So I met Lili’s brothers and their girlfriends at a dinner yesterday and it was great. As we were returning home I looked around me and up to the sky where you almost always still see at least a few tops of the 30 storey plus apartment buildings and I had a very strange feeling that I was leaving home again. Yes, Hong Kong, although one of the huge cities that I don’t generally fancy too much, grew on me. Add Lili’s unbelievable caring mother, Lili herself and her boyfriend Gary who both helped me where they could, be it phoning around to find out things for me, looking up things on the Internet, putting up with my constant occupation of Lili’s computer desk and her internet connection or simply showing me around.  Top it up with Lili’s father who, even though not talking much at all, have also done so many things for me and even paid for some spare parts and you start to feel that you are about to leave something precious.

Anyway, there I was today morning getting the last bits on the bike into order. What I tried first was the battery, as it didn’t feel OK when we recharged it the last time. Not to my big surprise the bike would not start. The battery could not turn the start motor. OK, plastic sides off, seat off, battery off and connect to the re-charger again. When I fixed all the rest I tried the battery – still no good :-(. So I had to wait, just sitting around with my own thoughts and sadness. I miss Tanja unbelievably and having nothing to do is the worst thing that can happen to me in such a case. The feeling is unbearable.

In the meantime Lili’s father had left for, I presume, a new battery. Before he returned announcing that such battery is not available in HK I have tried my luck with the one I had again. The bike started this time but died after a while like it was out of petrol. The thing was it was not. After a couple roundtrips between the re-charger and the bike which still sounded like there was no petrol going into the engine I decided to check the spark plug as it has not been checked yet during the whole journey while it should have been. I didn’t checked it nor had it checked for several reasons: I usually feel so pressed by time that I can’t make myself to spend time with such things and I figured that nothing can happen to the engine if the plug is not 100% except of failing to run, on which occasion I would have to check it. That is exactly what happened now. This is kind of my learning lesson on a motorbike operation that I give myself. Sure enough, after cleaning the spark plug with a piece of sandpaper (sorry you guys at Kawasaki – no sand blasting device in my travel toolkit) and adjusting the gap by eye (no precision measurement tool available either, although I suggest for other bike travelers to take say at least a piece of wire of the exact thickness that is prescribed for the plug gap, which I thought would be small and very handy to have) to 0.8mm the engine started on the first try. “Excellent, now I can just put it all together, pack up and we are off.” I thought to myself. Well, not exactly….

Long before I was finished I asked how long would it take to the tow truck guy to get here. He was apparently just around the corner so I didn’t want to call him just then as he would have to wait. When I was almost finished I gave the sign to call him. After waiting for an hour after I was completely ready we called him again. “He is coming at 3 o’clock.” Was the result of this call. “Great, it is barely two…  :-(” I looked at my watch horror-stricken. I was gonna have to endure at least another hour with my head and hart-bursting thoughts. Love is a tricky beast – It comes without warning and never wants to leave at a time when it would be convenient.

I didn’t even believe the truck would arrive at the announced 3 o’clock but to my relief it did. It was a smaller one this time and we loaded it with a crane on the top of it. I directed the strapping method and position of the bike on the top as I learned back in Oz before so I didn’t have to fear another fall.

I was not happy that we left so late as I planned to cover lots of kilometers still today, leaving the huge city of Shenzhen far behind. What I didn’t know at the time was that things were going to get much worse than that.

OK, I confess that it has crossed my mind that if the customs will not allow the bike back into China I would have an excuse to send it back home and end the emotional torture I was (and am) going through, but it was too easy this time. The immigration officers were very courteous and even apologetic when they let me wait mere 10 minutes as they have apparently never seen the card I had issued at the original point of entry into China for my motorbike. The customs guy wanted to see my Carnet – even though he didn’t even know he was asking for that, as he obviously had never seen it before. As they didn’t stamp my re-exportation voucher on my way to Hong Kong I had the un-finalized page before the Hong Kong one that was on the next page. I didn’t hesitate to explain nicely and with a touch of leisurely confidence that the bike have already been stamped into China and that it will be stamped out on the China-Pakistan border and therefore that the officer didn’t have to do anything. It is great that these customs guys listen ;-) – he returned the carnet to me after that and let us go. No worries.  :-)

Behind the border the driver drove to a tyre shop and asked 4 guys to take the bike off the truck, which I previously tried to explain was not an option as the bike is too heavy to be carried down by mere menpower. We needed a crane. This driver was a different guy from the one who took me into Hong Kong and this one could not understand a single word English so I grabbed his pen and scribbled a “250 kg” on it. Only then he stopped the guys untying the bike. Although I tried to save the upright position of the bike it was too late. We had to stop just a few meters further to redo it. This young bloke, who by the way looked homosexual to me (not that it has anything to do with anything, but I usually don’t notice such things ;-) ), did not seem to be able to even redo the knot he just untied so we ended up using his self-fastening straps.

Here is where the horror of the day starts. At half pas five we were at a place with a crane who took my bike safely off the truck and put it on the firm ground again. All ready and dressed up I want to start the bike but nothing… absolutely nothing!.. not even an attempt of the start motor to turn. The battery must have gotten damaged by the fast re-charging (which happened in the Suzuki authorized service the first time and now several times in Hong Kong – another learning lesson for me…) as well as operating on only half of the total number of cells for a while between the big crash I had and the time I got to Hong Kong where I found the electrolyte was missing from 3 of the 6 cells. So after a few unsuccessful attempts to push-start the bike we decided for jump-starting it. OK, get out the Philips screwdriver, the socket wrench with two different sockets, take off the panniers so that I can access the plastic side covers, take them off, unscrew the seat, take that off and voila, all ready to jump start. Easy, no?

Jump-starting the bike was no problem. I had to leave it running while I screwed all the parts back on the bike and then found that I actually needed a key from the bunch of keys I have on my ignition key ring. I cursed before I realized that I can (very cautiously) separate the ring from the ignition key. Before I put everything back I did think about connectig wires to the battery and lead them out so that I would not have to go through this time consuming and unpleasant process of removing the seat again. However, I remembered I put the wires to the bottom of my spare parts pannier and I was too lazy and too in a hurry to get them from there. I was about to regret this decision just about 5 km down the very busy 6 lane road down to Shenzhen, which was traffic-jammed at that time on the top of everything. I stalled the engine while trying to move from one gap among the other vehicles to another to get to Shenzhen just a little bit faster. Pushing the bike across 4 very busy lanes to the side of a road lined with high un-crossable kerb was just another of today’s “great” adventures.

Still on the busy road I pushed the heavy bike a few hundred meters further to a side road by a container yard. I could see a petrol station another few hundred meters further but I decided to install the wires here with the chance of having a passer by to stop and offer his battery power when I’d be finished. I screwed the last bolt back in with the final remains of daylight, now having two three-meter red and blue wires leading from the side under the seat. It was half past seven.

As no passenger cars were passing by me in the side street I had to push the bike to the petrol station on the busy multi-lane street again. There a husband of a lady just finishing her shift at the station was kind enough to share some of his car battery power but the bike would not start. Since the wires were getting quite warm it was not hard to conclude that they were actually too thin to carry the current needed for the bike to start. In a flesh there were other people bringing new wires. After comparison it was clear that they were actually not too much thicker than the ones I installed so we decided to double them up as there was enough length available. I was about to have to go through the whole lengthy process of taking off the seat again – top pannier off, right pannier off, unscrew two Philips screws, two socket screws, tow different size socket screws and the battery terminal screws. Remove the thin wires and install the thicker ones. Fight with putting the battery screws back on as they were now too high up thanks to the new doubled thicker wire ends. Long minutes later it was finally all ready to re-try.

The new jump-starting attempt was finally successful. Screw everything back in and of I go again. One of the seat screws actually didn’t take the frequent turning of its head well and lost it. In defense of the guys at Kawasaki this was not an original – I lost it long before this. Just after 9PM I had my new chance to finally get somewhere.

Getting through the Shenzhen night traffic was a success and I was finally on my way again.

As far as I can say from what I saw in the dark of the night pushed away by the artificial lighting there is quite a few holiday resorts on the coast right behind Shenzhen city and the coastline itself looked very appealing to me. I also saw quite a few theme parks of which Shenzhen seems to have a lot.

As I veered inland I felt it was a shame leaving the eastern China coastline that I so looked forward to behind without actually seeing it. Well, such is life and changes in plan were expected…

It was about 10:30PM when the road in front of me changed from concrete to dirt, which was shortly replaced by slightly muddy surface as it’s been raining lightly by then for about an hour. I really didn’t feel like looking for any kind of a hotel. All I wanted was to throw my body on the ground somewhere by the road and sleep under the open sky. The problem was that everything was wet. Like a miracle though I was passing a wooden construction with a roof. I have not seen many roofed unoccupied places in China at all. This place was all overgrown by tall grasses inside but it would do if only there was not for a man with a torch that came to have a look what was happening as I was still observing the spot with my engine running (I was still too scared to switch it off). This guy (not surprisingly) could not speak any English so I continued. Just a kilometer or so further there was a complex of roofed and concreted buildings that looked just like something I was looking for. It looked deserted too as it was still under construction. This must have been a new chicken or duck farm or something like that.

So I went in with the bike and suddenly I could see a light behind the door of one of the buildings on the side and two dogs barking at me from in front of it. Seconds later there was a topless guy with a machete in his hand checking out what was happening and who I was. After a bit of hesitation from his side he approached me and let me explain that I was looking for a place to lay my body down for the night. I gestured to him that I was happy to sleep on the concrete right next to my bike but he invited me in, offered a cup of tea and (I presume) his bed. I crashed into it as soon as it was socially possible without being impolite.

(Only months later, when I remember this story, it clicked to me how interesting it was that while before leaving for this journey I thought I would carry my original big US Marine Corp knife everywhere to use should I feel in danger, especialy at night, I was then facing a guy with a machete in the middle of the night and I was the one who felt safe and he was the one who was not sure... Funny...)

(68km)