In search of money, we head back out of Daofu, retracing our path, and head
for Kangding, the nearest city. The ride seems quicker on the way back,
since we're not packing extra people on the bikes and we know what to expect
from the road. Six kids flag us down on the road, and to my amazement, they
all manage to fit on the two bikes. I drive them into the next town
carefully, imagining the trouble it would be if on of the bikes crashed. We
hit the same soft dirt road with loose rocks, and take it easier on the
bikes this time through. In the process of passing a large truck we're
completely coated with dust, and all our laundering and showering seems
futile when we keep getting back on the bikes. We go back through the
grasslands, stop in Bamei for popsicles, and turn off on to new road headed
for Kangding. After traveling an old road with rows of trees providing shade
on the sides, we arrive outside a huge monastery, with a medium size town
behind it. They've strung prayer flags between two steel cables that span
maybe a half mile across the valley. We stop in the main square and kids
descend upon us, wanting rides on the bikes. After indulging a group of
girls dressed tradionally so they can charge for photos, we get some coffee
with a French guy. After spending too much - now we're down to about $5 - we
ride out of town and turn off onto a meadow near a river to camp. The ground
looks grassy but the bikes start sinking where it's muddy, and when I speed
up to float on top, I plow into basketball sized grass clumps that disappear
in the dim light and nearly drop the bike again. After making it through a
bit, we decide it's better to take the bikes out in daylight rather than
risk getting stuck. Across a stream there's firmer ground, and we make camp
there. To kill the evening, we walk back into town, but it's completely
dead. We ask a girl who's about 8 where there's an internet cafe, and she
leads us through dark alleys, but there's nothing open. We find a hostel
where people are playing cards and relax before hiking back to bed.<br/><br/>

The next morning we pack up, strap everything to the bikes, and figure a
route out of the muck. Sky wants to charge up a steep embankment back up to
the road, but I think it's best to go back across the meadow, because we
made it before, and now we can see. I charge across, keeping the engine
speed up, and head right for disaster - a marsh camouflaged by grass on top.
At first I try to power through forwards, but I see I'll be lucky just to
pull it back out - now the wheels are mostly buried, and I can't even step
off without sinking my feet deep in. Meanwhile, Sky is up on the road,
wondering what's taking so long. After some reflection, we start piling flat
rocks on the surface, giving us something of a foothold. Once we can stand
near the bike, we strain to pull it out backwards, through its own rut. Once
it's free, I drive out on Sky's route, and while he cleans his shoes, I find
a stream to cross on the bike so I can get off the mud on the brakes and
chain. This is another exercise in bad judgement, since the rocks in the
river are covered with algae, and I bounce and slide around madly as I
cross. On the way back through, the bike tips suddenly, and I put a foot out
to keep from falling. With all my effort, I can keep the bike up, but I
can't right it because I'd have to move the foot which is holding it all up.
After contemplating that I'm about to dump the bike in the stream, I manage
to shift my weight, scoot the foot over slippery rocks, and make it across
without soaking my pack. Finally, we set out, joining a freeway which turns
into rough dirt periodically. We pass up a police car on a rough stretch,
which is no big deal, we've learned - the cops don't care about traffic in
general, and are particularly lenient with foriegners. We crawl up another
mountain pass and take a shortcut between the switchbacks. As we pop the
bikes up out of the grass over a ditch back into the road, a passing
policeman waves. Over the pass, we race down the hairpin turns on the other
side. As we pull into Kangding, full of apartments, shops, and skyscrapers,
Sky runs out of fuel, and we can't spend our little remaining cash on that.
I use a plastic bottle to give him some fuel from my bike, and we pull
further into town. We find an ATM, but it rejects me and the PIN entry step.
Another bank's ATM stops cooperating further in the process. Now we're
starting to worry, asking what banks are in town, if anyone takes a credit
card, where the ATMs are. After waiting for some guys to clear, I get my
chance at a newer looking machine, which takes the card, accepts my input,
starts moving inside... and spits the card out. We've hit every ATM and none
of them work. We find the fanciest hotel in the town, and they don't do Visa
either. We spend a little of our remaining $2.50 to eat, and start thinking
what's next. Sell our stuff? Open a new bank account and wire money to it? A
Tibetan guy we meet offers to loan us cash so we can sleep and eat for the
night, but we're reluctant to borrow when we can't repay. We find a hostel
with foriegners and ask them how they get money, and find out that you
can't, really. Some Chinese girls offer to feed us, which we accept, and
also give us the use of their room for the night.<br/><br/>

The next day, we meet a Brit who has an account with one of the local banks,
and he'll give us cash if we promise to wire him the cash - problem solved.
The chinese girls want to visit some nearby lake, and we take them there on
the back of the bikes in a show of gratitude. My passenger seems to take
this as more than just a lift, clinging closer than necessary and burying
her face in my back. I'm starting to feel repulsed and cheapened, but as Sky
keeps reminding me, we have to be nice. They charge admission at the
enterance to the lake, which is nice but hardly amazing. We take a walk near
the top and are hassled to buy horse rides the whole way. You're supposed to
be able to see a 24,000 ft. peak from the end, but it's overcast, so we turn
back. Sky gives a kid a ride on the dirt bike and this draws dozens of
people, who circle around, ask me to give them rides, and offer to buy the
bikes for low-ball prices. Sky disappears down the road, returning minutes
later at high speed. The crowd parts and the bike flies through, small kid
driving with Sky in back, and skids to a stop just at the end of the parking
lot. On the way down we stop at a hot spring where you pay to eat eggs and
put your feet in. It's too hot to keep them in, so I walk through mud where
it mixes with a cold stream, only to be scolded by the people running the
attraction. On the way out I'm anxious to get back and have this girl off my
bike, riding fast and then waiting for Sky to catch up. Back at the hostel,
we eat with Sky's friend, who we ran across by chance, and get some time
alone. The hostel gives us the cheapest accommodation available, beds in
between chairs in the back lounge.<br/><br/>

After the two-day stall in Kangding, we hurry onto the road, following a
river north, back through Danba. After an hour of fast and pleasant riding,
we hit a closed gate, and the men there say we'll have to wait until 5pm to
get through - the road is under construction. We find a place to eat in the
small town we're stuck in, find more popsicles, and pet a white cat with one
light blue eye and one dark green one. We try to head across the river to
sit on the banks, and as we cross the bridge, a sidewind is blasting so hard
we have to lean the bikes way over to compensate. Then I notice dark clouds
coming in on the horizon, with the wind. We can't make it down to the river
banks, but we find waterfalls to sit by, and prepare for the rain that's
already starting. We head to the gate when it's almost 5, and a huge line of
cars is ready, with a pack of motorcycles at the head. When a man makes a
motion towards the gate, the whole pack races their engines, jerking forward
on the bikes, ready to leap forward. After a few teases, he finally lifts
the gate, and the pack goes wild. The front lines scream forward, and one
bike on the side pops a wheelie, throwing off both riders, and then pivots
on the back wheel, diving into the bushes. We chase after the leaders, and
soon the road merges into a construction site. Bikes are going everywhere,
with no clear path, and we stand up to better fly across the bumps. I spot
the road and swerve onto it, Sky close behind, and we've taken the lead. We
have the road to ourselves for a few kilometers, winding but smooth, and
then blow past a tunnel with machines working in it, which was actually our
turnoff. The rest of the pack is caught up now, and we move through the
dirt-and-stone tube, many tunnels forking to the side, straining to see in
dim headlights and sucking in dust. After exiting, we stop at another gate.
Up ahead, a loader is making a path through a rockslide covering the road,
pushing rubble off the mountainside. Once it's done, we're supposed to wait
for the cars on the other side to come through, but the motorcycle pack has
a mind of its own, charging once the flow of traffic stops. When we get
close, I see why - a guy in a sedan is figuring out how to drive it over the
boulder-pile passing for a road. The bikes squirm around on the sides, weave
through the line of cars, and we're on open road again. We move to the front
and spend an hour racing along undisturbed, then rest on sandy river banks.
Finally, we drift back into Danba, find a room for the night, and relax.<br/><br/>

The next day the storm we outran has caught up to us, and there are patches
of rain around as we continue to follow the river north. I watch the sky
worriedly, and soon enough we have to put the ponchos on, which flap like
crazy at highway speed. The weather is teasing, opening to blue sky for
moments, then sending down more rain. I notice a screw in my lap which
doesn't match anything on my bike - odd. After a few more miles, I flip my
visor up and the whole thing is falling apart - that explains it. Now I can
only use sunglasses to keep my eyes from being whipped by rain, so I'm even
more wishful for nice weather. We make it to Shaojin, a decent sized town,
and eat food as rain continues to fall outside. A shy but persistent girl
has questions in English for homework and we chat a while. We ask for a room
at a hotel, then leave when they won't budge on the price, and stay at a
cheaper one. I'm happy to have a dry room that night.<br/><br/>

The next day the sky has cleared we take a small paved road further north,
stopping at a waterfall with kids playing in it, supervised by monks. The
kids have a burn mark between their eyebrows, some kind of religious symbol.
Then we turn off onto dirt, passing a tunnel that's worthy of exploration.
We roll in on the bikes and see a huge underground complex, with tunnels,
machinery, and offices, but just a single person. Before they spot us, we
ride out. At a small town ahead, we manage to buy gasoline stored in plastic
soda bottles from more monks, who seem to be everywhere. We stop at the next
small town and find our next road, drawing another crowd eager to stare and
say "Hello!", and ride fast on a narrow dirt path up a canyon. We find
dinner in another town that tells us we're the first foriegners to ever
visit, and they offer us some brown powder that everyone is smoking. They
tell us to sniff some, and I figure it has to be opium, but it turns out to
be crushed tobacco mixed with ash. We leave town, dispersing the crowd
around the bikes, and do a hurried campsite search before it's too dark. A
meadow near a stream is the best we can find, though it's in sight of some
houses. After we make camp, we walk over to see if they have food, and bump
into villagers on the road who came to check us out. A small girl clings
fearfully to her dad, and the dad says there's no food, nothing for us. We
start walking towards the town anyway, and they're clearly nervous about us,
following close behind, so we go back, play Chinese chess, and lay out under
the stars. The sky is clear, the Milky Way is obvious, and we spot several
satellites and a few shooting stars. I lay out until it's too cold and then
crawl into the tent.<br/><br/>

In the morning, some villagers come to check us out just as we're about to
leave, and they're less intimidated in the daylight. We managed to draw
smiles and get a group photo. After following a river upstream for a few
hours, we stop with a Tibetian road crew and get taken in for lunch -
biscuits dipped in tea with melted butter floating on top. The road moves
out of the valley and over high grassland, with tents every few kilometers
where yak herding nomads live. The yaks aren't very bright - they stare from
the side of the road, then dash in a panic once I'm almost on top of them,
often choosing straight down the middle of the road as the "escape" route. I
notice dark clouds in the sky again. The dirt road empties out to a freeway,
and we bundle up for the cold, get up to speed, and watch patches of rain in
the distance. After a slight drizzle, we stop at a cluster of buildings to
drink hot tea and eat dumplings. We have 50 km to go on a small road to get
to the day's goal, and the sky is threatening rain, but the locals say it
won't rain until night. We buy more soda bottle gasoline and immediately go
up a mountain pass of about 14,000 feet. I'm reminded of Kashmir - forest at
lower elevation, waterfalls and streams, rocky mountain tops with green
carpet on the sides. We pause at the top in strong cold wind, then move down
through dozens of hairpin turns. Once we're out of the pass, we descend
seemingly forever, following a clear stream and surrounded by pine forest.
Some unseen bug stings me in the neck, and I honk for Sky to stop and pull
out the stinger, then just pull over when he can't hear. Exhausted from a
long day's ride, we come to Heishui, a small city, which is apparently under
renovation at the moment. The roads are torn up to dirt, pipes are laying in
ditches throughout the street, sidewalks are cracked, and construction
machinery rules the roadways. Sky goes in to a hotel to negotiate a price
while I sit in an alley and get stares from passers-by. One boy holding his
friend's hand stops and looks in shock, then is jerked along as his friend
continues. I lock eyes with the shopkeeper across the street, though this
doesn't faze him. Sky comes back ecstatic - "She thinks I'm Chinese! Don't
let her see you until I have the price!" We get the room cheap, but then
they try to gouge us on parking the bikes. I'm tired and cranky, and I'm for
leaving, but when they see this they relent and let us park for free. We
walk the town at night, looking for a restaurant, when the power goes
completely outl. Taking a step on the sidewalk is now way too dangerous, so
we step into the first place with a generator. After watching some golf on
the ever-present hotel TV, I'm out again.<br/><br/>

The next day we fetch the bikes and start out on a 200 km dirt section. As
we turn off into our valley, there's construction of new roads high above,
with excavators at the leading edge of the path. The work causes rockslides
that kick up enormous clouds of dust and tumble into the river below. We
stop to watch and flinch when explosives boom as they blast rock. The
terrain is dry and rocky, then increasingly forested as we gain elevation.
We pass small towns of Tibetan style houses, with huge drying racks for
crops outside. The riding is great - dirt road with enough smooth lines to
go fast on the bike if you are focused, but bumpy enough to bring four wheel
traffic to a crawl. In late afternoon, we search for a restaurant, and some
guys tell us there's one about 10km ahead. Once close we ask for directions,
and after halting words and gestures, an old woman gestures towards a nearby
building. We walk inside and enter a small room with a stove and seating.
They're badly stocked - no meat - but the chef starts the fire and pulls out
some noodles. Sky can barely talk because the guys speak another dialect,
and he's exhausted from trying to communicate. As we wait for the water to
boil, I notice that this doesn't really feel like a restaurant... Sky asks
the guy, and after a few times there's comprehension, and we find out we're
just barging into some guy's house and demanding food. We laugh and thank
the guy, and the rest of the family comes in. Grandma swings a prayer wheel
in one hand and pulls on a string, which dangles from another string, which
pulls on a crankshaft connected to another prayer wheel in the corner. I've
seen prayer wheels operated by hand, wind, and water, but this is the first
to employ reciprocating motion. We fill up on noodles and oil, then do
another hurried dusk campsite search. Tonight we find a flat pad overlooking
a sharp bend in a stream, near waterfalls and a rickety bridge. We cross the
bridge to find clear water and it's the scariest one I've been on - main
suspension cable sagging on one side, planks rotting out and missing, no
handhold, everything held together with bailing wire. We sit on the stream
banks for a long time talking, then are spooked by a flashlight nearby,
which turns out to be lightning. We lay inside the tent and hear thunder
rumbling for many seconds, and then rain starts pouring. We're quite dry
inside, and I sleep by the loud static of drops hitting the tent.<br/><br/>

The morning is overcast but dry, and we're both eager to leave. I've emptied
some internal reservoir of patience, and I want to be back in Chengdu. A
friend mentioned a huge burger and peanut butter pie he got there in an
email, I think that did it. I'm tired of dealing with the swarms every time
we stop in a town, having them sit on the bike and push every goddamn
button, the inability to communicate, all the stares. We ride away from the
river, over grassland again, and fly down the dirt and near-highway speed,
passing countless road crews. We have 350km to Chengdu, 100 of it on dirt,
and I'm fantasizing about pulling in at 9 pm and having my burger. We get
out of the dirt and stop in some miserable rat-hole town, flies all over the
restaurant, and about 5 things on the menu. I joke that they should start
serving the flies, since they're in such abundance. We're near the end of
our tank, and I ask Sky if he's on the reserve tank, and he says he's not,
unless one of the villagers played with the switch. We drive on freeway,
passing many towns but none with marked gas stations. Sky disappears behind
me, and I wait ahead, then turn back to find him on the side of the road,
out of fuel. It turns out he was on his reserve tank, and the villagers had
flipped the switch. We search for a discarded plastic bottle on the side of
the road, then use it to split the remaining fuel in my tank - about 300ml.
Apparently the reserve isn't very big. With 150ml each, we can go maybe 10km
more. We pull into a few-building town and ask for gas, and a guy offers to
sell from his motorcycle tank. He empties a liter, and we offer to pay
double the pump price, but he says he wants more, and jealously guards the
bottle when we try to look at it. A woman watching says "You're foreigners -
you should pay more." I'm furious with these stingy Han Chinese, after all
the selfless Tibetans we've been around. I insist on leaving, even though we
do need the fuel, and waste a little more rocketing off in first gear,
screaming the engine for dramatic effect. In the next cluster of buildings,
they have nothing. We continue moving down the road, and then Sky runs out
again. So we walk the bikes along, asking every person we pass if they have
fuel, as motorized vehciles whiz past us. Everyone says they have nothing,
when vehicles almost certainly not dry are parked all around them, or want
to charge us something obscene. Stubborn, I won't pay them on the principle,
so we keep walking. We have 30 km to go until the next pump, which we could
walk before starving. When it starts getting dark, we stash the bikes in
forest on the side of the road, and Sky prepares to hitchike into town. By
amazing coincidence, a truck gets a flat tire and stops not 10 meters away
from us. He makes a call on his cell phone, and Sky asks about gettng fuel
brought in from town, but he has some in a spare tank in the bed of his
truck. Without mentioning anything about money, he fills up our bottles and
gives us as much as we want. I give him about 4 times the going rate, more
than the gougers could hope for, and force him to take it despite his
protests. A happy ride into town later, we fuel the bikes to the brim and
find a hotel to crash in.<br/><br/>

Our last day of riding is all freeway, headed straight for Chengdu. The
first part is winding along a mountainside, verging on cliff at points,
packed with busses of Chinese tourists. Some places have no guard rail and
hundred meter drops on the outside, and I hug the inside of the lane, until
I contemplate that a head-on bus impact is just as lethal. The economies of
the towns we pass seem to be supported by bus passengers paying to have a
photo taken as they ride an albino yak in front of the gorge we're
following. Still in a bad mood, I honk to clear the tourists out of the road
like cattle. Some mist is out, so we watch for wet road on the turns, honk
around blind corners, pass with care, and give the riding full attention.
This feels like the final exam of our dirt bike training. We get caught in a
procession of cars and busses behind slow trucks on a very windy section of
road. Every time it straightens out, everyone gets into the oncoming lane to
pass, so no one actually can pass. I breathe diesel exhaust behind a bus for
a while, and then we just go for it, kick the bikes down two gears, and
scream up the oncoming lane. Almost at the front, a car comes around the
bend, and we duck behind the lead slow truck. On a straightaway, we move to
pass that truck, and creep pass its length as a jeep on the road ahead
flashes its high-beams in warning. We nose past and swerve back over into
our lane and then enjoy open road for kilometers ahead. In town we hit
congestion, then use our small size to weasel past another accident causing
a traffic snarl, and then make our way down out of the mountains. Now the
riding is complicated by rain and swarms of bees. Several bees strike me in
the face, and then I finally catch one stinger-end first on my cheek. I get
Sky to stop and pull the stinger out this time, and we keep moving. We catch
up to a guy on a dinky motorcycle who shows us how things are done in China,
racing past cars in the oncoming lane at every opportunity. We hit the
plains, make quick time for Chengdu, and stop for food just outside of town.
Then it starts raining again. Struggling to see through wet sunglasses, we
keep moving along, following what turns out to be a cars-only expressway,
then finding a suitable highway. The sky clears, it's warm out, and we drive
like we own the road, keeping the bikes near top speed and passing up just
about everyone. To find our new hostel, I consult their map, aerial photos
of the town, and enter the GPS coordinates of our target. Inside are friends
from Kangding, beds, and food.<br/><br/>

Since the riding, I've been in a pleasant state of suspension, sleeping a
lot, killing time at internet cafes, and eating good Tex-Mex. The hostel
reminds me a lot of college, with writing on the walls, people gathering and
talking all the time, and drinking parties all night. I would be out of here
by now but I have to wait for the cheapest airfare. I'm working on selling
the bikes - we have an offer from the guys who looked at them with us when
we bought them, but they're low-balling us in typical Chinese fashion. My
hope is to find some westerners who want to do the same...<br/><br/>