Where the wind blows: Where the producer wants it to

October 3, 2014

It had been windy in the evening and I had sought a sheltered spot behind a large rocky butte for my tent. I was well protected from the wind which was coming from the north and also had some shelter from the west and the south, so of course the wind soon started blowing in from the east. I hardly slept the whole night because of these strong gusty winds flapping noisily at my tent, but just before dawn they grew to gale force. It was really incredible the strength of it and the space inside my tent began to shrink as the pegs on the windward side were ripped from the ground. It was only me and my belongings that were holding the tent down and I began to doubt if we were going to be enough. My no-flying rule was in danger of being broken here. It was still dark but there was just enough early-morning twilight to see the tent walls closing in on me. Realising I had to act I unzipped the inner and met the full force of the gale head-on. I kept my lower half inside to keep everything from blowing away and with my torso outside I unhooked the tent poles and wrestled the whole thing to the ground. I put my bike on top of the flapping tent to weigh it down and then sought shelter in a little nook of the rockface to wait for the sun.

It was too cold in the wind to do anything more until the sun warmed things up a bit, so I stayed crouched in my little nook. It hadn't been the best start to a day, but on the plus side I had the chance to just sit and watch the sunrise for the first time in as long as I could remember. I wish I could tell you I had some profound thoughts but to be completely honest with you what I was actually thinking was 'this sun is taking its sweet time isn't it? I wish it would hurry up, I'm freezing here!'

But eventually it arrived and I packed everything away and onto the bike. Now for the difficult part - cycling into this wind. It took all my effort to push the bike back to the road, never mind anything else. Then I made a very nice video of me being blown about in the wind as I tried to stand up, but I'm afraid the Great Firewall of China won't let me access youtube so I can't upload it for you. And there were no trees to take a picture of to show the wind. So I took a picture of my bike, which doesn't show the wind at all.

I probably would have given up and not bothered trying to cycle at all but there were two problems. The first was that there was nowhere to shelter. The second was that I didn't have enough food and was in the middle of nowhere on a road with no traffic, so I had to go somewhere. But the very fact that there was no traffic was the saving grace, for had I been on any other road cycling would have been impossible. As it was, with the whole width of the road to play with I was able to zig-zag my way upwind being blown about all over the show, with an average speed of about four kilometres per hour. It was absolutely the strongest wind I had ever cycled into. I thought about how one of the reasons that I had decided to go west to east around the world on this trip was that the prevailing winds were supposed to go from west to east around the world, but after more than a year of cycling I was quite sure this was a load of baloney. The actual truth, and this is a little known meteorological fact, is that the prevailing winds go in the exact opposite direction to whichever way I want to cycle on any given day.

I struggled on, wondering why life had to be so hard. Then I thought again about the possibility that perhaps I really was existing in a Truman Show type pretend world. That would explain everything. You know how at the end of the film, when Truman is getting to the edge of the pretend world the producers do everything they can to stop him. Clearly that was what was going on here! They were throwing all this crap at me only because I was getting so near to the edge of the set. Determined to find the real world I pressed on!

Then after two and a half hours and with an underwhelming nine kilometres under my belt the G30 expressway suddenly intersected my road. It cut right across it and there was no way to get to the other side and continue on the G312. It was even blocked off by huge piles of sand and a fence on the other side. Now I had no choice in the matter, I had to rejoin the expressway. At least I would have a valid excuse if the police pulled me over.

Don't drive tired, or people will throw drinks at your car

But the G30 was going more to the south now, and the wind started to come from the north, so it worked extremely well to my advantage. The first time a police car came by I held my breath, but they just drove on without seeming to care. And at the toll booths I slipped by unnoticed. And the G30 had some advantages; the barriers at the side were painted a shade of turquoise that I found quite relaxing, and the flat gradient and good road surface meant that I made good progress and even made it to a hundred kilometres for the day, something which had seemed impossible that morning. My only conclusion was that the producers of my Truman Show had realised that I was on to them and they had said "okay force him back onto the expressway and we'll just play that on loop for a few thousand kilometres." Oh yes. I knew what was going on here. I'm not stupid.

I used a storm drain to escape past the fence that lined the road. I was going to sleep in it but it was a bit noisy so I slept out in the desert under the stars

Today's ride: 104 km (65 miles)
Total: 29,864 km (18,546 miles)

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