Day 6 to: Erlianhaote, 121km, 683km to date, 190m up, end elev 1000m

The web connection is extremely slow, so posting any pictures will have to wait...

Day 4 of 6 in a row.  Another hard day, actually a very hard day.  Very strong wind on the side mostly from slightly ahead, occasionally square on the side.  Upwards of 30 knots at times, continuously blowing sand - I felt like I had spend 8 hours inside a sand blasting machine.  I was starting to wonder how much sand blasting exposed skin can handle - since I’m still intact, apparently quite a lot.  Serious sand drifts across the road at times. I would have taken pictures however the visibility was very poor.  It took four washings of my riding clothes before there was no sand in the sink.

The lunch stop today was in the middle of nowhere.  Making a sandwich when it is blowing sand that hard guarantees it will be a “sand” wich.

This area is also the Chinese equivalent of Drumheller.  Yes, the two kissing dinosaurs are really big - spanning a 4 lane freeway.

Also when I approached the Dinosaurs, there was a group of Chinese cyclists - many many pictures were taken.  One of them asked me how old I was - the answer prompted a lot more pictures.

We cross the border into Mongolia tomorrow morning, apparently we are not allowed to cycle across the border so the Tda guys have arranged a collection of trucks - they are not quite sure it is going to work - they have never gone into Mongolia before.

Part of the extra fun associated with border crossings is changing money - the best answer according to our local support is to use the money changes that work out of a corner to the town market.  After a bit of haggling on the rate, I now have a very large pile of 10,000 unit Mongolian notes.

Tonight we had a Welcome to Mongolia event that involved singing, sharing a short of Vodka and each of us received a Mongolian scarf - very classy.