We hit a strip of pavement a dozen kilometers before Moron. It felt like riding into some glassy, fourth dimensional plane. After a few days the riding style becomes adapted to dirt roads and a brief return to pavement can be an exulting (if eerie) experience. Two weeks of pounding the dirt have brought us here healthy and sure footed with only one slashed tire to show for it. We heard many a sadistic tale of the horrors of Mongolian roads but, knock on sand, few have come to fruition in the 700+ kilometers since we left the scruffy pavement [View Full Entry]

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China stops at the Mongolian border. In Inner Mongolia province we experienced a fair amount of Mongolian culture as well as tourists hailing from Ulaanbaatar. Signs were usually written in both Chinese and Mongolian script, and the cross cultural exchange was evident in nearly every facet of daily life. Mongolia crosses the border into China but the opposite does not hold true. The crossing was long and beaurocratic, we could not ride but rather took compulsory jeep trasnsport into the Mongolian Border town of Zamyn Uud. Here we found a familiarly rougher version of life with child begga [View Full Entry]

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09May09 Woke up very cold out misty foggy 5 degrees C in tent. Hard to get started. Eat apple each with some moldy smelling but not looking chipatis, picked up our muddy tent and bikes and rolled away cold. I wore my bright SeeMe vest Madonna gave to me. (smiley face goes here) Very wobbly front end this morning. Sometimes it seems more wobbly when I'm not pedaling and sometimes opposite. We thought we could get some food in a village just a few km down the road. We saw a place with tables inside and Chad went over and [View Full Entry]

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At any speed the landscape changes at an almost unpercievable pace. Subtle details transform around you but it is hard to put a finger on any one particular moment from whence everything has changed. The steppe is a vast grassland with an enormous sky. When we turn on the GPS the screen is filled with satelites fighting for recognition. The fact that this plain stretches on for distances that make the Canadian Shield seem like a suburban lawn makes it feel even more daunting. Walk to the edge of the horizon, see the same thing again. Two days ago we stopped [View Full Entry]

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Up, up and out of the city we climbed. Through the restored ramparts of the Great Wall and out onto a high plateau. Last night found us enjoying the company of folks who are by Chinese standards political dissidents. We don't see any of them heading to the capitol with a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil any time soon. None the less, when the local police entered their restaraunt, the bilingual dance performance we were watching on their old TV, along with the conversation we were having took a turn to a different channel. This is coal country; here [View Full Entry]

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Today finds us in Tianjin, China where we have taken the day to find info, maps, etc and enjoy another round of damn fine food. Southern Japan was a pricey treat and procuring ferry tickets turned out to be far easier than finding our way to the dock! After a few interrogation sessions with helpful locals (including a spanish exchange by some strange chance) we found the obscure footbridge entrance to the departrure port and off we sailed. The journey took 53 hours and we were lucky to have a four person cabin all to ourselves. On the second night [View Full Entry]

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