Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Chiang Mai to Phrao

Two of my brothers and I are in Thailand right now. Our plan is to ride from Chiang Mai to the Laos border and then spend a week or two riding through Laos. Jay hooked us up with three Vientos for the trip and I bought a FreeRadical from Xtracycle and had it shipped to Bangkok. If you have never heard of Xtracycle you should check them out. With the help of the FreeRadical my Viento has been turned into a hauling machine.

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(Lop Buri Train Station)

We packed our bikes into a train in Bangkok and headed north to Lop Buri. We spent a day in Lop Buri before heading north to Chiang Mai.

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(bikes in the cargo car)

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(hanging out in Chiang Mai)

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(riding around some temples in Chiang Mai)

We woke up before dawn for our first day of riding. We were not sure how far we would be able to ride in a day and did not want to kill ourselves. The road started out pretty flat and easy but it was not long before we were riding on mountain roads. We stopped for lunch in a national park and found some cool waterfalls. We set up our tent and spent the day there.

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(outside of Chiang Mai, early morning)

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(riding down a nature trail near a waterfall, after walking up the waterfall James suggested that I try to ride down it. with a free ride bike or a bigger set of balls I could have rode the whole thing.)

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I am now sitting at a guest house 3 Km outside of Phrao. I am pretty tired from waking up so early and pedalling a bicycle with three guys belongings on it. These are just some of the pictures that have been taken so far. When I have some more time (like when I am home) I will go through them all and post the best ones here and have a link to the rest. I can honestly say I do not think I am much of a touring guy. But a couple more weeks of this and I will be in pretty good shape. Maybe I should move back to Canada for the summer and race, this would be good winter training.

I will leave you with two artistic shots that my brother Morgan took. I think the guys from Spank will appreciate the second one.

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Leave some comments let me know what you think. Let me know if you want more details of the touring.

From Thailand,

Rob