The beginning of every journey

As told in Around the World on Hot Air and Two Wheels, publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes set out in 1982 on a six person tour through through north central China aboard five Harleys and a hot-air balloon named Friendship.

Calling themselves the Capitalist Tools (after a slogan of Forbes Magazine), this was his second motorcycle soujourn into communist territory, after leading the first biker gang across the Iron Curtain to visit Moscow and Leningrad. They also believed theirs to be the first motorcycle trip of Westerners into the Middle Kingdom, but they must not have read One Man Caravan or they would have realized that Robert Fulton, Jr. beat them to it by 50 years.

In any case, at the close of their journey, Clifford May, one of Forbes' companions, wrote:

The end of a long journey is always a melancholy time. Perhaps that is another reason why, at the close of the motorcycle expedition to the Soviet Union nearly three years ago, Malcolm began contemplating this venture. Perhaps all journeys begin not with a single step but with a craving for the tingle that only anticipation can create.

Now back from China for two months, I can relate to both parts of his sentiment. For me, too, the craving grows...