James Chan

Today is the last day of 2010, everybody is hanging out waiting for the new year to come in about 1 hour, but now I am staying in my bed.

2011, what is your dream?

On December 25, Christmas day, but it was the race day. Merida Cup XC Race held in Bihu of Lishui City. It was in a wetland park.

This is what I got for 9th place

We started out early from Wenzhou towards the destination in Lishui, as early as 8:30am although it was scheduled to be 7:00am. Anyway, we hit the road and spent approximately 1.5 hours on the freeway. We got there at around 10:00, it was snowing, freaking cold in this winter, I couldn’t feel my fingers and toes. Nevertheless, we unload our bikes, changed our dress, then went to test the track. The track is not long and not so difficult. It was 2 km long, only had some small technical sections, other than it was pretty even. However, we had to go 8 laps, that’s 16 km, basically, we were competing physically at the end. Read more…

It all started this morning, I went to office as usual, turned on my computer. Okay, the only thing that was unusual was the lil icon in the bottom right corner of the screen just kept spinning. Why? B/c normally I could sign in easily, like few seconds.
Well, I just thought there had been something wrong with the network, not until afternoon. Then I suspected the Skype server was down, and yes it was confirmed. Now every user around the world is suffered from it. It sucks being this way by the way.
Hope Skype reinforces their hardware and software is great already, if it can be better, why not!

Posted by Wordmobi

By heart breaking, I didn’t mean Fuyang is heart breaking, in fact, Fuyang of Hangzhou city is a nice place. The thing is that my bike’s chain broke right before the race started, which also broke my heart.

The XC (Cross-Country) riding competition in Fuyang was broadcasted few weeks ago, I got very excited and signed up for it when I heard of it. Finally it came and I thought I was ready for it. Early Saturday morning, December 18, I got up and rushed to gather with other friends from the club, loaded the bikes and set out to go at 9. It took us nearly 6 hrs to get to Fuyang due to the freeway was closed for snow left on roads days earlier, and traffic jam here and there.

After circling around to the city for a place to eat, we finally sat down at a small noodle shop and quickly finished it. We then headed to the course, where is located in an island. We changed our gears and went test riding the tracks. The track was good, I liked it but it was not clearly marked and I got lost in it. I was even chased by some bulls. But finally we found the exit and got out.

December 19, race day, it was bright. The view was beautiful, I didn’t really get to see the blue sky like that very often here in China. I got up very early as I thought warmup was very important. I again rode to the track, and yet again, I spent quite some time to get back by when my friends were ready and waiting for me, I felt sorry.
It was 8 already and the race was to start at 8 30. We rushed to the register and checked in. Got the plates, and attached it to my bike immediately and rushed back to start point. I didn’t know exactly the starting line and asked the referees, and surprisingly the answer was no. OMG.
Now the tragedy began, I heard a cracking sound, I got off the bike and checked it out. Usually this happens when chain slips, this time, sadly, it was not, the chain broke. It was 8 20 already and I could not get a chain tool to fix it. I was like f**k, how could this shit happen to me!
So I paid load of money, missed the game. It was a disaster. All right, that’s it, I got back to my room, took a shower, cleaned my bike and waited to go back home. I can never forget this and I have to write it down. The thing I learned is that always do a full check up before any riding to make sure your bike is i good condition. Always!

Posted by Wordmobi

I have not been updating this site for a while, obviously. I figured I’d come and write something…

Fu’an of Fujiang Province is a good place to go MTBing, for its terrain diversity and untouched natural paths. I had fun during the two-day riding. In fact, it was the best XC riding I had ever had by far.

From Wenzhou to Fu’an, it took about 4 hours by car, though it was a long and tiring trip, I was very excited. After I upgraded the fork, I had not had a real XC riding as the fork is 100% designated to XC. This was kind of once-in-a-lifetime chance for me and it turned out good.

The weather was not so good, cloudy and humid the whole day but the terrain was still good enough. I didn’t record the route due to that I forgot my GPS in the hotel room. On day 2, the weather was very nice, bright but not so hot, cool but not wet. I wished I could have more time to do it, we only spent 4 hours on the trail.

It was a chance of getting out of the noisy and lousy city and kissing the nature. It is a worthwhile place that you cannot afford to miss.

Right click here and save it as .kml file to view the trail in Google Earth.

Click http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/workout/jchan/99969jfi9f0jfsv4 to view data in Sports Tracker.

It was long after last time we party like last night. And yes, there was no better time to party than last night as we celebrate 3 things together: Sophia’s marriage, Nana’s going to Europe and working there as well as receiving the order.
I actually haven’t been drinking much for months but I re-activated my potential and drank a lot more than I planned. Although there were only 8 of us, we finished 8 bottles of wine. “What? That’s not much.” Remember 6 are women, who didn’t drink as much Lee and I did. Of course Candy seemed drank a lot. I got too wasted that I fell asleep in the cab on the way back to my apartment. Now my head is still aching like hell. But we were happy, that’s all that matters.
I think people talk from bottom of their hearts more often after drinking and we had stayed together and worked towards our common goals for years and yet we were about to say goodbye to one of our members, things could get even sensational for sure.
Thanks to Nana for her hard work, and wish her a safe and joyful journey. Stay in touch.

I purchased this bike about 2 months ago, well from the online shop. That was the first time I bought a complete bike on internet, and it was my first bike since I came back from the US. What bothered me about China, let’s say this city, is safety, not only personal properties, you are not safe living in the city. Traffic is so bad that even riding may kill you.
Anyhoo, back to the stolen bike, I never epected that and I locked it every time, but it was just stolen in 2 hours when I was at the gym. I just parked downstairs, and I did that each time. However, things are never safe now. Don’t be silly.
I rode bike in Houston for 6 months, sometimes I just left it outside mall for the whole day and it was there when I came out. Sometimes I left it unlocked if I did not plan to be away for a long time and nothing happened to it.
Thank god it was not the other bike of mine. But I gotta watch out.

It is right along my way to work and home, the new trail I found is good for light cross country. Besides, I can do it every day. Some photos here.