Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

Mate, this is what it’s all about.
Riding beside rivers in the countryside for countless hours.
Relaxing with a few cold beers and bbq’d meat sticks with friends.

The weather here is totally awesome and more than perfect for riding so at any given chance my peddles and I have been out and about until one of my peddles decides to break and has to be replaced but can’t be way out in the middle of the fields. Also now my chain keeps jumping off and no matter how many times I pull the back wheel back and tighten it my bike continually tells me that its had enough of riding distances on bad and bumpy river side tracks.

Well I’m the dominant one in this relationship so I guess it has no bloody choice!

The photos for this entry are from Saturdays Han River 'Wrong’ Ride where Brad and I chose as a destination a bridge we spotted far into the distance when were about an hour west of town several weeks ago. After an hour of riding along the river side the bridge once again came into view and we estimated that it would take another hour to reach.

Well, that was the last of that bridge we got to see for the day.

We knew that the Han River made a right turn (from west to north) but we expected that we would turn with it. What we didn’t know was there was tributary and that we would be actually following that instead and we also had no idea that the days destination had actually been passed by without notice due to trees but it really didn’t matter as it was on the other side of the river where the tributary enters the Han. Throughout the day we visited several villages full of excited children who came out to watch and laugh at the monkeys on their bikes passing by and we then rejoined the beautiful and blissfully quiet river side tracks from which we spotted several small local ferries that could have taken us across the river.

Brad was all for a relaxing river crossing by ferry.

Me, well the days destination was a bridge and I was determined to cross the damn river by bridge and as I was more than confused at what had happened to the days destination bridge I was all the more determined to continue riding for however long it took just to find a bridge, any bridge and cross the river. Several hours later we finally came across a small town that was actually big enough to warrant a bridge and as the sun began setting we finally began making our way back east.

As Hanzhong city crept onto the horizon we finally figured out where we were and that we were actually on the road that took us to Mianxian town (forty five minutes by bus) where we visited the ‘Marquis Wuhou Memorial Tomb & Temple’ several months prior during the Qingming Festival. However things now look completely different as then the fields were covered completely by a golden blanket of rapeseed flowers. Now the golden blanket is a thing of the past and has been replaced by rice and wheat. The rapeseed plants now lay bare and scattered, bundled into small triangles which are then loaded onto the farmers hand carts to be taken away and made into many different products such as the Canola Oil and Margarine you have in your kitchen.

If you click the Marquis Wuhou link above you be able to compare the huge difference that has occurred within a short two month period.

Once we figured out where we were we knew where the road was taking us and that was north west of where we wanted to go so we decided to grab the next track that took us south east towards Hanzhong city. That idea had us riding along the actual Han River back towards the tributary we took by mistake but on the wrong side of the river of course. So we then had to ride all the way back to the main road where we found that if we had of ridden one extra minute we would have come to the river and crossed the bridge to the correct side.

From there it was another hour before we finally reached home and opened our first cold beer for the evening at a side walk BBQ just up the road from home.

We spent the evening with Frank who is the Buckland’s guy for the Xian City and Shaanxi province area. He is actually from Hanzhong city and luckily for me was coming to visit his family for the weekend and as the Toshiba people know him from several of our visits they were more than happy to allow him to collect my computer so I didn’t have to waste yet another weekend and a heap of money on hotels and taxi’s for no reason.

It’s been working for three days now and this is the longest my QOSIMO has worked for many months and I believe the Toshiba store actually changed several parts such as the hard drive and the motherboard prior to taking it to the Toshiba Service Centre as when I took it to them it wouldn’t even start and they spent several hours trying to get it to start to actually install new software, which seems to be their answer to everything.

The past half a year has gone something like this;

Computer works for a day or two, I take it back to Xian, they format it and give it back. It works for a few days and several weeks to a month later I head back to Xian and remind them that it has the same problem using XP, VISTA and now Y7 using both English and Chinese software.

They buy new software, format it and give it back the next day….Yeah...Not!
It works for a night and then dies again...Yeah...Not!
Re-read above paragraph….Yeah...Not!

This time they finally took it to the Toshiba Service Center who had it for three days and used it continuously day and night and found no problem and that means it’s been working for a week now so I’m thinking that some of the innards were replaced prior to the service center visit. Whatever the reason I’ve gone from my ten inch travel computer back to my zippy fifteen inch widescreen QOSMIO and I couldn’t be happier if I was twins…Yeah!

Beers N Noodles toya…..shane
PS: I hope you enjoy all the Chairman Mao shots that I took last time I was in Xian.
I have started a Mao photo album for FB but as I've lost my sneak software that won't be happening anytime in the next decade....Yeah...Not!
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The soundtrack to this entry was by Ladysmith Black Mambazo
The album was ‘The Best Of’
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