Month: May 2010

Yesterday night, Ellen was supposed to ride to XuZhou (almost leaving JiangSu Province). She began the day at about 8 am and started following her road atlas. But after half a day or riding, the road ended….. That’s the thing with China, Roads are being torn up and built constantly. Atlases don’t often completely tell the truth. It’s the effect of a rapidly growing economy. Anyway, the road just ended and Ellen had to back track, losing much of the progress she had made. The sun had set, Ellen was on a highway of some sort and was nowhere close to a city. She eventually walked her bike down an on ramp to a normal road. Two fellows on a scooter pulled up to her to do the usual gawk and question. Ellen chatted them up and they led her to a cheap motel to crash at. it was 11 pm… Time to crash and start over in the morning.

I’m not entirely sure where Ellen is right now, but I know that her spirit is high and she is doing well. She called me today to tell me that she will be on her way to Huai An in the morning and that it will be a relatively short day. Today she did about 125 Kms to make it to where she is right now. She found a cheap motel in stay in tonight. On her ride today, she stumbled onto one of the 4 canal locks on the great canal. This is a very fortunate find as there are only about 4 canal locks left of what used to be the great canal. Don’t worry, lots of pictures were taken and we’ll all be able to see them in due time. In other news, Ellen’s Chinese has been progressing at an increasing pace (like the Natural Log function). She’s been ordering up scallion pancakes on her own and talking to random people on the streets about her adventure with ease. Go Ellen!

So far, Ellen has had to repair 2 flat tires. Not too bad for the trip so far. These last few days shes been racking up 100 + Km days. Tomorrow will probably be a rest day and she’ll do a 1/2 day of riding.

Ellen is hunkering down in Chang Zhou right now due to some heavy rain. She send this from the road

“stuck in Chang Zhou at a KTV motel, or am I just in a David Lynch film? Seriously, don’t come here unless you want a mouthful of dirt and a prostitute – those 2 don’t relate to each other, I think?”

Once Ellen parted ways with me, she headed in a north westerly direction. But due to the crazy amount of road construction, progress was slow and many many detours were taken. After a frustrating day of riding, Ellen decided to find a spot to set up camp. She was somewhere outside of WuXi. Off the main road, she found a clear patch of ground that wasn’t too visible. The ground was lumpy. A patch of trees had recently been torn out of the clearing. Camp was set up and she called it an early night.

Day 3, Started with a tube change. There had been a largish puncture in her tire and tube. The tube and tire were both patched up and Ellen was on her way. (FYI: If you ever get a largish tire puncture/gash and just need to make it home or bike shop, after you patch up your tube, you can fold up a dollar bill and stick it between the tube and tire). After a full day of hard riding, Ellen cruised through Chang Shu and then into Chang Zhou. So far she has chocked up about 250 Kilometers.

This is Jason and I’ll be filling in for Ellen since she has limited internet capabilities while on the road. On Friday (5/1), Ellen and I rode to Shu Zhou. Shu Zhou is about 100 km to the west of Shanghai. The weather was hot, but the roads were relatively smooth. At 2 pm, we stopped for lunch at a hole in the wall restaurant. We had stir-fried green and mushrooms, spicy tofu, cold cucumbers with soy sauce and vinegar, and a beer. Everyone tends to stop and look at Ellen’s bike. Kids tend to look at the front and rear racks and comment “Yeah, this bike is good for kids, you can kit on the front and the back!” With a full belly of food, we left the restaurant and hit the road. It took us about 6 hours in total to get to Shu Zhou. We were going on average of 25 KMH (pretty good for a loaded touring bike), which should total up to  150 KMs, but there was a lot of stopping to check the map and getting lost due to road construction/detours.  When we got to Shu Zhou, we ate a couple ice cream cones to celebrate.