Ah Jian promised me he'd try to find me a replacement tire in Qionghai. However, a replacement tire didn't happen. Once again the ride took longer than expected, even with the very slowest of the slow being delivered the last 40km by support truck and by the time the rest of the pack arrived in Qionghai the few places where I might have had a chance of getting a 700cc tire were all long closed.

         Faced with a full day on the truck and no chance of even the possibility of riding I was feeling pretty grumpy. I wasn't actually in a bad mood per se but I wasn't in a particularly good one either. This was the only day of the trip where we were following the original itinerary and I knew I could do those 135 kilometers real easy. This was the flat side of the island and we'd be spending the whole day on national roads. Occasionally rather poorly maintained national roads but national roads nonetheless.

         I can't decide whether or not the bike shop boss has started mothering me more since I started calling her "mom." It was because of the mothering that I started calling her that in the first place. This morning she was being particularly "mom" in prompting me to get out of bed and I was acting exactly like I do with my real mom. Grunting and pulling the pillow over my head. Eventually she took the pillow and then she took the blanket so I had to get up.

         Getting dressed was easy. My almost not bike clothes are also my pyjamas when I go on trips. Unlike my blue and white striped Shimano shorts or my red, yellow, and black particolor Giant shorts the unpadded bike shorts almost look like real clothing. I tend to wear them around town on shorter rides or when I'm wearing a skirt. To this I added the tie-dyed cotton tank top I had slept in, my heavily embroidered silk jacket from Vietnam, and a pair of ordinary sneakers. Once my helmet and gloves went in the bag with my bike shoes in the back of the support truck I felt very naked.

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         I couldn't quite bring myself to ride the support truck in my cute pink sundress. That would have been too weird.

         I ate sparingly at breakfast. Or at least I tried to. I'd only done 30km the day before and although my body kept trying to tell me I ought to be hungrier than this and needed to eat more more more I knew that I wasn't burning enough calories to eat the way my friends whose bikes weren't broken were eating. However, I still managed two bowls of rice porridge with salted fish, pickled vegetables, hard boiled eggs, and a bowl of fried noodles. No matter what my brain said my body knew that I'd been burning hard calories and it wanted more, more, more.

         The whistles start blowing and the calls of "准备!准备!" Get ready! Get ready! start going around. I slouch around trying not to get in the way as the luggage is shifted around on the back of the support trucks. I know from previous attempts to help doing things like spreading tarps or tightening ropes that I am more of a hindrance than I am a help. So, I mostly stayed around the edges waiting for someone to tell me what to do.

         The bikes had left. The motorcycle had left. The luggage truck was packed and the leftover bikes were going on the other truck when I heard my name in a conversation. "Give that one to Marian." I had a bike! Someone had gone home and I had a bike. They were going to let me ride.

         Suddenly I understood exactly the way Ah Zhi felt in Danzhou when he swapped with another driver. Compared to riding a bike, riding the support truck is boring. And since it is limited to bike speeds it's also mind-numbingly slow for a car. I paw through the luggage to get at my padded shorts, leave my fancy silk jacket wadded up in a ball shoved in a box, and head for the bathroom at a fair impressive clip. Hardly a run but I'm a crip, I might be able to ride a bike but I can't run.

         The bikes have already been gone for twenty minutes and I'm hardly a strong rider compared to most of the rest. If it were my road bike I might be able to catch up the pack within an hour, but it isn't a road bike. It's a full suspension mountain bike with buzzy wide tires. Instead I'm delivered to the head of the pack at first tea and I get to ride.

         For the first 60 km I do a pretty good job of keeping up. I'm pretty far near the back and spend most of my time as the last rider. I just can't get my speed up. It's a real good bike but these roads cry out for a road bike, or at least a hybrid. Even if the low gearing would have been wonderful on some of those mountain climbs I can't imagine how to original rider managed to do back to back centuries on this bike.

         When I go offroad I much prefer to be on a mountain bike but I don't understand riding mountain bikes on roads. I don't find it particularly comfortable compared to my own bike. Perhaps when the day comes that I have a mountain bike of my own set up the way I like it I'll understand but, for now, I just don't get it.

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