DAY EIGHTEEN

200km? 7hours. 3 flat tires and 1 leaky valve stem. Nice road in parts... Petty rocky peaks. Back in Shangri-la now for a few days including some more repairs.

DAY SEVENTEEN

240km 7hours. Flat tire. Beautiful road again... over a pass and into an amazing canyon. Neat white rammed earth houses. Saw some quail with babies. In Xiang Cheng(乡城) now 2-300km from Shangrila.

DAY SIXTEEN

230km? 7hours. Another broken bolt, a large piece of plastic including the tail light and turn signals fell off, and the 3 day old clutch cable broke. Very beautiful ride again. High mountains pine forest and alpine meadows makes me wish we had a tent and were hiking. Back in Li Tang now maybe for a few days. This is turning into more of a learn how to fix Zong Shen motorcycles with no parts class or watch your motorcycle fall apart while you ride it nightmare rather than a journey through the Tibetian highlands of Si Chuan and Yun Nan trip. What will break tomorrow? Bets are open. Saw marmot and pica like creatures today... not sure what they were because I didn't know China had either. Had amazing Tibetian dumplings and soup tonight, stuffed ourselves for less than Chinese food would have cost.

DAY FIFTEEN

200km? 7hours.Two broken bolts, cracked frame and oil leak. All fixed this afternoon except the oil leak. In La Ri Ma township(拉日马乡) best riding yet heat dirt road no cars, beautiful country. Made a spectacle in town just by being here. Huge circles gathered around us every time we stopped walking. A 40 year old dude spoke some of his foreign language with us... sounded like a bunch of t's a's and k's. Went up on a grassy hill and took some glamour shots with three much too happy guys. Got to try riding up a creek for the first time and got pretty wet.

DAY FOURTEEN

180km? 50hours. In Lu Huo(炉霍) tonight. Bad road deep deep  dust lots of trucks. Still beautiful and Tibetan... Getting drier and less steep. Tomorrow will try and find an alternative route away from the highway and over a mountain on a dirt road for 150km. Got stopped by the police at gun point... Three young guys... one with a machine gun and two with assault shotguns. We played dumb as normal and the finally produced the word passport. Their camera wouldn't work to take pictures of our passports and they told us the road was dangerous and let us go.

DAY THIRTEEN

100km? 3hours. Went in this morning to get Casey's visa and waited until 4 to pick it up. The road out of Kang Ding was under construction for the first 40 all one lane big trucks and dust to block the sun. Back in Ta Gong tonight. Heading north tomorrow.

DAY TWELVE

0 km.  All day spent in Kangding. Found the visa extension office, but are waiting for tomorrow to extend casey's visa. Spent several hours fixing things broken by the last mechanic. Found out both the speedometer/odeometer pickups are broken probably means no repairs until i can get replacements back in kunming. Went to the post office again to mail a watch to Hainan.  In Litang the postal worker from hell told us it was forbidden to mail batteries or things with batteries...like watches.  Here we walked in said we would like to mail the watch and the postal worker replied here is a box it is $0.50 and what address would you like to mail it to.  Five minutes and the watch was mailed. Back to the small towns and villages tomorrow.