From the Library

[Biggles]

There were highlights to the day, the main one for me being the sense of peace I had when we stopped for lunch and watched a Uyghur man rolling out the dough to make naan bread in an oven. Another was talking about motorcycles to some Uyghur men in a small village. And another was riding up towards the clouds until we reached a high pass through the mountains, 3300 meters above sea level, where I looked around me at the incredible view with an almost poetic sense of accomplishment.
On the downside, we had a lot of problems with dogs that day. We'd be riding through an apparently completely deserted landscape when they'd suddenly come running at us, snapping and snarling at our heels and chasing our motorcycles as they tried to bite our legs. Once when it happened, Colin almost got caught: I don't even want to imagine what those dogs would have done if he'd fallen. I knew it was a problem that would get worse as we headed into Tibet, because I'd seen it there before, and that really bothered me.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p150-151

[Biggles]

There's a vast world beyond the tiny fragment that each of us inhabits, and going out into it is the only way to understand other people, their cultures and religions: you can't travel and have the sorts of experiences we're having without learning something from the interactions involved. We'd travelled 8000 km from Shanghai on a journey that was exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, rewarding, scary, fascinating, and, most of all, a privilege to be taking part in.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p158-159

[Biggles]

At the military checkpoint just outside Tashkurgan, one of the soldiers said, with a wry smile, "In the rain, on motorcycles: it isn't wise." But he handed us our permits and waved us through anyway, and we set off on what was to be a 260 km round trip. It was still raining and just 10° Celsius. Half an hour later, it was 3°, the rain had become frozen pellets of hail, and the temperature gauges on our bikes had started to flash a warning potential for ice on the road. After another half an hour, it was -2° Celsius and the hail stones were the colour - although not the consistency - of snow.
I can't even begin to describe what it's like riding in a hailstorm at -2° Celsius, 5000 meters above sea level. Colin and I are Canadians and we do a lot of skiing - quite often in the sun and always below about 2000 metres. There was no sun that day; just a bitterly cold wind and frozen hail. Riding a motorcycle in those sorts of conditions is a supremely miserable, uncomfortable experience.
 The visors on our helmets kept fogging up so that we couldn't see the road ahead of us, and our hands were so cold they were burning - the hand warmers on the handgrips on our bikes were only good to about 10° Celsius. Stupidly, we hadn't bought any of the really good waterproof clothing we'd seen in July at the shop in Germany, and as the wet seeped through our jackets and pants and turned to ice, we slowly lost the feeling in every part of our bodies.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p179-179

[Biggles]

They taught us how to fall during the training course in Germany and told us, 'Aim to hit the ground with your shoulders, because that's where all the padding is. 
Never put your hands down as you fall: if you do, you'll bust both your wrists. Just hit the ground and roll.' If you told ten people the same thing, maybe five of them would react correctly when the occasion arose; the other five would probably follow their instinct and reach for the ground with their hands. It all happens so quickly you don't really have time to think. Luckily, I did manage to hit and roll, so I avoided any really serious injuries: my shoulders and ribs were badly bruised, but I hadn't broken my collarbone.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p181-182

[Biggles]

When you're riding off-road on uneven terrain, the back wheel of the bike slews and bounces all the time, and if you sit down, your spine takes every hit. So, to avoid the risk of breaking your back, you stand up and let your knees, hips, arms, and elbows act as suspension. After doing that for 10 hours, every muscle in your body is screaming, and when you get up the next morning and do the same thing all over again, a pain develops in your back and neck that's like no pain you've ever experienced before.
On day 35 - our third day of riding on Highway G219 - we did 354 km, which is a serious haul over that sort of ground, and Colin and I began to feel more confident about our off-road skills. It felt as if we'd been battling the road and were finally beating it. All the riding we'd done since we left Shanghai had required little more than an ability to navigate; whereas what we'd been doing for the last 3 days had involved a different level of competence. We thought we were ready to tackle the Dakar!
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p196

[Biggles]

The first clutch that reached us - after we'd been waiting in Lhasa for 3 days - was the one that had been sent from Toronto via Hong Kong. Now all we had to do was fit it! Neither Colin nor I had ever done any major bike repairs before and the work took us two days. We wouldn't have managed it at all without the help of the guys in Toronto who sent us pictures and told us what to do, and without the support and assistance we received online from the motorcycle community.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p211

[Biggles]

I did a search for 'F800' clutch on a well-known motorcycle blog for adventure motorcyclists called ADVrider and, amazingly, came up with a complete DIY repair schedule. I printed it off at the hotel and when the guy from Hong Kong arrived with the new clutch, Colin and I put the pages on the floor beside us and followed the instructions step by step.
 I wrote a blog on the ADVrider site afterwards, saying that my brother and I were circumnavigating China on motorcycles and that the repair blog had saved our whole trip. The guy who'd written it, who goes by the online name of 'Lost Rider', posted a response, saying that he'd seen our website and thought what we were doing was awesome, and that he was glad to have helped.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p211