15 Oct 2015

Photos of China with Captions to Tell a Bit of the Story (Part II)

by Adam | posted in: Adventures, Cycling, Racing, Travel | 1

(Best way to view is to click the first image and then use the arrows to see the captions.)

The second batch since I took too many photos. Or wait, that’s not possible.

Massive cliff straight to the river.

Hiked up one evening to this amazing view point.

The sun was starting to set so the photos weren't crystal clear but it was incredible there. Probably the best view I saw in China.

Our hotel.

Interesting stone work.

Pretty cool park type area with the hotel.

A building seemingly built into the rock. That line going up from it was some elevator sort of thing that took people up the side of the cliff.

Cameras everywhere.

Crazy trail down through the rock.

My biggest fear was snakes. One guy almost got bit by one a few nights earlier at a hot tube spa place at one of the hotels. The snake was huge and it was nuts watching one of the workers go after it with a stick.

Up or down?

Straight up. Wanted to go to the top but I don't know if there were any trails.

Down through the jungle.

Chicken foot soup and some other goodies.

Another big city.

Ceremony prep for the next day.

City by night.

Quite the bridgework. And throughout the trip we must have gone through fifty tunnels.

Lake in the center of one of the biggest cities in the region. Nanchung.

We had pretty nice hotels the whole trip to say the least.

Loo with a view? This one was good but I prefer some others. :)

The beer here was between 2.5 and 3.5%. I guess you have to go to Japan in this region for good beer.

The view from that loo.

Lunch during one of the long transfers delivered from McDonald's. It was quite the spectacle without any organization.

Walking around town one of the last few nights in China.

Hungry?

These were wood carvings done by hand.

There were everywhere in this town.

The detail was out of this world and I'd have to guess that one takes years to make.

Quite the vehicle.

The detail.

To eat I guess?

Just past the end of this bridge and to the right was where I came to a grinding halt on the pavement. Good views around at least.

Engraved into the rock.

Straight up on both sides.

Monastery, I believe, with a monk.

Quite the carvings outside this temple.

Seemingly a bridge to nowhere. Not sure what it was.

We rode up this little path above that monastery and temple and came across this in the woods.

This guy probably wondered what the heck we were doing.

Bamboo so thick you couldn't even walk through it.

Back allies in town.

Some locals.

Because I was to stay and race in China for two months following this trip I had way too much stuff. Basically an explosion and repack at every hotel.

Although the hotels were nice, this guy was in one of them.

Fighter jets at the airport.

All bandaged after a long day and as ready as I could be for a long flight home. Fortunately the gnarly parts with stitches are bandaged here. Never good when you can see the bone on your knee.

View from the team accommodations I was to race with in Shanghai who graciously let me stay with them for a night even though I wasn't going to race with them anymore.

Solar tubes for hot water on the roof of the apartment building. Always into renewables and saving energy and that will be my new focus in life going into the future.

What is this doing here?

Team car.

15 Oct 2015

Photos of China with Captions to Tell a Bit of the Story (Part I)

by Adam | posted in: Adventures, Cycling, Racing, Travel | 0

(Best way to view is to click the first image and then use the arrows to see the captions.)

Photos of China between the stages of the Tour of Poyang Lake which was a two week stage race around Jiangxi Province. The region was way more pictureque and more mountainous than you ever would have imagined. Some of the places we visited you could tell that seeing a “white man” didn’t happen everyday. There are a lot of ways to see the world and doing it via a bike race truly is one of the greatest.

One of the many scenic transfers between stages.

The arrival at one of the hotels. It was crazy the amount of people that were there as well as to watch the next stage. No joke, probably over 100,000 along the course.

Walked around town a bit and came across this sort of street festival with music and other happenings like rc boat racing.

Just random people on the street would want our picture and to have their picture taken with us. And for whatever reason they always wanted us to hold their kids.

Taking pictures of each other.

View from one of the ten or so hotels we stayed at.

But I got to stop and take some amazing photos.

So after the finish we started riding down thinking the buses to take us back to the hotel would be just a k or two below the narrow and twisty top part. No dice. Descended the HC descent in sneakers and a lot of guys didn't even have helmets on. Crazy

Incredible views.

Tram to the summit. These mountains were big.

Finish of stage 2 way up in the mountains. Super cool area and probably the longest and steepest climb I've ever done.

Quite the climb and descent.

Super steep the majority of the way.

Amazing views that we didn't really get to see on the way up.

May as well of been a sand volleyball court.

So carbon clinchers don't do well with long steep descents. Even with stopping and minimizing my braking my rim was toast.

Pretty new coal fired power plant. Everything was super new a modern. Wonder if they had scrubbers and the like on them.

What is this doing here?

Abandoned hotel across from our fancy Howard Johnson.

And this hotel was in the middle of nowhere.

The food was tasty at this hotel but by the end of the trip it started to get old. A lot of fried food.

Not your typical Howard Johnson lobby in the States.

Never got old.

Random horses going over a mountain pass to the next hotel.

No idea who stays here the rest of the year.

View from our room balcony.

Out and back TT course. Cones like this for 15 miles.

Views.

These exist?

A wall of water was waiting for us at every hotel. That's a lot of bottles.

Cool area.

Captain.

We were expecting a long ride at first then realized we were going maybe five minutes.

We took a boat across the lake to then ride back to the hotel. Quite the motor.

Finish at a temple on a huge lake in the mountains.

Probably the best breakfast. The white drink was peanut dew. It was amazing. The cookie looking thing was a pumpkin cookie thing that was fried. Delicious.

Lakes and sunsets.

Lakes and sunsets.

Endless views like this.

Typical rest area stop every transfer.

Off-loading.

Pretty cool city at night.

In the center square of the city they were playing music and dancing. Pretty neat.

Stray dogs a lot but way more in places like the Dominican Republic.

Little park next to the one hotel. These are everywhere.

Whatever these are, shaped into little faces.

Hard to tell but those are all vans. Probably a thousand of them.

Mountains.

Hard to tell here but these mountains were huge.

Massive.

Sunset.

Sunset

I don't know if we took a wrong turn or were taking the only road to where we were going but we ended up on this tiny back dirt road on one of the transfers.

Hard to tell here but you couldn't even really see the very tops in the distance so I don't know how high they actually went.

My mechanic tried to replace my derailleur cable. Internal routing became external for the remainder of the trip.

Part 2 resides here since I took too many photos…http://adamfarabaugh.com/photosofchinapart2/