I think I'm getting old

because even though the Lion King was my favourite childhood film I can't remember this character for the life of me...

titanic fail

Chinese people love the film titanic, so much so that I am lucky enough to hear 'my heart will go on' on a daily basis.  And now they have sunk to a new low with this.

e-bikes

7. Ebike

I mentioned in an earlier Blog about ebikes, electric bikes, which whiz silently along the roads and stand very noisily and obstructively on the pavements.  Due to the very high temperatures and humidity over summer I though I would get one, and as my friend already bought one I thought it would be fun to go out on exploratory city rides together.  It set me back £180, and costs about 20p to recharge, which will take you 20 kilometres.  To convert that in to petrol prices, I get over 400 miles to the gallon on this Hog.  To drive it once around the world would set you back the equivalent of 277 litres of petrol.  Anyhoo, apart from being extremely economical it also looks the part, and gets a lot of stares from the locals despite the fact that there are thousands thronged across the streets.  It feels great to ride, especially as summer is in full swing and it’s nearly always mid thirties. Walking even a short distance leaves you hot and sweaty, but the ebike gives you a nice breeze to sit back and relax in as you dodge the potholes, drain covers, cars, trucks, people blindly walking across the road, people blindly driving across the road and of course all the other ebikes.  It has foot peddles in case you run out of juice or encounter a particularly nasty slope.  It’s a funny feeling when you pedal and open up the throttle at the same time, you feel like Lance Armstrong effortlessly accelerating away.  You certainly don’t feel like Lance Armstrong when you run out of battery though, pedalling alone will require a lot of effort to keep up walking speed.  There are luckily however, charge points around the city, which will give your battery a speed charge for 20 or 30p.

 

As you can see from the photos she is a beauty, and as her Chinese name is 小鸟 xiǎoniǎo with 小 xiǎo meaning small and  鸟 niǎo meaning bird, I think it translates in to ‘the millennium falcon’.

Quite a few of the EF ream now have E-bikes and we have formed our own E-bike gang, ‘the easy laowaiders’, for those of you who don’t know, laowai is the name for ‘foreigner’ that Chinese people shout at us from across the street when they can’t remember how to say ‘heellloooooo’.

Below is a picture of the bikes specifications, I though you might not be able to understand so I translated it.

1. This is the battery, where the plutonium rods are housed

2. The Flux Capacitor

3. The pillion seat

4. This stops the passenger from getting thrown off the back under extreme acceleration                                  

5. Hydraulics, that’s how I roll!

8. May look like a brake disk but this is actually the power station, which generates the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed

9. Rear centre stand, perfect for applying the tyre warmers

21. basket storage unit

23. Primary thrust control

24. This actually does nothing at all, but the lever that you can’t see on the other side will kind of slow you down a bit if you pull hard on it.

this is also an e-bike

E-bikes are also very convenient for transporting things!

or taking long road trips!