Jim Bryant in Beijing
(Newest images are at the top of the page.)

[They're ALL decent pics as far as I'm concerned—Dan]

"Check out the exhaust system on the CJ at the gas station. Looks like it could lift the front wheel just standing there!"

Yesterday we rode north above Fengning, about 300km round trip. There were eight bikes including a couple of flatheads, some OHVs, my R69S and a Harley... and this Harley came back under its own power! We passed over three mountains on the way up north and three more on the route back to Beijing. About seven hours of riding. Just a great ride."

We took a short ride up to the mountains to the fish ponds and ate sturgeon this time. I think I'll stick to the trout next time. One of the bikes that came with us was a water cooled CJ750, but unlike most of the watercoolers around Beijing, this one was done right. The frame was cut and extended under the gas tank by 10cm. The tank itself was lengthened and widened. Really clean work. On the way back to Beijing I took the highway, running late for a meeting. The watercooler stayed right with me at 140km/h for about the 20 minutes of highway travel. And he had a passenger in the sidecar. I was impressed. But not so that I'd ever give up on my beloved BMW airhead powered CJs! The owner figures he's getting about 40HP at the flywheel. He upped the compression ratio to 8:1."

[The image file names are also the captions.]

We got a bit of a late start from our normal starting point but by 11:00 AM we were headed north. We rode into Huairo and then took Route 111 all the way to Weichang. Traffic was a mess until we got north of Huairo. We stopped at one of the BBQ fish ponds for lunch and then continued north. Unfortunately, because of the late start, we rode the last hour after dark arriving in Weichang around 7:30 PM. Big Bill had stayed at the same hotel the night before and was kind enough to make our reservations for the following night.

Our fellow riders were, Ed Williams with his brand new 1000cc Beemer Chang, Chris Newman riding my original bike #323 OHV powered CJ, Nick May riding one of our shop bikes, and my trusty R69S. My wife—who just got her drivers license after a long 12 weeks of driver education—drove our Isuzu (Liu Feng) and carried part of the time my son Eric, videographer Joanna, Jiao's little sister Hannah, our dog Baozi, and a felled Ed when he suffered a bout of food poisoning.

But for most of the ride everyone was either riding in or driving one of the bikes. We left the hotel early Tuesday morning and headed up north to Inner Mongolia and the grasslands. We have stopped by Moon Lake every year since 1998 and it has grown into a tourist trap. Time to find a new spot.

I'll try to show pictures of Moon lake past and present. (The first picture is from 2002.) I think you can see the lake covered with ice. But we made it back to the hotel in Weichang just before dusk and had another beautiful (weather-wise) day's ride back to Beijing."

[That's Jiao and Eric Bryant in the first pictures.}

I must say it was quite a pleasure getting to meet Jim face to face. He's one of many CJ people I've gotten to know via the Internet and through mutual acquaintances, so well in fact that it seemed to me as if we were old high school buddies or something.

Since the grey CJ is still down we hopped on the black one and rode into town for some food and bike talk. Jim drove the bike on the return ride and let me tell you, riding in the sidecar gives you a whole new perspective, that's for sure. With Jim at the controls I wasn't in the least bit nervous about being a passenger, not with the miles he has ridden.

Once we got back to CJU's main building we performed a little running maintenance on the Beemer before Jim hit the road. We decided that he must come back and spend some serious time riding around our county and meet my brother in law Tom who has many interests in common with Jim (as well as a vintage Beemer.) By then the grey bike will be up and running again so there will plenty of sidecar machines for us to ride.

Regards,

Jim