[My Weekender] with Thomas Chabrieres

Thomas Chabrieres runs "Shanghai Sideways", a city tour company that specializes in tours of Shanghai via motorcycle sidecar. Check out their webpage here and their reviews on Trip Advisor here.

When your weekend starts, my busiest time of the week starts. At Shanghai Sideways, most of our Shanghai tours happen on the weekend

It's Friday. I have an end-of-the-day meeting with Elisabeth de Brabant, who has two contemporary art galleries in Shanghai. We have to discuss the Brabant-Sideways tour, which would be of the contemporary art places by Sidecar. We also have to discuss the happening we have been working on for a few weeks now: a photo exhibition by Aurelien Chauvaud, an upcoming wonder boy of the international photographic scene. Aurelien has been working on portraits of sidecar owners in Shanghai. The idea is now to exhibit these photos with the sidecar owners joining the usual crowd of art buyers.

Once this is done, we go to The Chalet on Yongjia Lu and grab a few cheap drinks. The place is empty during the first half of the evening, which is perfect, and Aurelien is happy too!

Saturday morning, we have to pick up a group from Park Hyatt who ordered a morning Champagne Tour. It ends at 1pm and we're off for lunch with the other riders in a street restaurant. Here is a free hint for you local street food junkies: look out for street restaurants where taxi drivers stop, because if taxis stop there, chances are that the food will be good, fast, and cheap! Last one I found is in a rat hole at the crossroads of Shunchang Lu and Taicang Lu.

Meet up with my lovely girlfriend after lunch to discuss the color of her sidecar. Bright red it will be! Life is good! We shop for a few DVDs and go way up north to check out an abandoned villa on the side of the river with an intact garden. Seems it was the house of the water treatment factory in the 1920s. Very cool spot for architecture lovers, I'll pass the info to the other insiders at Shanghai Sideways.

6pm, another group, we're 22 sidecars in front of the Puli hotel for an event by a French luxury group. All of us are dressed by the brand. We drive through Shanghai with a police escort to drop off our guests at The Peninsula. Very fun ride!

We then drive back to Shari (which has the triple advantage of offering parking space, having great outdoor space for drinks, and being empty most of the time) where I invite all the other riders for a drink (alcohol free.. can’t drink and drive around here)... a few will decide to leave their bike there and pick it up tomorrow though. I'm part of that bunch, as I live 250m away from the bar.

Sunday morning, get up at 10am -- that was nice! Brunch at home with a few friends: we provide the fresh juices, the bread & coffee, and they deal with the rest. I drop by my mechanic's place to fix one of my bikes and try to explain the type of red my girlfriend wants for her bike (turns out that "Ferrari red" is a perfectly understandable color for my mechanic).

6pm, we meet other riders and head off to a Chinese rock event in Qingpu called "Rock Ladies Motorcycles Dogs" organized by some Chinese riders. It's nice to see the underground cultures coming out in business oriented Shanghai!

Will probably run into the guys from Harley and try again to explain to them that riding a Harley with Celine Dion blasting out from the speakers of the bike is NOT living the American dream.

We'll ride back after having listened to inaudible rock and taken photos of 200 bikes and dogs.

Back home, light diner, DVD and a big night's sleep after having decided with the beloved girlfriend that we’ll spend more time together next weekend!