While I'm on the truck I see yet another bicyclist. In the last three days there have been no others doing the biking for fun thing. This man, who calls out "Hello! Ah Zhi! Long time no see!" as he pedals past in the other direction is the eleventh in one day.

         The truck is going pretty slow. The truck usually goes pretty slow. This time, however, there was a reason. The two people who ended up riding in the back of the pickup truck are also two of the strongest riders so I'm not entirely sure why we had more passengers than passenger space. We stop for gas. We stop for fruit. We stop to go to the bathroom. We stop to let someone from the back of the truck drive for a while. All sorts of things. Catching up with the crowd by way of the truck is taking longer than catching up by way of bicycle would have. But it's all good fun cause the weather is fine and I can follow most of the conversation going on around me.

         Finally, at the base of a mountain, (oh look another mountain) we catch up with everyone. I'm willing to climb but there are four or five people who just can't do it and they'd already been ferried to the top. Unfortunately, when Ah Jian unloaded them and their bikes my front wheel was somehow left at the top with them. My bike came back down the mountain. My wheel stayed at the top. So I'm still in the truck. And heaven help me but I'm actually grumbly over not being allowed to climb the durn thing.

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         Just as we are about to start up a loaded group of thirty coming from Nanning in Guangxi passes us. Some of them, including one of the foreigners riding with them stop to chat. They are on their fifth or sixth day in Hainan and are making their way slowly with camping along the way. He says they've seen other bikes everyday. How could it possibly be we haven't? By taking roads that aren't on the maps. And by taking roads that aren't roads. Doesn't your group go to play on local non-roads? No, of course not. How do you find the non-roads? By being local, of course. I get the feeling that this answer doesn't quite satisfy him but he doesn't press the topic.

         Once at the top of the mountain it is discovered that my 1000 mile curse is still in effect and the reason that flat sounded so much like a blowout was because it was, in fact, a blowout. My tube is showing through a hole in the sidewall. This would be tire #4 this has happened to. Always at approximately 1000 miles. And this one a Michelin at that. Unfortunately, with everything else in the toolkit there are no replacement tires in my size and I'm on the truck for the rest of the day.

         Ah Jian promises me that he'll get me a new tire in Qionghai.

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         I even know where I damaged the tire. There was a pothole in the dark in Sanya. One of the places where we had streetlights and were riding a bit faster. By this time I had a flashlight taped to my handlebars and it didn't help. It was a very small pothole. More like a cuphole than a pothole. If I'd been riding alone I would have had the space to correct and go around rather than through. Riding in a pack there wasn't much of a place to go. The kthump jounce had been strong enough that I'd stopped to check tire pressure and make sure I didn't have a pinch flat or anything like that.