| hello everybody, we are now in a town in china whose name i do not know because our mapsare in chinese and all the signs are in chinese along the road as well. sowhat we usually do when we set out in the morning, is memorize the chinesecharacters for the town we are heading to and then keep an eye out forthem along the road.so let's see, what happened since last time i wrote?well, we left simao, the town i sent my last email from, and we got toanother town called puer. it wasn't a long ride, only about 45 km, but itwas pretty mountainous, so when we found out after getting there thatnight that there was no way of changing any money (american cash,traveller's checks, bank cards, credit cards, nothing worked), and weneeded some youan pretty badly, we were pretty upset. we were also toldthat there's nowhere to change money in any of the towns we were planningto hit in the following days, so our only options were to either run outof youan or return to simoa the following day. we chose the second option,although i hate to back track, and ed's not crazy about it either. we leftour bikes and all our stuff at the hotel in puer and took a bus back tosimoa. changed money, got some food and bused it back to puer (only ~1hrride each way).at around the same time as all this money thing was going on, we noticedthat ed's back wheel was visibly wobbly, especially at low rpms. his tirelooked pretty frayed near the rim too, as if the brakes had been hitting.we went to a local bike repair shop/garage and tightened the spokes onboth our bikes. this didn't really help ed's problem, so we concluded thathis tired was messed up and there was nothing to do but ride like this. bythe way, if anyone is interested, we were told that 27in tires are popularall over the world including asia. several bike shops in the us assured usof this. not so! it turns out that you can find 24, 26 and 28" tires overhere, but not 27. anywhere we've been so far, thailand, laos and nowchina, no 27". so if ed's tire went, we though that we'd be in trouble.after we left puer, we rode to a little town on the top of a mountain,where nothing interesting happened, except that i found rambuttan again atthe local market. this is a fruit that i like almost as much as pineapplethese days, sometimes i think more. i used to eat it all the time inthailand and laos, but haven't found it in china any more, until thismarket. paid ~1$ for 1kg, which was very expensive by previous standards,but what are you going to do? when you gotta have it...after we left this place we had just over 70 km to the next town.the first20 kn were downhill through the rain, and ed was having major problemswith his brakes. at first it was the rear brakes, but soon the front onesbecame a problem too, so that he couldn't stop at all even when he waspressing all the way. the rain was making everything worse. we stoppedseveral times though, until we got the brakes to function decently. soon,we got to the bottom of the hill, and the rain stopped, so all seemed tobe going well. we started going again, and after about 21 km of straightuphill (we were really worried at this point about making it to ourdestination in reasonable daylight hours, if the hill continued), edstopped again on the side of the road. i stopped too, and started bikingback to him, when i heard a loud 'pop' and i knew that his back tire hadgone. it was actually the tire and the tube.we had two options now: try to flag someone down, or if that didn't workin a reasonable amount of time, we were going to try to construct somesort of tandem bike out of our two individual bikes. fortunatelly, we gota truck to stop within 10 minutes.this was a 5 ton heavy duty truck, construction type, you know the onesthat carry sand in the back. we threw our bikes and stuff in the back, andwere going to climb in there ourselves, but the driver asked us to ride infront. there were already 2 other people there, the driver's helper and awoman. so when ed and i climbed in, it was very cozy.this ride, although it was only 22km, was very demanding physically. firstof all my body was contorted in a yogic position so as not to fall overthe woman next to me and at the same time not to hit my head too manytimes on the door/roof. the whole way was unbeleivably bumpy, although theroad was not too bad, but the shocks on this thing must've been stiff likehell. anyway, we finally made it (by now we were very close with everybodyin the truck), and offered them some money for the ride, but they wouldn'thear of it. it started to pour again as we got out of the truck, butfortunately we found a place to sleep very quickly. we are still in the same place now, 2 days later, because ed's got theruns pretty bad, so we're waiting for him to get better. besides, we haveto stay in china until july28th, since we can't enter vietnam before thatdate.yesterday we tried to fix ed's bike. he moved his good front tire to therear. for the front, we found a 28in tire. there is only one place in townthat had bikes with 28 in wheels. we went there and tried to explain tothem that all we need were the tire, tube and rim to put on ed's bike, butthey wouldn't hear of it. so we had no choice but to buy the whole bike,take out its front tire and hope that it would fit on ed's bike. the bikeonly cost 50$, so although we didn't want to waste the money, it wasn't ahuge risk to take either. we proceded to change the tire right there inthe store, and pretty soon a huge crowd of onlookers had gathered around,all giving their opinion on whether the tire would fit or not, plus othermechanical advice, all in chinese of course.well, the tire did fit, and although at first it was a bit wobbly, a kindand mechanically inclined onlooker took over and helped us fix that too,so ed's bike was as good a new (almost). the front brakes even fit, eventhough they were made for a 27" tire. anyway, when the whole thing wasover, we were going to give the rest of the bike we had just purchased tothe guy who helped us, for thanks, but he wouldn't hear about it either,and soon there was a lot of gesticulating and shouting going on in thecrowd. we didn't know waht was going on, and hoped that nobody was upset.it turned out that people were just saying that we should get most of ourmoney back, since the bike was intact except for the front tire. so theclerk gave us ~40$ back and the store kept the bike. everyone was happy,the crowd dispersed and we went back to the hotel.we'll see how the bike does in the next days of riding. so far it was okwhen ed tested it out yesterday.ok, enough writing for now.until next time, i wish you well,and please write when you have some timeraluca |
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