[embeded]http://youtu.be/NbbLSGoutmY[/embeded]

Overall our flight went pretty smoothly. We got minorly screwed up by customs, but nothing we couldn’t easily fix upon arrival. There wasn’t a single thing the TSA didn’t touch in our bags. Marnix accidentally put his pocket knife in carry on and managed to lose one other thing that I’ll leave for him to disclose if he wishes. We packed our bike boxes a little too heavily so we had to open them up and move a bunch of stuff to our backpacks. The Beijing customs decided that bike locks are not appropriate carry-on baggage, however we managed to talk them into letting us keep our chain lock. But it’s alright because we bought a bike lock and a new knife in UB’s (Ulaan Baatar) black market. The airport was just the single-room facility we expected. Absolutely tiny. We got out, and were immediately greeted by friends of Pam, our Mongolian contact we got through Marnix’s friend Will Heiland.  They stuffed our bikes into the trunks of two Prius’s and carted us into UB. Not before getting approached by a guy in raggedy clothes claiming it was his birthday and trying to sell us postcards though. There were cows on the highway, which, now that we’re actually finishing this post, doesn’t even seem worth mentioning anymore. There are cows on every highway here. Everywhere. Cows.