A Sunday ride

This week has started out a bit slow. On Sunday I went for a bicycle ride with Peter, a student of Colin's. It was a small loop; however, I did go to the part of the city that is on the other side of the river and rode through several large parks. I saw where the city pool is; however, it is empty for the winter.

This is Peter. He is one of Colin's graduate students.

As you can see, many of the streets are not heavily used

Although, you may have to share the sidewalks...

Saturday evening Zeneta caught the train to Xian. I found a couple of students that were glad to help. There was a bit of stress over this because the students that had agreed to meet us were running very close to the time that I had scheduled to leave. I had a second plan in case they didn't show; it was simply to show the train ticket to a cab driver. I am pretty sure that would have worked for getting to the station; however, it is easier with someone who knows the language. As it turns out, almost exactly when I had told them to meet us they called from the base of the stairs.

We promptly headed out to the cab area in front of the school and found ourselves a cab. From there we went to the train station and waited a short while, in the lounge. We went out on the platform a bit early and waited. The train arrived and we carried Zeneta's luggage on board for her and said good-bye to her as she headed off to cross China by herself.

Zeneta, snug in her bunk. This car will be home for the next 12 hours.

While waiting at the station we, the students that had come with me and myself, arranged to meet the next day for a bike ride. The two that I had arranged the ride came along with a third, a young woman who is a student of Bronies. She rode Zeneta's bike and before we got off to a full start we had to visit a repairman to have a part on it fixed.

We started toward the same lake that I had visited a couple of weeks earlier. However, we tried to get to it a different way. The first attempt failed due to construction that had removed the road that we intended to use. Then we took a small road that took us along a dirt road through several small villages. This more than made up for the failure to reach the lake.

That road eventually put us back near town where we found ourselves getting separated. While I was waiting for the others to show up I met a teacher at a local primary school, Susan. She invited me to an event where several of the Westerners who work at different places in the area will be meeting each other. I was already aware of the event and am waiting to find out if I will be able to make it to this event.

From there we made a few random, but repeatable, turns that, after about 15kms' put us at the lake we tried to get to earlier in the day. We arrived at the back and from where we were we were able to see the back of the dam that we had seen from the front on our previous trip to the lake. A lot of our ride to the back of the lake was on single lane and dirt roads.

On the way back we started racing (sometimes I wonder what I'm thinking, racing kids, literally, half my age on a bicycle) which resulted in some problems. I kid you not, the kid that was putting up a good fight against me (of course, he looked like he was about to kill himself doing it) had a mechanical. His chain came off. We discovered that the lock pin on the master link of his chain had flown. We were able to find the side plate and get him going; however, it was slow going. The good part was that in about four blocks we found a repairman and got it, and some other problems he was having, fixed. From there we made a stop at the local supermarket, I was looking for some basic bicycle tools that I could carry with me; kind of like a wal-mart grade bicycle repair kit. I was not able to find one and we headed back to the college and had lunch at one of the cafes.

It was interesting, you think of China as being a nation of bicycle riders. However, one of the students commented that he had never ridden so far on a bicycle in his life. As I saw it, we only rode about 30-40km. It was a fun way to spend a day.