China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

While ghost riding my trick bike and trying to swirl around a car that decided to park on the bike lane along the 2nd ring road expressway making me have to swirl out into fast traffic hoping I would not get hit from behind by the approaching cars did make me have to yell at that stupid driver and not pay attention to the road for a second and oversee the unexpected pot hole making my trickbike suddenly jump around and then get caught with the bike I was riding resulted in me going over the handlebars and landing face first on the asphalt. But I was lucky: I was wearing my anti-pollution mask. That prevented my whole left side of my face skin to be scraped off.

So for all of you who want to look pretty and do not want to risk huge face road rash: Wear anti-pollution masks! I am so happy – My face only has minor road rash.

Today again we took a bus out North to the mountains for some supreme road cycling. We had a bit of late start due to the confusion of the departure times. The bus dropped us off near Lui Cun.

Here is Tom Lanhove’s (Cyclo Sports China) description of the ride planned for the A riders:

From the GaoYaKou village (near the Stone Lions) we go the normal way over Gao Tai. At the train tracks overhead, we turn left (east) towards Beijing. We go through the “Dong Fang Hong” tunnel climb and ride over the flat valley floor to Shang Wei Dian village. Here we turn abruptly left and start a 20km (!) climb at 4-5% to the intermediate summit. We descent into Jian Gou Village where we tackle the dreaded (and most spectacular) Yang Tai Shan. (7km at 7%) In my humble opinion, this is Beijing’s premiere road bike climb – the most Alp-like for sure. It takes us up to 1180m above sea level and offers awesome views of the city below. Then we descent via the same way back to Jian Gou Village and go up 5km to Miao Feng Shan. We descend back 2-3km and go up the “Alpe D’Huez” of Beijing, an alternative route up to Yang Tai Shan.

This is my note from after the ride: The beginning was nice as we started cycling as for the Bai Yang Gou loop. But when we turned left (East) we had to cycle on a busy road with stupid drivers overtaking the opposite traffic and coming really close to us at high speed. The river was huge, it even had rappids at some points. The 20km climb is not a steady one. In between there are flatter parts, and even downhills. But there is a beautifull very long stretch just below the ridge of the mountains. It is a very narrow but nicely paved road and it seemed to last for almost 10 km slowly winding higher and higher. But then after a small village after 17km of uphill it suddenly get steep as hell. One part of me was saying get off and just push, you can’t make it. But the other side succeeded saying do whatever you can but stay on the bike at all times. Then from teh Jian gou Village the guys went up to Yang Tai Shan and the A-girls went up to Miao Feng Shan. The A-guys actually did not do the 2 other climbs „for time reasons“. But I think many of them were very exhausted already.

How small the world is: At the parking lot toilet of the temple Miao Feng I bumped into the wife of Ge Yajun. Ge Yajun and a friend were there too. What a nice coincidence! They took some pictures.

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!