After another two days of talking (or attempting to talk) to shipping companies, airlines and different agents I finally had some hope of getting my bike out of here. The airline finally agreed to take my bike, their shipping agent agreed too, I only needed a Dangerous Goods certificate to prove that my bike would not be dangerous for air transport. So I talked to the Dangerous Goods Management company and they told me to come over with the bike. After about 20km of riding through the city and looking for them and phoning them several times I finally found them. “Yes, it could be done.” “Great!” I could call the shipping agent then to agree on next steps, or in fact just where they want me to deliver the bike. They are located at a different airport on the opposite side of the city, about 40 kilometers far, but they also have a warehouse just a couple of hundred meters from the guys in whose offices I just was.

As probably not unusual in China the now straightforward thing turned complicated again. The shipping company is apparently not able to accept goods straight from me and I will have to go through a customs freight forwarder for which I got a number. I have no idea what has customs to do with deciding what way of shipping is possible and what is not but they told me that I would in fact not be able to ship my bike by air from China at all. Why? I don’t know. In fact I’m quite confused as now I have about 25 different telephone numbers for different people in different companies that I have to talk to or already talked but the final result is nill, zero, nothing…

As it was half past five on Friday already there was no more to do. Now I have to wait till Monday to be able to do anything again.

I have to mention a guy at the DGM office who was incredibly helpful and supportive. In fact all the people in this company were nice and helpful and at this stage I was not requested to pay any money even though I spend over 2 hours in their office while they were trying to help me. Anyway, this young guy would call to all the places we got new numbers for and talked to all the people how to go about my problem. He didn’t have to do that but he did and I am very grateful to him. Just the fact that he tried so hard made the situation much more bearable for me.

The same guy was showing me his scared elbow (which we now have somewhat in common) that he has from a traffic accident and pointed out several times that Chinese drivers are ruthless and crazy. He appealed several times on me to be very careful while driving in Shanghai. This was to have some significance just a bit later.

As I was riding back from their place back to my hostel in a very heavy traffic on a 4 to 5 lane road a taxi driver turned into my lane without looking (as they do here) and so to finish the series of three I had a third traffic accident here in China. He bumped into my side fuel tank and pannier with his bumper and I could not steady the bike anymore. I had to drop it while jumping of it, landing safely on my feet. So I was fine, what about the bike? No, I could not say exactly the same thing about my mechanical companion. My newly replaced brake lever broke as the bike fell on it while still moving forward and when I stood the bike back on its wheels and wanted to ride off, throwing the broken part of the lever at the driver that caused the accident and was sheepishly but with a cunning twist looking if I was going to do something about it all or if he could just drive off quickly, the bike would not go. It felt like one of the brakes was engaged. But no, I realized shortly that my now pretty stretched drive chain was off the rear sprocket. So through three very busy lanes I pushed the bike to the side of the street while the taxi driver disappeared with the first chance he had. It would be useless to try to involve police in this, as I know they would not help me. In a while I managed to put the chain back on and drove off with only a half of my front brake lever.

Is it starting to sound like I can’t drive having already third accident here in China? Well, all I can give you is a reality check: Just in Shanghai alone more then 500 people die each month in traffic accidents. This number says a lot about the state of the behavior of the local people in traffic.

In the evening we went to have some dinner with all the new boys who arrived today and are staying in the same dormitory. There is couple of Danish guys – Anders and Soeren an Ozzie - Anthony and Igor and I. Then all very kindly waited for me until I sorted my bike out, parked it securely and brought the panniers back to the room and waited even more for me to be able to give Tanja a call. After that we had lots of fun and went to our beds long after midnight.