Ahh Jer, your house is so sweet that even an anti-land owner like myself would want to buy it. They'd all be fools to leave your door quiet of fantastic offers.
The tricycle crew continues on. We've lost one of the super group "Fun Boy Five". Juan has gone for a solo career. He wanted to see what China could offer his mind as he went off alone. We plan to meet up again somewhere in the south.
(Many pics need to be inserted here, but I'm out of time. I have to get back to the hotel before they lock the gates)
We had a great time in Datong, checked out big ol' cave carvings, a hanging monastery and the local clubs. The Icelanders were more than they'd seen. There was a circle of chinese folks cheering on as the tricycle crew showed their silly moves. We split as we left town. The four of us continued south on the wrong road. We sorted it out, but didn't make it far that day. We ate at a road stop and slept on the floor of the resturant.
We we were setteling in for a quiet night then we found Yaya in the next room drinking with the truck drivers. We joined and dug into the food and Bi Jao (a Chinese drink that people insist must be downed in one go). It ended up with Yaya sleeping and me playing card games. I taught them poker and lost badly. Luckly we were playing for almost nothing.
The next day we explored a really old peice of the great wall made of rammed dirt and headed up for a mountain pass. My bike was going really slow and I was peddeling t o hard, so when a coal truck passed, going just a little faster, I held onto the back and it towed me past the rest of the boys. All of our bikes held together which warrented mighty hoots from all of us.
We stopped in a village to check out some of the houses after we came out of the mountains and made great time that day with no bike break downs, but as we neared the town we were going to stay in I hit a big rock with my muffler. Someone was drying rice in the bicycle lane and blocked it off with a row of big rocks. It was dark, so I didn't see them quite soon enough. I was only going about ten km/h, but it was enough to bend the exhaust pipe  away from my engine half a centimeter. My tricycle now sounds like an old lawn mower trucking down the road, a Harley compared to the rest of the boys. On the upside I'm no longer the slowest one. So the green turtle has mutated. It's new name is Raphiel in honor of the other stoic mutant turtle.
The next day Yaya's peddle slipped as he was trying to kick start start his bike. It ment there was no more peddeling to be done on his bike. We took it appart but quickly I saw we would have to open the engine to fix it and that scared me off. We found someone to fix it up (another welding job) and we all got our bikes spruced up with break reapairs, oil changes and new batteries.
We took a bus up to Wu Tai Shan to check out Mountain tops and temples. It's an area that is sacred to Buddhists and is somewhat succluded so it missed the worst of the cultural revolution when communists were destroying religous sites. As we were wandering through a monastery we met an English speaking monk. He was super friendly and invited us to his cell, made us coffee and answered our questions about what it was like living up here.
Today we hiked up to a temple on the mountain beside town. Johnny and Yaya didn't feel like bush waking up to the peak so Ziggy and I headed up on our own. We found a different path down and walked through a few more monasteries. I chatted with a few sweet ladies lighiting candles in a nunnery, who were easy on me and my bad chinese.
These are a few pics from today...
Here's some of the old dudes I've met wandering around this last week.
I just stepped outside and it's starting to snow. I'm hoping for white mountains come the morning. Hopefully you get a bit of the same.
Cheers!
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