East Bay Dinner

"Bicycling 10,300 miles on the Silk Web Road: The Final Challenge: China"

Thursday, November 30, no-host cocktails/social hour - 6 pm, dinner - 7:00, program - 8:00, Berkeley Yacht Club on the Berkeley Marina, one block north of the west end of University Avenue (ample free parking is available in the Marina parking lots.)

Marco Polo didn't have a bike. He left the possibility open to Alan Nichols to become the first person to bicycle the entire 10,300 miles of the Silk Web (also known as the Silk Road) from Istanbul, across all of Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and China to Xian, China's ancient Silk Web capital.

Alan's film will take you across wild, desolate, remote parts of China where more reasonable tourists never dare to go. You will experience snow on mountain passes and heat that melts bicycle tires. You will run into China's police forces and its all-pervasive and dangerous security forces. You will most of all respect (and hate) the winds that can make life hell for a bicyclist, and the truck traffic that can crowd you off the road and kill you.

You'll enjoy camp life in the wilderness among extraordinary mountains, rivers, deserts, and villages. You will witness the extermination of the Muslim Uighurs of Xing Jiang and Alan's own arrest, as well as his broken hand, broken arm, and quintuple coronary bypass.

You'll see firsthand why the Explorers Club awarded its flags to all four of Alan's bicycle expeditions on the Silk Web Road for his additions to the world's knowledge of history and travel, religions and sacred mountains, architectural layering of spiritual sites - and coronary medicine.

In his free time Alan is an attorney, and has served as president of the San Francisco Board of Education and as vice president of the Northern California Chapter of the Explorers Club, as well as written eight books.

Cost of dinner and his program is $22, including tax and tip. For reservations, please send your check, payable to "Sierra Club", with your name, your telephone number, and the names of your guests, to:

Jane Barrett
170 Vicente Road
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510)845-8055.

Attendance is limited to the first 115 reservations received. Reserve early, as these programs do fill up. Reservation deadline is Wed., Nov. 15. There is no admittance for program only.