January 13, 2025
A Dry Run for The Run
Failed First Day
Drawing on inspiration from the Australian cycle tourist Ray Pokai who I met in Shanghai at exactly this time 10 years ago, his tour provided the blueprint for my escape. Before meeting me, he had cycled in Taiwan across the Taroko Gorge, taken the ferry to Fuzhou, then cycled up the Chinese coast past Wenzhou and beyond. His route in China was one that I had cycled in reverse several times, and all with some sort of failures. After he saw me and continued cycling onto Qingdao for the ferry for Korea, these are his inspirational words:
"So to get you up to speed I spent 5 days servicing my bike and hanging out with Steve Ruelle who is an amazing, generous guy and is one of the few fond memories I have of China. I attempted to extend my visa so I could comfortably ride to Beijing but I was refused within seconds of them reading that I had a double entry. That left me with not enough time to ride to Beijing so I ended up choosing to ride to Qingdao which is about 800 km north of Shanghai to take a ferry to South Korea and end this nightmare that I was living. The ride was flat and typically polluted with extra high air pollution that gave me teary eyes and headaches. The scale of pollution is hard to describe without actually seeing it."
I was essentially going to follow his route out of China.
But it ended up in a complete failure on Day #1—just like all my other bike rides in China.
I soon realized this plan was going to have to change, and fast. Let's face it, a slow motion bike ride up the Chinese coast while escaping Shanghai would leave me a sitting duck. The anticipated ferry ride and seeing the sunrise on the way to South Korea would have been symbolic like it was for Ray, but I came to realize: this was his journey, not mine.
For some reason, don't ask me how, we actually got a day off on a Monday. So this was the time for my "escape". Come to think of it, the timing was pretty dumb to be doing this in mid-January. Sure, the semester just ended, but we wouldn't get paid until the end of January. A friend suggested it would be better if I waited a little bit longer.
But I was so desperate and reeling from mental health damage, not to mention countless sleepless nights that I just wanted to get out of here, timing or plans be damned.
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Numbers #32 and #34 were the epicenter of a hidden cluster of covid cases that kept this compound sealed off for weeks in the heart of the Shanghai lockdown. It was also the location where the father climbed to the roof and committed suicide. That was nearly 3 years ago but I couldn't shake it. The suicide happened on a Friday night. There was no sleep that night. I'll never forget the police in their ghostbusters suits the next day and the wailing woman who saw them carry out his coffin. For this reason, I tried to explain to Sophia many times that living in such a compound was causing severe PTSD, that we would need to move out and find a smaller place. But she wouldn't want to move out, and that forced me to make drastic decisions.
And so every time I would either walk or bike past those buildings, I was reminded of this pointless lockdown that caused untold suffering and for what? State control, no more, no less. It was time to make good on my talk to leave China and take action on this.
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The northerly track continued. I didn't know the exact route, but if I kept going north it would seem reasonable to come across one of the highways leading out of Shanghai and towards a ferry across the Yangzte River. My plan woud be to stay in a hotel then drop the bomb that I had started my escape out of China.
I had all kinds of nervous and excited emotions about this. What was I going to do once at the hotel? Then the next day? And the day after? Work would soon find out I absconded, and so would my wife. If I was still in China it would not be hard for them to find my location and convince me to come back. Knowing myself, I might even volunteer my whereabouts. No. This plan was not a good one at all.
But that was the extent of my desperation. I was willing to do anything to leave behind this nightmare, just like Ray at the time. Even a ridiculous plan like the one I was executing now to basically ride north and see what happened.
Interestingly though, my mental health did begin to improve even the slightest when I was on the open road and it looked like this might have a chance of actually going somewhere.
That little break didn't last long. I kept circling back mentally to the months leading up to all this. This was most definitely going to be my last teaching year in China and it was decided months in advance. The school I taught at had 3 principals in 3 years. The latest one was a micromanager to the extreme and the way he treated us showed utter contempt to teachers and the profession. He could best be described as a Stalin archetype dictating affairs while never leaving an office. His modus operandi was outsourcing all his clerical and admin duties to the teachers and bombaring us with an insane amount of bureauratic paperwork.
Seeing how this year was unfolding as my worst nightmare, the decision I made was to give official written notice as early as December, meet with the heads of the company, give my formal resignation, and just ride out the remainder of the contract. That would in effect have me collect 5 months worth of pay (before giving notice), then collect another 6 months plus the completion bonus.
In the past, this strategy would work. You could officially give notice and tell the school you are leaving, then they get off your backs. You're then cruising, collecting about 60% of your salary and can relax knowing that you did things by the book. But the company had other plans. From their point of view, they saw their best teacher asset, their biggest cash cow, and the most senior employee made a strong decision to resign having been disgruntled with the micromanagement as well as the politics of China in general. And the whole thing was done by design from the very top. The company then had other ideas: they wanted to milk every last bit of value out of me and work me to death, right until the very bitter end on June 30th.
The road opened up more and traffic thinned out. Maybe it was a combination of all this mental processing, finally catching a break however briefly, or maybe it was my mind going into micro-sleeping. We'll never know exactly what happened.
We're riding. It's an open road.
Yes, it's finally a break.
Not even weekends are a break. It's pressure at work, pressure at home. Constant visits to the in-laws. The food is great but they seldom include me in conversations. They yabber on in Shanghainese dialect the whole time. Is that a fun time for anyone? At the very least, you could speak Mandarin but you won't.
During those times I look forward to Monday morning, only to dread going to work. Then by the time Thursday rolls around, it's looking like the weekend, only to repeat these in-law visits. Thursday might end up being the best day of the week. That's a very sad thing.
But today it's a Monday, there's no work, and I'm riding.
Oh, that looks interesting, it's people fishing on the other side of a gate. Why is there a gate here? Of course, it's China. There's always a gate. Gates are lockable. Another lockdown could happen at any time.
SMASH!!!
I didn't even see the concrete post on the edge of the fence. My bike rammed right into it. The front wheel absorbed all the initial impact. The right brake cable then took the secondary impact and snapped right off. Then my right wrist was snapped back as a tertiary blow to all this. After this, I suddenly pivoted clockwise. I was catapulted off the seat bike but landed firmly on my feet and didn't touch the ground. I could feel the side of my face barely graze the concrete post.
I was astonished as to what the hell just happened and why I wasn't dead or seriously injured having just survived this blow by literally the skin of my teeth. The speed of all this was terrifying. This was a Cannondale bike with 29 inch wheels that could cruise. Inspecting the damage, the front wheel was completely warped. My wrist had a small cut and some minor swelling that never got to anything serious.
This had to be the universe or God saying "I got you on this bro" It was a message on three fronts: One, someone is truly looking out and cares for me. Two, it was an immediate message that I needed to kaibosh this ridiculous escape plan and come up with something better. Three, all this pressure at work and home in China was really putting my life in danger. It is very unfortunate to say this, but the frequency of bike and other accidents significantly increased ever since meeting my wife and her overprotective nature. The more she would say "safe riding", well meaning of course, and how she constantly worried about my safety, this had the opposite effect of attracting more accidents. It wasn't like I was actively seeking out bike accidents. But this whole dynamic and all the high pressure put me in a very precarious mental state that led to these things happening.
Once I separated from her and realized I could take care of myself, the accidents and mishaps decreased to nearly zero.
So what did I do after that accident and the damage on the bike and to my wrist? I kept going that's what. There's no way I would be making it to Qingdao obviously, but I could at least bike out of Shanghai province to the first town in Jiangsu province, calm my nerves with a coffee at 85 degrees then bike back to the city.
The funny is that the coffee stop wasn't even planned. I was going to go further into the city but even in the middle of nowhere a traffic cop was watching me to see if I would commit a traffic violation and run a red light. Seeing his game, I turned right and lo and behold, a coffee shop. Ok then I'll relax here.
The coffee stop was a nice break then I assessed my options. I could just dump the bike here in the middle of nowhere, in much the same way that I had dumped all my previous scooters and motorcycles. Those were gotten rid of, sadly, after many years of incredible memories. It was a combination of it being harder and harder to ride scooters in the city and of course my wife not allowing me. I could fight that, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. If I was serious about escaping China then I would get rid of the scooters and motorbikes over time. Now I felt like ditching the bicycle too.
But the bike would have to be ridden back to the city in its warped state and stored at a subway station nearby my school to at least make a believable pretext as to why my wrist was all damaged and why the bike wasn't with me. The bike was surprisingly rideable, that's how good the condition it was. I bought it in Manila nearly 8 years ago and flew it to Shanghai soon after. That bike carried a lot of memories
After that accident, I rode less and less. I started taking cabs to and from work. This was totally out of character for me, but nothing was really said about it. Even my cycle commuting career was over, nobody would care.
Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 70 km (43 miles)
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