Tianjin to Beijing

When you are in Beijing and planning a bicycle ride the first thing is you look for the pollution stats, even before weather and wind. Pollution at that specific day was good because it was raining.

I was in Beijing meeting our distribution company and as usual looking for a rental bike. I found a shop that is also a bike brand - Serk. They are organizing group rides and so i joined one starting in Tianjin about 140k northeast of Beijing and almost on the coast of Bohai Sea. The start still was in Beijing but we travelled with a high speed train with 341 km/h to Tianjin.

The start there was nice as we had breakfast in the Shangr-La hotel which CEO was Nick who joined us for the ride. The breakfast was great and a good base for this ride. Wouldn´t have been the weather it would have been a nice long distance ride in a group of 19 people. The start still was easy as we headed out of the city. It was grey and cool but dry in the beginning. But more and more rain came into the game and combined with the low temperatures it became more and more cold on the bike.

If you ever did ride a road even by car in the countryside of china you will know that roads are not well maintained some time. After a while everything was so wet and dirty that even between teeth we could feel the sand. More and more paddles were on the street hiding big pot holes. In observing the more and more dangerous traffic half of the group decided to stopp at a break after about half distance this ride.

I was shaking like hell and it took some time to get warm again in the car on our way back to Beijing. Having lunch we waited for the rest of the group which arrived much later than expected in the shop. As well shaking of cold the conclusin was that it had been a great ride - but not for me.

rental bitch: Serk Titanium

starring: Nick Yates, Kristof Kollar, Yu Chen, Jason, Jens Plaggemeier, Kent marker, Marc Sanchez Borras, Nuno Kim