We were supposed to leave the bike shop at 6am. Although I didn't know it yet, and wouldn't confirm it until late the next day the original 6-day plan had been changed to a 5-day plan while I was out of the country. For most of us it was going to be a long hard ride and they wanted to avoid night riding.

         A combination of fumbling, bumbling, people repacking, stretching, checking the trucks one more time, and me running back into the shop to get my handlebar bag plus the time and confusion involved in putting my handlebar bag on at 6am led to a 6:12 start.

         When I've done night riding in the past it has been, well, at night. The dark end of the day instead of the dark beginning. Occasionally I have been out on my bike as late as 2 or even 3am when things are rather quietly still going on but very definitely in the winding down stage. Cities are not meant to be silent. Especially not Chinese cities.

         It was not only 6am, it was 6am on a holiday. Black and silent.

         We headed out as a pack at a comfortable pace. Probably around 25kph. Since there wasn't any traffic at all to worry about our leader took us out of old town by the shortest of the available routes. Normally he wouldn't do that since we were westbound and that particular route has the unfortunate habit of ending on the eastbound side of the median strip on a main road, forcing us a very slow kilometer in the bike lanes until the next intersection. At this hour, however, we could ride in the car lanes against the nonexistent traffic flow.

         I've never seen the roads so empty. Even when I went riding during Typhoon Damphrey there were more cars and people and bikes on the road than this. Above the sounds of my own bike and body I could hear my friends breathing.

         At the second muster point all the riders who live on the west side of the city as well as those being delivered by car, some cars belonging to people who weren't actually joining us, and some riders who were only going to accompany us for the first part of the first day met us. It wasn't merely a large crowd. It was a huge crowd. Full of friends who I hadn't seen in a month.

         I shouldn't really have been surprised at the clothing worn by those who weren't planning on riding. This isn't the US. This is China. The ability or desire to do sports for fun is the province of the comfortably wealthy. But on the rare occasions that I hadn't seen them in grubby (expensive) bike clothes I'd seen them in clothing that doesn't exactly make me think executive, businessman, or manager. At the back of my mind I must have known that this is exactly what many of my friends are. But knowing and knowing are two entirely different things.

         That Shimano makes most of their components in Asia makes Dura-Ace cheaper. It doesn't make it cheap. There are a lot of $1000 bikes and a not insignificant number of $2000 bikes being ridden in this club. I have acquaintances in this city who aren't making $2000 a year let alone having $2000 left over after everything else to spend on, of all things, a bicycle.

         However, I was surprised. Some of them weren't merely well dressed. They were downright glossy. The driver who spent a good portion of the morning shadowing us was wearing a very natty tailored wool suit with a crisply starched dress shirt. He had cuff-links and a tie-pin. I'm not merely talking glossy, this was downright swank. Especially when matched up with the sweet car he was driving.

         By 7:00am roll call had been called, announcements had been announced, hellos had been said, goodbyes had been said, the truck had been packed and repacked and covered with a tarp, and we were off...

         It immediately started to rain.