Day 21: Birthday Collision
Date: 22nd Sept. Today is the 21st day of my trip. It is also my birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! YEAH!! I am going to have a feast tonight. Going to eat something better. I think I deserved a treat after going through such tiring incidents days ago, dont I?
The place I stayed at last night was biker friendly. Not only did they locked up my bike in a room, they also have my bike tagged.
Unlike the other parts of China where I was previously at, Western Sichun seems to be a place where people do not wake up early. Most of the shops were still closed when I begin my ride. Starting the engine, I realised that it sounded very much louder than it should be. After doing a visual check, I saw that the connection between the pipe and the engine came loose.
Got it fixed and rode on. Back to the vast grassland, everything remained beautiful. Ths sky was clear blue, the air was fresh and there were not much traffic. I could go as fast as 110km/hr this time round but ofcourse I did not maintain at this speed as I want to enjoy the moment for as long as I can.
A basketball court out of nowhere.
Fencing to prevent animals from getting on to the road.
And in areas where there are no fence, BEWARE!!
Soon I entered GanSu province. Grassland started to disappear and mountains came into sight. I felt it was generally easy to ride in GanSu as there were road signs everywhere.
Just as I was enjoying the ride,
a car suddenly dashed out from this sideroad at full speed. Although I had the right of way, he did not give way to me. I saw him turning out fast and there is no way for me to avoid him. I press on my brakes real hard, sounded my honk and kept as much as possible to the right side of the road (it is left hand drive in china) hoping that I could avoid him. As he was coming at high speed, his car swayed alot to the right when he made this left turn. In just a split second, he is now a few centimeters right infront of me. While still maintaining my brake, I was hoping that he would maintain his speed or even go faster so that the gap between him and me would widen. But then, I saw his brake light turned on and BANG!!! For the first time every since I started riding 8 years ago, I am now in a head to rear collision accident.
Down to the ground I fell, only to see him sped away. What an irresponsible driver! At least he should have stopped and checked if I am alright. Soon, many tibetians gather around me and one of them asked me why didn't I give chase? I was thinking, forget it. I cannnot even see his tail light by the way I got up. Not to mentioned that I still need to lifted my bike up from the ground. Well, I just would treated it as a birthday sabotage or prank. Just my luck.
Minor damages to my bike. Broken signal light, cracked mirror, cracked speedometer and rpm etc.
Riding on, I realised that both my speedometer and rpm had gone haywired. The speedometer now indicates that I am consistantly travelling at 120-130km/hr while my rpm is way out of the red zone (it almost went one complete round). Anyway, filling up petrol here is quite unique. You will have to parked you bike at one side, get a container like this, then go to the pump, fill up this container with petrol and then go back to your bike and transfer the petrol over. Strange.
With the change of colour in these trees, it is an indication that I am about to moved into another season.
Riding in GanSu is fairly relaxing. Gentle mountain passes.
China is a very huge country and thoughout the past few weeks of riding, I noticed a gradual change in many things like: the faces of people, lifestyle, culture and religion etc. Now in this part of China though I am still in a region where most tibetians live, I am beginning to see more and more Muslim.
Like the previous day, I rode through numerous military check posts. Riding through this, I am now in XiaHe. Although I am now at an alttitude which is very much lower than previous days, I felt much colder. The temperature here is definately much lower and the wind is stronger.
This is the place to be at since I cant get into tibet. Reason? It has the leading tibetian monastery out of tibet - Labrang Monastery. There are more than a thousand tibetian monks here. They are everywhere. You can even see them on the streets. Here's a quick preview of the monastery.
That night, I stayed at a hostel opened by a monk. Surprise right? Monks nowadays are also into business?
Then I found an internet cafe and when I went in, I got a culture shock. I saw many young monks playing counterstrike, surfing net, watching youtube etc. Surprise surpirse surprise. Are monks suspposed to lead this kind of life? And then, I also noticed that most of them has a mobile phone. Hmmm.....
Anyway, when I was about to leave the internet cafe, the owner warned me to becareful and dont get beaten up by others. This is a small town and so the streets has got no lights. What he said got me thinking. Is that the reason why all the militray posts exist? Scary though. What a thing to tell me. The internet cafe is quite a distance away from my hostel and so when I walked back in the dark, I was really on my toes as what he had said got stuck in my head.
And oh ya, as for the feast, I had decided not to have it.
*Click HERE to return to the Main Page of The Cold Journey.*
The place I stayed at last night was biker friendly. Not only did they locked up my bike in a room, they also have my bike tagged.
Unlike the other parts of China where I was previously at, Western Sichun seems to be a place where people do not wake up early. Most of the shops were still closed when I begin my ride. Starting the engine, I realised that it sounded very much louder than it should be. After doing a visual check, I saw that the connection between the pipe and the engine came loose.
Got it fixed and rode on. Back to the vast grassland, everything remained beautiful. Ths sky was clear blue, the air was fresh and there were not much traffic. I could go as fast as 110km/hr this time round but ofcourse I did not maintain at this speed as I want to enjoy the moment for as long as I can.
A basketball court out of nowhere.
Fencing to prevent animals from getting on to the road.
And in areas where there are no fence, BEWARE!!
Soon I entered GanSu province. Grassland started to disappear and mountains came into sight. I felt it was generally easy to ride in GanSu as there were road signs everywhere.
Just as I was enjoying the ride,
a car suddenly dashed out from this sideroad at full speed. Although I had the right of way, he did not give way to me. I saw him turning out fast and there is no way for me to avoid him. I press on my brakes real hard, sounded my honk and kept as much as possible to the right side of the road (it is left hand drive in china) hoping that I could avoid him. As he was coming at high speed, his car swayed alot to the right when he made this left turn. In just a split second, he is now a few centimeters right infront of me. While still maintaining my brake, I was hoping that he would maintain his speed or even go faster so that the gap between him and me would widen. But then, I saw his brake light turned on and BANG!!! For the first time every since I started riding 8 years ago, I am now in a head to rear collision accident.
Down to the ground I fell, only to see him sped away. What an irresponsible driver! At least he should have stopped and checked if I am alright. Soon, many tibetians gather around me and one of them asked me why didn't I give chase? I was thinking, forget it. I cannnot even see his tail light by the way I got up. Not to mentioned that I still need to lifted my bike up from the ground. Well, I just would treated it as a birthday sabotage or prank. Just my luck.
Minor damages to my bike. Broken signal light, cracked mirror, cracked speedometer and rpm etc.
Riding on, I realised that both my speedometer and rpm had gone haywired. The speedometer now indicates that I am consistantly travelling at 120-130km/hr while my rpm is way out of the red zone (it almost went one complete round). Anyway, filling up petrol here is quite unique. You will have to parked you bike at one side, get a container like this, then go to the pump, fill up this container with petrol and then go back to your bike and transfer the petrol over. Strange.
With the change of colour in these trees, it is an indication that I am about to moved into another season.
Riding in GanSu is fairly relaxing. Gentle mountain passes.
China is a very huge country and thoughout the past few weeks of riding, I noticed a gradual change in many things like: the faces of people, lifestyle, culture and religion etc. Now in this part of China though I am still in a region where most tibetians live, I am beginning to see more and more Muslim.
Like the previous day, I rode through numerous military check posts. Riding through this, I am now in XiaHe. Although I am now at an alttitude which is very much lower than previous days, I felt much colder. The temperature here is definately much lower and the wind is stronger.
This is the place to be at since I cant get into tibet. Reason? It has the leading tibetian monastery out of tibet - Labrang Monastery. There are more than a thousand tibetian monks here. They are everywhere. You can even see them on the streets. Here's a quick preview of the monastery.
That night, I stayed at a hostel opened by a monk. Surprise right? Monks nowadays are also into business?
Then I found an internet cafe and when I went in, I got a culture shock. I saw many young monks playing counterstrike, surfing net, watching youtube etc. Surprise surpirse surprise. Are monks suspposed to lead this kind of life? And then, I also noticed that most of them has a mobile phone. Hmmm.....
Anyway, when I was about to leave the internet cafe, the owner warned me to becareful and dont get beaten up by others. This is a small town and so the streets has got no lights. What he said got me thinking. Is that the reason why all the militray posts exist? Scary though. What a thing to tell me. The internet cafe is quite a distance away from my hostel and so when I walked back in the dark, I was really on my toes as what he had said got stuck in my head.
And oh ya, as for the feast, I had decided not to have it.
*Click HERE to return to the Main Page of The Cold Journey.*
posted by ZeeVinCeZ at 1:01 PM
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