China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

My friend Dieter works at the Belgium Embassy. As it is Easter they have the Easter Monday off. So he suggested to take me out north for some nice road cycling in the mountains. It was good that it had rained last night so the air was clearer than the last 2 days, but it was still slightly hazy.

Once we started riding the air became clearer. We could see further and further. It was so gorgeous with the blossoming cherry and peach trees, the fresh green leaves on many trees, the mountains and mountains, the temples and pagodas on the mountain tops. When we entered the 10km long climb I saw 2 beautiful pheasants flying from one tree to the next. The looked like phoenixes. It was so quiet on these nicely paved roads. Only the 20km false flat that is quite steep in some sections was killing with the head wind. I was hiding behind Dieter who pulled me all the way over that almost never ending false flat. The whole loop we rode was 85km.

Just when we started cycling we passed a place „Sino-Belgium Museum Display Equipment“.  We first thought it was a Sino-Belgium Museum. But it turned out to be a factory for display cabinets. I never knew Belgium was famous for museum display equipments…

After the ride we stopped by at a university with an extremely impressive building, especially as it is in the middle of nowhere. We tried to get onto the campus but were rejected. Maybe it is a military university.

Even in Beijing the sky was clear blue. I went to a restaurant for some after cycling food. When I came back out of the restaurant there was a huge wind, clouds and particles in the air. This was the first sand storm in 2009, at least to my memory. Good that I was wearing sunglasses and an anti pollution mask.

In the evening I gave back the long loaner camera Canon G9 to Simon as he is leaving for Afghanistan. Now I am again cameraless…

It was the second time that I took the arranged bus out north of Beijing for cycling. This time we went to the Chang Ling Tomb parking lot. The cyclists split up in three groups, I joined the medium group (B riders) for a 85km ride. We cycled up Fen Shui Ling and then down through a little village where me and Vincent almost crashed into an ascending truck that cut the corner. Also my bike was sliding as I pulled the breaks because the street was all wet. Then we continued in a nice valley and passed the Huang Hua Cheng Great Wall before we went up to Si Hai. That was a really nice and long climb.

It was quite chilly at the top despite the weather forecast having said it should be 22 degrees Celsius. All weather forecasts had also said that it should be blue sky and sunshine the whole day with very good visibility. Somehow that was incorrect. This was the view that we had:

Then we went back on the same route. But by now most streets were dry so we had no issues with the long descent. But we were going at a quite fast pace in the valley and one of the guys had a bumble bee smack against his cheek.

Unfortuneately we had to wait a very long time for the group A riders to return to teh parking lot. They did a more challening route with 5 climbs (we only did 1 big one and 2 small ones) and had one guy fall on 2 descents.

By the time we were ready to drive back to Beijing many weekend tourists were also on their way back which resulted in massive traffic jams. At least I was able to take a picture of the nice blossoming trees out on the road back. Beijing went from brown color to green and white/pink/yellow within the week that I was gone. Sproing has finally come!