Really boring.

         Really really boring.

         If we'd been going a little faster or had had something to fix or someone to feed or someone to photograph or something, anything, it would have been alright. However, we didn't. It was an extraneous third car that had shown up the night before when the bike shop boss's husband arrived from Haikou. Some clever person decided that putting me in the truck with the backseat packed full of newly purchased explosives probably wasn't the best way to calm my rattled nerves and there was a switching about of drivers and passengers so that me, the nurse, a random woman I'd never seen before, and Ah Zhi were in the bike shop boss's husband's car.

         I fell asleep for a while, woke up, and fell asleep again for lack of anything else better to do. That the CD changer was still playing a particularly bland recording of the Butterfly Lovers didn't help with the drowsiness of the environment.

         As we went farther north the weather started looking more like February. The sky started getting clouds and if it weren't for the intense green of the plants around us one might think it was winter. Of course it was winter or what passes for winter in the tropics.

         We pulled to the side of the road for Ah Zhi to take a nap and for at least five or ten minutes we all fell asleep. Then, of course, we had no idea how many (if any) bikes had passed us and where we still were in the line. It was a slow drowsy slow boring slow dull drowsy slow and boring afternoon.

         Did I mention it was slow?

         And drowsy.

         Boring even.