Dreams become reality

I had a strange dream last night.

I had been on dates with several people and decided to have another one with a girl who was plain - but persistent. We met up and skipped straight to living together. But there was some sort of war or battle going on and my brother had a struggle with her and ended up shooting her dead. So I kind of lost the one thing that I was holding onto, even if I wasn't holding onto it all that hard.

Perhaps it's a metaphor for my current headspace: thrust into this tour by a persistent calling, I'm now stuck on a slow bike with a creeping realisation that things aren't going to get much better. Every day is a struggle to survive the weather/traffic/loneliness/boredom/austerity. What's the point of it all if you're not enjoying it? Do you persist in the hope that it's preparation for something greater, or pack up and go home?

Because there's nothing to go home to except my biological family. No job, no flat and no girlfriend. That freaks me out. So going home would mean starting over - and isn't that what this is?

I see the light

New lights.

My next destination is The Hanging Monastery, a 40-60 kilometre ride out of town.

It'll be getting dark when I leave there so I'll get to test out my new Chinese lights.

Costing 260 Yuan (NZD 70) it's a shame that they're mains charged, as I already own great lights but left them in NZ for the same reason.

My way or the highway

I'd planned to leave this morning but my direct mountain route has been flagged as mal-aware.

Zhihong says that it's dangerous as my gear is not up to spec for the expected conditions. If I encounter a blizzard I will surely die in my tent like those before me, and away from the G208 no-one would even know that I was there.

I show him a picture of me camping in the snow in Mongolia and he contradicts himself by giving me the thumbs-up. Yes it was cold but I survived and if I hadn't got myself into that situation in the first place I would never have known that my gear was underrated. Also, a cold tent is better than no tent.

That said, it is freaking cold here so I should really keep that in mind before I go all gung-ho in the mountains. It's a clingy humid kind of cold which definitely slows me down. Warmer gear would be nice but forking out hundreds of dollars on gear upgrades isn't an option since I quit my job. My hard earned savings are now depleted so it's frustrating to find that the store's recommendations aren't fit for purpose. But even if I could upgrade to bulkier versions, where would I put them all?

The language barrier adds to my frustration here. I need to type everything into my translator and can't respond fast enough to the questions and suggestions being thrown at me. When I ask about the merits of a certain route or section my host assumes that I want to go that way and proceeds to tell me how not to - by taking a shortcut. Then he'll tell me why the shortcut is a bad idea and recommend taking the main road instead. Comments like your route's no good hurt my feelings, even if there is some truth to them!

Recognising the deficiencies in the negotiating process I ask for his recommendations. He'd head West rather than South. In fact this is the way I was initially planning to go, via Xi'An and Chengdu to Kunming. It would be warmer over there but as Hong Kong was and still is my priority, I'd decided I'd try to buy another visa and head West after that.

My current route through Luoyang is basically a direct line to Hong Kong and from that perspective Kunming seems like a massive detour. But that simplistic view ignores both the challenges enroute and the design of the wider transport network. Apparently Kunming has good train connections so by first heading West I could then quickly return East to Guangzhou, which is right by Hong Kong. Longer but faster.

However I'm hesitant to use trains, after finding out the hard way that it would take 3-5 days to ship my bike from Beijing to Manzhouli - separately from myself. While the ensuing layover allowed for some enjoyable sightseeing it was at the expense of many unridden kilometres. Border crossings add further anxiety especially if they involve switching to different trains.

Route planning is difficult because you always need somewhere to aim for, but you never know how your intended route stacks up until you're on it. Mongolia didn't have mountains but it had cold and off-road sections. China has less off-road sections but colder cold and more mountains. There are always going to be slow periods where it takes much longer to do what would be easy if you could just knock out 100k a day.

Somewhat resigned to a non-optimal route, he asks me to try on some clothing. The pants feel good but apparently look too small, while the jacket looks right but feels loose and drafty. He is used to wearing a fleece and a puffer under his, but this causes me to sweat and become cold. He tells me that I'm doing it wrong, maybe he doesn't sweat like I do.

Going dark

Whatever the route, my departure is imminent so I am making the most of the shop Wi-Fi before I lose it.

Following my successful Audible intro with Bill Bryson, I've purchased a USD 22 per month subscription which allows me two book downloads. It's reckless expenditure, but the audio books allow me to zone out and get through the k's without totally obsessing over what the speedo says. I've downloaded War and Peace and a book about obstacles, and separately purchased a third book about MBAs. I enjoyed reading as a child but don't have the patience for it anymore, so hopefully this will allow me to catch up on some classics.

I'm also charging everything up, everything that is except for my Macbook Air, which refuses to. Its MagSafe 2 cable has been customised with a DC plug to connect to my Voltaic V72, though I've since found solar charging to be idealistic on tour. This means that I can't update my WordPress blog until I source a new power cable, and that requires finalising my route so I know where to send it to. Currently I'm doomed to ranting into my phone to record what I did.

I've also run out of 4G data on the phone I bought in Sonid Youqi, so I won't be able to download maps, make bookings or contact anyone when I'm out in the field.

Shopping is hard

Select a photo to display

Keyboard instructions

• Navigate: LEFT / RIGHT arrows
• Select : ENTER

High street shops.

New York, New York?

Taste of home.

Therefore there are a few things that I need to buy before leaving civilisation:

• a MagSafe 2 charge cable
• more phone data from China Mobile
• more camera batteries
• postage for excess stuff that I'd like to send home
• a haircut.

Heading out on foot with Zhihong means that I'm able to take in more of the sights, the accompanying daylight increasing the appreciation factor.

The wide high street is full of modern shops, interspersed with traditional buildings and the odd temple. My favourites are the alleyways that siphon people off to ancient areas. I try to get a shot but have to hustle to keep up with my host.

Every day I've been intending to leave this place but haven't. That's taken my focus away from what's around me and I wish I'd given this city more of a chance rather than spending my time shopping.

Because shopping in China is hard. Store signage is in Chinese so you can't tell if a shop stocks what you need until you get up close, which is only possible during the day. It's really hard to get stuff done when you don't know where anything is.

So you might think that things would be easier today with a Chinese speaker on hand, but asking everybody for help is still a slow way to go.

In the end nothing is ticked off my list but we do enjoy a hot breakfast, our favourite cafe cooking up some greasy fritters that wouldn't be out of place in a Kiwi fish and chip shop.

One opinion to rule them all

Another thing they don't sell here is Presta tubes.

Thus the guys are patching up my existing tubes, leaving me feeling somewhat sidelined. I guess I can't complain since they're doing it for free - they are a bike shop after all.

To that end, Jia is still learning the ropes. When he fails to check that the tube is correctly seated I try to correct him but my Chinese falls well short. He only redoes it when asked to by Zhihong.

He redeems himself by removing a big metal staple from my tyre. The possible cause of two flats, I'm surprised that it got through the Double Defenses of my Schwalbe Marathon Extreme (opens new window) tyre. Another overhyped product?

They oil my chain again and mention that my bike is dirty. I could have told you that there's no point in cleaning it.

Zhihong says that my wheels are weak as my triple butted DT Swiss Alpine III spokes are too thin. He thinks I should have used double butted spokes (opens new window) instead. He recommends getting the spoke tension checked in every city as they're difficult to fix if one breaks in the field. I'm carrying spare spokes for this eventuality but am annoyed to hear this as the wheels were custom built and I trusted that they were the gold standard.

Or maybe they're fine and it's just his opinion? It seems that everyone I meet wants to be the expert, but people aren't born knowing and everyone had to get their knowledge from somewhere. As my friend and mentor Selwyn used to say, opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one.

It's a good reminder for someone like me who sees things in black and white. Rather than pit so called experts against one another I should view the dissonance as a curiosity rather than cause for doubt or conflict. Maybe in the future I will ask Why do you think that? rather than accept others' opinions as truth or trash.

Truth be told I thought I would be more easy going about opinions during my O.E. But I think I'm actually becoming more closed-minded because, with so much time by myself, I'm getting used to doing whatever the hell I want.

Stay another day

Given that the day is already half gone, I decide to postpone my departure.

Craving another taste of 'home', we head to KFC for lunch, wasting 35 Yuan on a sad little roti wrap with chips and a Coke.

Afterwards I ask Zhihong to ask where the bathroom is. The manager seems perplexed, as if he should know to go and piss around the back per my maiden motel stay in China. He points out that I'm from New Zealand and they send me upstairs. Emerging at glass doors to a roller skating rink announced by pumping techno, I backtrack and find the toilet in an area closed off to the public, one less thing to clean.

It would be great if they'd also had a shower. The bike shop is showerless and I smell skanky. As I lie in bed with my bike packed and ready to roll, my dreams are tormented by the sounds of rushing water passing through pipes, washing someone else.