On the Road to Danzhou

January 31, 2006

What a gloomy morning. At least it's stopped raining.

It wasn't a particularly heavy rain, I knew I had lots of dry clothes in my luggage, and although my poncho had come with me it was down at the bottom somewhere. Besides which, I don't like riding in my poncho. So, while other people were being confused I managed to pull ahead and stay ahead for quite some time. With no turn-offs to miss I didn't feel too uncomfortable riding alone and near the front though I also didn't feel too comfortable about it either. At one point the truck pulled up alongside of me, said something cryptic in Chinese, then accelerated and made a U-turn without giving me a chance to even say "what did you say?" so I stopped pedalling and waited.

Only a few seconds later Irish Chris and his friend Erlaoban showed up and told me that they were telling me to watch out for an upcoming turn that I was very definitely supposed to make sure NOT to make. It would be another three kilometers before the turn and by the time I got there it would have a car sitting at it telling people not to turn.

Erlaoban rode with us the ten or fifteen kilometers until Laocheng before saying goodbye and heading back home. He had neither the free time or the desire to go around the island. Unlike many of the people who didn't go because they genuinely didn't want to go I suspect he does have the skill and stamina.

A totally gratuitious picture of Erlaoban at an abandoned temple on an offroad mountain bike trip. But I really like this picture.

I kept riding with Chris. At least for a while. At one of the few intersections where we actually were supposed to turn he took off before me while I was still eating and chatting.

Chris found first semester A Class Chinese too difficult to complete. I tested into B Class and am about to move up to C class. He has just enough to get by. Enough to have a good time with Chinese friends who have limited English (and when he's around I'm amazed to discover how many of my Chinese friends can speak English). But standing in the drizzle listening to me babble in a foreign language wasn't his idea of a good time.

Some people ride bicycles. Other people ride cows.

Soon after Chris left I found myself back in the banana plantations from the very end of my last trip along this road. And at almost exactly 35km by my odometer, from front door to bike shop to muster to here I came to the tea shop in the town where I had given up. It looks just like every other tea shop in every other small market town down to the faded pink plastic chairs, the dinged up card tables and the chaotic mass of parked motorcycles but I don't think I'll forget that place any time soon.

Only a few months later it seems like such a monumentally short distance to have not gone when I was so close to my goal. Of course, at the time, I didn't know how much farther I had to go; I wasn't in anything like the shape I'm in now; and there was the little matter of fifteen dinner guests arriving in two hours.

Banana flower and banana fruit by the side of the road.

I pedalled on, mostly alone, knowing that some of my friends were somewhere in front of me and some of my friends were somewhere behind me. I don't know what supported group rides are like in other countries but our group tends to stretch out over many kilometers with periodic mini-regroups at snack points and turn-offs.

The sun came out. The hills got hillier. I started to wonder when we were going to get to those horrible climbs and descents I had remembered from the last time on this road before suddenly realizing these gentle rolling nothings were the horrible climbs and descents I had suffered through.

And we turned off for the other route to Danzhou. The one I hadn't been allowed to go on last time. Twenty kilometers of the most incredibly beautiful gently rolling (for my new and improved values of gently rolling) dirt road.

Today's ride: 80 km (50 miles)
Total: 98 km (61 miles)

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