Cher Yun Shan 车云山

Friday evening, after eating dinner in the student cafeteria with a girl named ‘Fish' (you can't make this stuff up), I asked Gao Jing to give the bike club a call and see if there was a plan for this weekend. A little while later I was told that they were going to 车云山, which translates, roughly, to vehicle cloud mountain.


I was surprised at the turnout when I got to the bike shop the next morning. There were about forty riding and the bike shop was doing brisk business selling last minute items. I ended up purchasing a helmet as I had left mine in America (sounds like a long ways away wen I say it like that). Because this club is an officially approved activity there are rules. One of the rules is that we have to wear helmets.

The helmets actually came in handy because at one point, on the way to the destination, I went off-route (that means I looked around and realized that I was the only one). Well, my way of dealing with that particular problem was to continue doing what I was doing, which was purchasing a bottle of water. I then waited until what I knew would happen, happened. Someone else, also wearing a helmet, rode by with a lost look on his face.

I started following him and of course he didn't want to admit he was lost. To make matters worse, he didn't speak the dialect spoken in this village. Finally he asked a truck driver from the city who told him where he had seen many people in helmets. Off we went; of course, this put me near the back of the pack and the road had narrowed considerably. It had also turned from pavement to... they tried to pave it once and someone, apparently, said, “what the hell... it isn't worth the effort.”

Being as I am riding a road bike, this is the kind of ground that I am disadvantaged on. Almost all of the rest of them were on various forms of mountain bikes. Doc was on a touring bike of the same type I rode last year. This gave him room for medical supplies.

I still managed to chew my way toward the front. This was good because what I didn't realize is that not all the riders were going to the destination. Many of them stopped at the place that we were to return to for lunch. I didn't realize this because by the time we got to that point I was with the more aggressive riders; and, nothing was going to stop us.

The road turned extremely steep. So steep that my concerns narrowed to two. First that I would not be the last to the top. The second being that I would not be the first to begin the walk of shame; the point where on begins walking ones bicycle in admission that one is not strong enough to continue riding.

Afther getting to the destination, which was the summit of the road, we took some pictures (yes, we passed a bike up to the people on t rocks so that the picture would have a bike in them). We then turned around and headed back.

After getting back we met up with those who had stayed behind. We had lunch and sat around for a a couple of hours afterward trying to nap while others in the room played majong, the tuckers out side played air horn, and others chatted at a shout. In general, no one took much of a nap.

I wandered off to get some water in the village we had lunch in and several people panicked. They even called Gao Jing to tell her to stop me, that I would never find my way back. She convinced them that I could see the place I was going and that it was only about 40 meters away. Finally they relaxed and I got my water.

In a short while some were ready to go. So, I left with the first group. This was where a minor mishap occurred. Instead of trusting their own orienteering skills (or, possibly because they were aware of their own orienteering skills) they asked some guy fishing which way to go at a certain point. Well, I could see the way we had come. But, he told them another way.

So, we went that way. Asa result, we ended up splitting from the main group there were about ten of us and it really wasn't a problem. As a result we say a different part of the area. However, when people cluster together and start into the, “this isn't the way we came.” It looks the same no matter what language they are speaking.

Oddly enough, we got back long before the main body of the group. I did notice that there was a discussion of, just who had, the map on the internet forum. The final result of the discussion indicates that no one thought it necessary to bring one.