Night Ride

About the only funny thing to happen this week, so far, was on Monday evening. I got a call for the bicycle club, at about 20:00, asking if I wanted to go for a town ride of about 30km, high speed.


Of course I was game. After all, high speeds, in the dark, on the city streets in China... What could possibly go wrong... Right?


The trouble was that I had no idea where to meet them. There is no good intersect point on the continuum of their English and my Chinese. I had them call Gao Jing and have her tell me where to meet them.


So, based on her instructions I set out for, "a bridge along the river." I did this at speed so they would not wait too long. I arrived that the 9 middle school Bridge and there were a bunch of riders on bikes just like mine. I figured I was at the right place. One of the women even recognized me and told them that I was, "lberta." (they can not end a word in a hard sound) I figured I was with the right group.


They assembled about ten riders, all on good bikes and we headed off. The leader pulled off on to the side walk but it was in my neighborhood so I knew... WHAM!... what was coming... some open tiles in the sidewalk leading to the sewer about 3 meters below. He missed the sewer and rolled (but not on the bike, it sort of flew) into the street. Bi Jao (a form of Saki) cures all injuries and we were off again... I still knew I was with the right group.


We then broke into two groups, the slower riders and the idiots... er... faster riders, yea, that's the word. I think you can figure what group I was in.


We raced to the top of the dam while the slower group waited at the base (the base of the dam is still a daunting ride). We then rode, at great speed, back to the bottom.

We stopped at a bridge to wait for the slower riders to catch up. It was there that I noticed some very strange messages on my cell phone. Messages like, "where are you." I continued to ride with the lead in the group for a while until we all spit off and headed for our respective homes.


I got home and saw that there were a lot of messages. The, "where are you," theme seemed pretty consistent. It seems that the bike club was concerned when I never showed. They called Gao Jing and she had no idea where I was. You guessed it, I rode with the wrong people. They knew who I was; but I have no idea who I was riding with... oh well, I had fun.