Amberlynn and I have been pedaling our asses off and it’s been great! We landed in China on July 7 and waited in Ürümqi until our missing bike arrived; it was quite the fiasco! We pedaled west for a few days until my front hub blew up… It only took a day for a friendly local bike shop to order a new hub and rebuild my wheel. In the meantime, they entertained us and kept our faces stuffed with delicious watermelon!
Back on the bikes, we detoured a bit to get off the direct route and get into the mountains. This was suggested by almost every Chinese cyclist we met (and there were a bunch of them). They called it a “library road”. I’m not quite sure that Google got the translation exactly correct, but the idea of a quiet mountain road was clearly understood.
It took us 4 days of non-stop uphill climbing, and then a 10 mile ride in the back of a pickup truck to finally reach the 11,500 foot (3,500 meters) mountain pass. Amberlynn remarked that the truck ride was one of our “best decisions ever” and I think she was right.
We then enjoyed a nice coast downhill for several days until we leveled out around 3,000 feet (1,000 meters). After 9 continuous days of pedaling, with the final day being our longest to date – 72 miles (115km), we arrived in the regional town of Ili (also known as Yinning). With the bikes parked up in the hotel room, we enjoyed 2 well earned rest days where we pretty much just laid in bed all day. It was glorious!
Well, we didn’t lay in bed all day… In the evenings, we were treated to delicious dinners by locals. We also used the time to begin editing our video footage. We’ve been on the road for more than a month and have already published several episodes. Many more episodes will come as we continue our trip. We hope you enjoy them!
Here’s the link to subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/BenSlavin
If you want to start from the beginning – here’s your link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvqjG9opPVlbrdnJrnqp25jK6qokjWXZd
It’s possible that some of the earlier videos won’t play on mobile devices (due to copyright issues from the music we used). If that’s a problem, you can watch the videos on a desktop computer or on Facebook…
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A Few More Miles 