China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

As the weather was so nice today I spent the afternoon in the park rock climbing. After that I met with 2 friends for bike riding. Unfortunately other fixed gear riders had no time or were injured.We cycled to the Olympic forest hoping that we can ride inside. But it seems to be fenced off really well, the gate closes at 5pm every day and no bikes are allowed inside. We cycled a loop around it on a freshly paved cycling path which suddenly turned dark (it felt like we were outside of Beijing) and then turned onto the 5th ring road (highway). The random bricks or line of bricks with some missing on the side lane of the highway was quite surreal. Then that lane just disappeared and after cycling on a highway kind of street for a bit then suddenly we saw again a beautifully paved bike lane again on the other side of some bushes. We cycled over huge empty Olympic parking lots with great surface for skidding and random small ditches and also some deep and quite wide sudden ditches. I was positively surprised to find out that we could cycle on the Olympic Green and play around on our bikes between the Birds Nest and the Water Cube Olmypic stadiums. That was awesome!

Tonight was the first show of the Chinese Improv Group. They did a great job. Especially the Olympic Ear Wax Pulling Event (last picture) was very funny.

Today I again did a performance in the Ditan Park. It was still for the Beijing Book Festival. I think it is great to inspire people to read books by doing tricks on a bike. As I do not have a camera right now these pictures were taken by two of my colleagues.

Some more really nice pictures from a friend are here on flickr. That is the difference of a nice SLR compared to small pocket size cameras.

Here are some more impressions of the book festival:

My friend brought his beautiful old track bike. But he installed a free wheel single speed on it. Old bikes are just very beautiful. Too bad I currently do not have a nice camera.

Then went to the Ole soccer venue opening party. They have 2 indoor fields and 2 outdoor fields. Plus a soon to be opened climbing wall and bouldering room. The indoor climbing wall is 10 meters high. Today it was already painted yellow and had an easy climbing route and an overhang route screwed in. I climbed the overhang route which was not difficult but fun. They have nice La Sportiva rock climbing shoes for rental. I cannot wait for the opening.

After that we went for a nice North Korean barbeque dinner.