In April 2010, Eleanor Moseman left Shanghai on a journey of more than 10,000 miles, across 3 countries, on one bicycle. This
is where she updates from the road.
Some may think it’s just downright blasphemous to make an insult to the absolute must have, Ortlieb bags.
BUT…how far did you get when those damn clips started falling out? How far did you get before you lost one? Have you looked how much they cost? Let alone the shipping for such little bastard plastic pieces.
Well, with combined brain power of myself and Brandon…we devised a little method to get rid of the clips all together and to prevent the noise they make when bouncing down a broken shale “road” and sneaking past police checkpoints.
Additional pieces were placed to prevent hot spots.
I have Surly racks, Brandon had Nitto – this method worked on both. We have the identical classic rolltop bags.
Nothing a little duct tape, a few zip ties, and some hosing from your local hardware stare. (In China: WuJin – 5Gold)
So, take your clips out all together and find an alternative method.
Yea yea…we (still) ARE total jerks to one another every now and again…but at the end of the day…we still were BFFs of 2011.
More good times than bad…right, Guy?
Friendship is when you can move past differences and a shattering argument…and become tighter than before. It’s hard not to reminisce about the amazing days of summer…when I’m held up in -16C temps.
We were in Amdo/Kham Tibet. Nearly 4 days of cycling to see one of the three Tibetan Holy Mountains: Amnemachen.
Arriving in the town the night before and not finding a cheap place to stay, Brandon and I opted to sleep in an open field. No tents and under the open stars. Our favorite way. During the night we could hear a man praying into the early hours.
We had just hit tarmac after a very long journey through the mountains. Beat. I was pretty relieved to hear when Brandon admitted to this, because I thought maybe I was just being a baby. He at 22,000km let me know that the stretch we traveled together had been the most difficult in his life – in my opinion – probably both of our favorites.
I never accepted free rides or tried to hitch in China, but with Brandon’s Visa, we had to get to a PSB every 30 days. With his inability of speaking Chinese, communicating with drivers was left up to me. Sometimes I’d do dances on the side of the road, or lie down kicking my legs up in the air. Hell, who doesn’t want a crazy fun American passenger. Brandon pulled his weight, he was a work horse at getting our loaded bikes on trucks – and I felt safer having his short fuse around.
We spent nearly the entire day on the edge of town trying to hitch a ride. There was a little boy that spent it with us.
Earlier in the day, he had been throwing rocks at the road sign. There were probably 3 dozen stones in the road, trucks running over them.
Then Brandon helped him with a new game of lining up our empty beer bottles and throwing rocks at them. Thanks Guy, you’re such a great influence on the kids.
Needless to say, we went through a fair amount of beers, snacks, and cigarettes (as our nasty new habit from boredom and hangin with locals).
The little boy worked on keeping his snot in his nose, but that poor kid…haha…oh man. Then he brought me a bag of cookies and I could see the dried snot all over his hands and arms. Tibetan kids are notorious for this.
At one point he rides his bike out and Brandon and I cheer him on. We spent the entire day with this kid, with random visits from monks and local Tibetans. Of course the street sweeper, who was REALLY REALLY stoked to be cleaning up the BOYS mess!
We did get a ride, eventually, that took 18 hours because we got held up by a landslide on the mountains. Yes…for about 5 hours…rocks tumbling into a deep abyss. The pass was more than 5000m and the driver had this mix tape with about 6 song and one was the Cardigans “love me” and this other one that’s about a baby bottle or something. Brandon and I could hear it in our head’s for days after.
These are the moments, the days, that still make me laugh and remind myself how wonderful touring is.
The girl on the left could speak fairly good English. She met Brandon and I at the restaurant her brother cousin owned. The two older girls in the photo are sisters. Their family had lived in these Tibetan mountains for generations. When we walked up to the temple, as they bought Brandon and I each a beer, she explained how the city had grown since her childhood.
There were about 2 dozen small Tibetan homes now, and a large area of homes and a dormitory for the monks.
These girls were half Tibetan half Han. Their mother, Han, had passed away near her birth.
The house we are in here is new, because her father had sold the older and bigger home. Since his daughters were growing up, and one in college.
I slept in her bed and Brandon got the floor. In the morning he gets up first and runs back into the room and tells me to get my lazy a$$ up because it’s 11am! “Oh sh*t!? REALLY???!!”
“No, it’s 9:30″.
Even though we left early in the day, we didn’t make a lot of progress because we kept getting stopped for tea and tsampa. We weren’t riding road or tarmac either. The road eventually broke into a cow path through some of the most beautiful valleys I have ever seen in my life. This route continued for a couple of days and over a pass.
I’ll never forget when we got out of the mountain valley and finally hit tarmac, a Tibetan invites us in for some frozen Yak meat. Yes…raw frozen Yak…Brandon and I especially enjoyed the cookies.
