Heading back north now through central/eastern China before heading over to the coast. Pollution in eastern China during the winter can be especially harsh, giving us the wrong kind of fuzzy feeling inside when thinking about heading back to Beijing. A nice reunion with a motorcycle club in Shandong helps to take our mind off of it though!

Busy couple of days but not much distance covered. We do two fund raising presentations, one in Hangzhou and one in Shanghai with a little bit of a break for Thanksgiving festivities in between. This, at least for us mentally, marks the beginning of the last leg of the trip for us.

So much to see in this area and so little time! We pass through the Ancient Phoenix City for a morning stroll and then another couple hundred kilometers onward we pass through the Zhangjiajie National Park where we visit the famous Tianzi Mountains, inspiration for the Hallelujah Mountains from Avatar.

A couple easy days as we make it to two destinations we had been looking forward to for a long time. The beautiful old towns of Lijiang and Dali gave us an opportunity to take it easy for once and even got to enjoy some delicious western food!

Couple days off in Chengdu visiting the pandas and eating local Sichuanese Hotpot. You'll have to click the link to see where the zombie food comes in to the story!

Food has been a big part of this trip. The Chinese are very proud of their local dishes and we wanted to try as many new things as possible.  So here’s a summary of our food experiences on the Great Ride so far. I wanted to list the most common foods we’ve found, what’s not ...

Had to find a shop to look into a suspicious rattling sound near the rear of the bike and ended up staying another night as we got invited for dinner at one of the biggest cow husbandry "factories" in the province.

Got a late start today as we waited for one last package to be delivered before hitting the road. When we did, we unexpectedly got drawn into a funeral ceremony and the dinner afterwards.