Terrific - ter·rif·ic (adj.)

         1. Very good or fine; splendid: a terrific tennis player.

         2. Awesome; astounding: drove at a terrific rate of speed.

         3. Causing terror or great fear; terrifying: a terrific wail.

         4. Very bad or unpleasant; frightful: a terrific headache.

[Latin terrificus : terre to frighten + -ficus -fic.]

Terror - ter·ror (n.)

         1. Intense, overpowering fear. See synonyms at fear

         2. One that instills intense fear: a rabid dog that became the terror of the neighborhood.

         3. The ability to instill intense fear: the terror of jackboots pounding down the street.

         4. Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.

         5. An annoying or intolerable pest: that little terror of a child.

[Middle English terrour, from Old French terreur, from Latin terror, from terrre to frighten.]

         It seems that my English teacher instincts were correct; terror and terrific do have the same root word. In which case I feel no qualms at all about calling this a terrific ride. Because it was. In all senses of the word. It was very good or fine. It was awesome. It was astounding. It caused great fear. And it was extremely unpleasant.

         There were some things that were a bit easier. Since I already knew that my gears and legs weren't going to like the climbs one bit not having the visual warning that oh no another one of those was coming was nice. Even if the group was starting to stretch out some giving me taillight indicators of distance I still had no idea how long the climbs or flats were going to go on.

         I was faster than the slow and slower than the fast. My eyes adapt pretty well to moonlight and on one of the flats I lost my cluster of people. I had no headlight, no flashlight, and no taillight. Then, I passed our motorcycle and he asked me if I wanted a bit of help. Oh yes. Oh very yes.

         His timing was perfect, less than ten minutes later I got to one of those big descents. Close enough to real towns and real cities that I had lights to tell me just how high up I really was. Not only was I able to take it while doing something other than clutching onto my brakes for dear life as I inched down the mountainside at 5kph, but, since I had a good, strong, gas powered motorcycle headlight lighting up the road far ahead I was able to go at something almost resembling fast. Which is not to say that I was going fast. Probably not much above 20kph. However, given the conditions, the adrenaline rush was extreme.

         Somewhere ahead of me we saw a blinking taillight go down. But by the time we got there the rider was already picking himself up and muttering about his own stupidity. As far as I know that was the only crash that night or at any time on the whole trip and he didn't even need band-aids.

         Down near sea level on the flats I started passing some of the clusters of people. I'm at my best on flat roads and I had the biggest bestest strongest headlight of them all. It's kind of strange riding your bike while making motorcycle noises.

         There was an "is everyone here and unhurt" regroup at the expressway offramp for Tianya. Even with my motorcycle I was one of the last in. Most of those who came after me had been swept up onto the truck. Bad enough that we had to ride at night but if we had to wait for the slow ones this ride would go on forever. They had to give up their headlights and flashlights to those of us who would still be riding.

         Into Tianya, past Phoenix airport, past the End of the Earth (and let me say that's a pretty surreal street sign to see under those kinds of conditions) through the city, another regroup, the emergence of streetlamps to the cheers of us all, back out of the city, through the suburbs, the disappearance of streetlamps, into Sanya, more streetlamps, another regroup, cucumbers and water, and out again. It went on so long that it stopped being scary and started simply being something that needed to be done between here and dinner.

         In theory we could have stopped at any one of a huge number of resteraunts and hotels. But that was theory. This was reality. It was 9 o'clock at night, there were more than 30 of us and it was the middle of the biggest holiday of the year in the biggest beach resort in China. If we didn't go to the place where we had reservations it was highly unlikely we'd find anyplace with enough empty rooms to accomodate us all.

         Finally, about 10km outside of Sanya, we stopped. We were still close enough to the resorts that although this would be the worst of all of the places we would stay it would also come out to be the most expensive. However, if we'd stayed in Sanya it would have cost a lot more for a lot less.