Tour of Beijing – 50km on two wheels around Beijing

I was a bit gung-ho on Monday and decided that I would bike to the US Embassy to pick up my US Visa. It’s about a 15.5km (9.6mi) ride, so it isn’t that much farther than the distance that I biked on Saturday from the Natooke fixed gear shop. But by the time I picked up my visa I didn’t feel that tired so I figured that I would head over to 三里屯 to grab some lunch and to rest for a bit. The forecast predicted scattered thunderstorms throughout Beijing during the afternoon, but the sky didn’t show any signs of rain coming and was looking unusually blue and clear of smog, so I decided that I would take advantage of day and bike over to 王府井 and 天安门 just because I was pretty close already. I ended up biking about 50km (31mi)- perhaps even more, because I got lost a couple of times and biked in the wrong direction- whoops! Not a bad distance for a second ride I would say. Also, very very thankful for my HTC Touch2 (not the best phone) but it was a key tool during my ride: Google Maps, GPS, and a handy-dandy camera all in one =)

Here are some pics from the day’s ride. It was a little date with my bike. People were looking at me like I was stupid for taking pictures of my bike, womp womp.

An approximate map of my route-

I started the day off with some mug shots of my bike.

First stop- Picking up my Visa from the post office next to the US Embassy.

Next- 三里屯 The Village. It was hard to get pics here because the security guards were basically chasing me out. I had to explain to them (in my bad Chinese) that I wasn’t trying to lock my bike to the fountain, and that I just wanted to take a picture. Crazy security guards. You’ll see in the second picture that there’s a security guard (white shirt and black tie) in the background watching my every move…

王府井- Not a very telling picture, but I couldn’t find a ‘cool’ place to perch my bike up to show that I was at 王府井, so I just left. On my way out, I saw these guys just standing around. Is an F license plate a gov’t plate? I wouldn’t be surprised to see undercover guys since it’s somewhat close to 天安门.

Next stop, 天安门 in 2km…
I actually missed a picture of this no-entry road sign that showed a car with an explosion above it. Basically “please no cars with bombs, thanks”, lol.

I was going to make a stop over at the 鼓楼 Drum Tower on the way back home, but I was pretty exhausted by that time- and it’ll give me incentive to make another ride out soon.

-Duncan