27.6.2009 von Ines.

This afternoon/evening I met some friends but we had to say goodbye. James is leaving too. It was the last time I saw him. Now that both him and Brad are gone I will be the lonely foreigner showing up to the rides of the Beijing Fixed Gear bike group. Another cycling friend is moving back home and had his goodbye party tonight. He was showing the 45 minute video he had taken with a handlebar camera on his daily commute to work. That really shows the feeling of riding in Beijing traffic. Vehicles and people can suddenly approach you from random directions. And another friend had a party but it was just because he moved into a new apartment. Even though he will leave in September.

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27.6.2009 von Ines.

Today was the 10th big ride of the year organized by the Beijing Peloton. It was a special one as it was the first MOB (Mountain Bikers of Beijing) and Peloton Road Cyclist Joint Ride. Tom had written in the Trek newsletter: To make it official we have adopted the following slogan-esque and easy to remember name: “Glorious Unity Purpose MOB and Peloton Joint Ride To Make Harmonious Society At Bai Hua Shan To Wanr Wanr With Bikes: One Country, Two Bike Systems”. Amazingly, the Chinese version of this slogan is only 4 characters long.

We started at 05:50 a.m. at the TREK Chaoyang store. Bai Hua Shan is located 100km west of Beijing and is situated along a slow and meandering mountain national road number 108. Driving there already took us 3 hours as the that national road was under construction most of the way.

But we all wanted to ride on Beijing’s highest mountain summit road. The Bai Hua Shan Loop had a total distance of 100km for the fast A riders. It was an out and back loop and started at 200m altitude. The road went continuously up for 30km length towards 2000m elevation (6500ft)!

The first part of the road to the foot of the hill was not such a nice ride. All the villages seem to live from coal mining and huge mountains of shredded coal are everywhere. All the old trucks on the road do not just annoy us as they drive roughly the same speed as we cycle but they were all loaded with black coal. On the right side of this picture you see the edge of such a random coal hill.

Well there was a gate at roughly 1300m where we had to stop for a while.

We were all happy that we did continue our ride up this beautiful narrow road that soon turned into many switchbacks. They were really steep that I often had to stand up to get more force onto the pedals.

At the top of Bai Hua Shan mountain there is a monastery. This is the highest temple in Beijing province. There was a monk sitting with us at this bell. We took a picture for one of our sponsors Powerbar.

On the way back back down we could enjoy the beautiful view. I stopped to take many pictures. It happened twice that I was so amazed by the view standing (but still sitting on my bike) to take a picture that I just fell over and could not get out of the clip pedals. On this picture you can see part of the road that we cycled up and back down. It goes all the way to the center of the picture.

All the pictures of this beautiful ride are uploaded to my website. When I arrived back at the mini-bus our driver just started laughing at me. I asked what is up but he did not explain. But other people told me that may face was quite black. And when I got home I had to shower twice to get all the black coal dust off of me.

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