I loosened that a little.  During this time traffic hadn’t moved, which tells you a little bit about how bad it was.

I kicked it over just as traffic started again, and it caught. Teresa and Diny let out a congratulatory yell and we raced through the light with the rest of the crazy people, and saw a sign that the 5th ring road, our destination, was 20 km away. Is it possible that the 6th ring and the 5th ring are really 20 km apart? Apparently, yes.

Teresa and Diny had a little conference talk ahead of me and suddenly we were turning left, going around and not through. The bike quit two more times before I got the idle-air screws right, and then we were on a ring road or expressway with maddened drivers as dying to get home as we were.

"Twenty minutes!" Diny yelled, as she zoomed by me on the on ramp. I held on and held my ground, thinking of the three of us as one unit and sticking to it so the cars and trucks and taxis wouldn’t separate us. Eye contact and a smile helped a lot with the passenger cars, but didn’t mean diddley with the professional drivers.  But by now, Teresa, Diny, and I were a well-oiled machine. We knew each others riding habits, capacity to take risks — Teresa less, me more, Diny somewhere in the middle — and recognized small signals like a shrug or a certain turn of the head that meant uncertainty. We were like the Blue Angels on that freeway, amazing spectators with our choreography.

And finally we turned off. And my bike quit again. And Teresa asked directions. And we were off again. "Twenty minutes!" Diny yelled at me, again. I rolled my eyes, but then even I recognized a street, the mannequins wearing garish coats with fur collars next to the barber shop and the grocery store, and then we were pulling into Starbucks laughing like crazy people.

"Wow, I can’t believe it," said Diny, after our hugs and goodbyes. "My bike ran perfectly!"

She started it up, turned the light on, there was a ping, and the bike quit, no electricity.

"I told you I told you don’t say that!" said Teresa, as we followed wires and couldn’t find the fuse, enlisted the help of everyone in the parking lot, and then finally found the fuse after calling the shop, and then called the shop to cancel the plea for help, and found Diny’s spare, and then she was off into the night.

"Only twenty more minutes!" she yelled, with a grin, and roared away.