Monday, 7th December, 2015
- Day 97/298
- 32%
Cold, wind and hills undermine my daily targets, but local people continue to encourage me through their unconditional hospitality.
Hills & hospitality
Hand me downs.
Today
I wake up feeling tired and crap, with an acidic stomach reminiscent of my recent gastro bugs.
Perhaps I should avoid orange juice before bed, or stick to water when I’m thirsty.
I get up early, with a plan to increase my daily reach. I’ve mapped out an ambitious 110km route, but when I load up the elevation data I realise that it involves a 300m climb.
I mentally calculate my available riding hours. If I leave at 10am that would give me around 6 hours. Realistically that’s probably only going to get me 60km. Maybe only 40km if it’s uphill.
Hmmm. I guess there will be another pitstop somewhere, and it could actually be quite hard going today. The G208 is the older, slower road, and this is to be expected. I’ll keep plugging away.
Dressing in my knee warmers, I plastic-bag my feet to encourage the heat to stick around. Going to put on my watch, I realise that I’ve lost it. I only bought it for this trip, so I’m not surprised that I didn’t miss it sooner. It was supposed to help me with the time zones, but it only supported major cities. I’m only annoyed because that’s a hundred bucks down the drain.
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Fence of families.
Farm house.
Tussock, mountains and footprints.
I leave Zhurihezhen have an hour later than hoped.
Heading out of town the wrong way, then the right way, I’m stopped by a little person, a woman who wants to know where I’m going. I pull out my iPhone and fire up my mapping app, but she isn’t familiar with the technology. She swipes mightily on the screen and then freaks out when she thinks that she’s broken it. I point her to the reset button, but it’s kind of a lost cause.
Out on the highway, the landscape is more of the same. Surrounded by snow, tussock and an endless row of power pylons, I’m riding past and towards mountains. It feels like a constant uphill battle, a combination of the ice and snow on the shoulder, the upwards gradient and a strong wind that is battering the right hand side of my head.
At least it’s sunny, if cold. I’ve got my woollen things on, but my feet are a bit cold despite plastic bagging them at the hotel.
I’m really tired from staying up so late. My energy levels are low, my eyelids are dropping and I’m just feeling a bit over it. I’m only managing around 6km/h uphill, instead of the 10 or 11km/h I was doing yesterday. At this rate I won’t reach the next town until 5pm or later.
I really should have caught a train and skipped over this boring section. But despite a train passing several hundred metres off my starboard side I can’t see any train stations.
I’m not thinking about much, just about the girlfriend I left behind in New Zealand, about how things didn’t end very well. I’d usually listen to music at times like this, but my headphones are buried somewhere in my panniers and the phone’s built-in speaker can’t compete with the wind.
Just before lunchtime, a truck driver pulls over next to me and throws down some free food before driving off.
I’m initially excited, but on closer inspection it appears to be past its November use-by date. There’s some sort of slice and a pie, which I hoped was meat but whose crumbly pastry appears to be filled with dried fruit and nuts. I’m still appreciative of this kind gesture, I just don’t want to get sick.
And my stomach’s been a little funny anyway. It could just be down to the amount of chocolate I’ve been eating, so I’m trying to switch to dried fruits. But the dates I bought have stones in them, which is annoying.
When I arrive at my assumed destination, I’m surprised to find a small sleepy town.
There’s no motel here, so after riding up and down the snowy suburban streets I knock on the door of a building which has its lights on.
As I open the door, I’m blasted by heat and warm yellow light. I can see now, that the building is a grocery store. A counter extends up the left hand side and on to the back wall, the shelves behind it lined with groceries. Not wanting to actually buy anything, I apologise and attempt to extract myself from the situation, but stop my retreat as a woman invites me inside.
On my right there’s a potbelly stove and in the corner a group of serious people sitting around a round table. The table top is green and probably made of felt. They’re playing some sort of Chinese game, perhaps Mahjong. They use cards with symbols on them and some small pieces made from plastic or bone. Each person’s pieces are laid out in rows, like Scrabble, but without the plastic trays.
With each turn they play a piece and perhaps take or replace a piece.
At the end of the round the central column of the table rises up with a whirring sound. The players push their pieces down the hole, then the column descends back into the table, transporting the pieces deep into its bowels. After some scrambling noises, the pieces reappear in neat rows, each player’s hand magically replenished.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I really want to take a video of it (opens new window), but I feel rude, considering that I’ve just gatecrashed their game night uninvited. The scene feels like a collision of old school China and new school China. The old school of this game that’s been around forever and the new school of the super futuristic table that seems to be straight out of Doctor Who.
The woman invites me to hang out there for a while and I’d like to oblige, to stay and watch the game. But it’s already after 7pm, so I tell her that I have to get going. I need to find the town with the motel.
She tells me that there’s a building not far up the road.
I understand that it’s either a hotel, or there’s someone there that could help me to find one.
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Watching martial arts from the comfy chair.
The lovely petrol station guy.
I ride up there and find a petrol station.
It looks big enough to house a motel, but the attendant says that it’s definitely just a petrol station. However they do sell food and he invites me in, to buy and eat something there.
Spotting the ubiquitous hotplate in the corner, I grab a packet of noodles to cook, but he announces that he’ll cook them for me. Then he tells me that he’s just finished eating and invites me to eat all of his leftovers. There’s some kind of meat, some sweet-and-sour vegetables, some raw vegetables, and some of those delicious puffy buns that I love. He gives me some milky tea to wash it all down.
After stuffing my face, he invites me next door, to do something until 8 or 9pm. I understand that his wife and child live there, and am looking forward to meeting them. But when we get there, I find only a small white dog and an office with a computer, a regular TV and a closed-circuit TV, to monitor the station forecourt.
He gives me his comfy chair and we sit there watching TV and talking. He flicks between the channels, settling on a martial arts show. But my favourite is the military news channel. Hosted by a man and a woman dressed in army fatigues, it shows quirky footage of people racing around in tanks.
Neither of us speaks the other’s language, but we communicate pretty well by drawing little pictures on a notepad and then talking about them. I really like the way that the man talks to me. He addresses me very directly, while looking me in the eyes. It is kind and personal and it doesn’t matter that I don’t fully understand what he is saying.
I can see a comfy looking bed behind a door and the man is very apologetic that I can’t stay there. The forecourt cameras recorded me arriving and the alarm would be raised if the bearded man (i.e. me) didn’t leave again. Perhaps they’d even come and arrest him. I reassure him that it’s totally fine and that he’s already gone above and beyond with his hospitality.
He then kindly offers to drive me to the next town, but I regretfully decline, pointing out that the Troll wouldn’t fit in his sedan.
We exchange WeChat details and I leave the petrol station feeling slightly less exhausted, my moral boosted by the food, rest and company.
I understand that the next town is 18km away and the hotels there will close at midnight. On the way I’ll pass a place that I should ignore at 9km, then there’s some other place at 17km. Apparently I’m also nearing the top of the hill that I’ve been climbing all day, and it will soon be mostly flat or downhill.
Back on the road, the downhill arrives quickly and with much relief. Enjoying the descent too much, I never see the place that I’m supposed to ignore, but there are a cluster of buildings about a kilometer outside of the town which catch my attention.
Unsure what they are, I keep going and reach the town proper just before midnight. Riding around its snowbound streets, I try to find a place to stay. But each of the four big flashy hotels is locked behind massive concertina gates with animated LEDs. Every gate has an intercom, but I can’t rouse anyone on them and I don’t know how to speak Chinese anyway.
I really dislike riding at night. It just makes everything so much harder. The local dogs bark angrily at my squeaking Troll and after a couple of loops of the town I eventually decide to backtrack to the cluster of buildings that I passed earlier.
Following the lights, I invite myself into the building and meet an older man who says come with me.
We head down to another building, which doesn’t look anything like a hotel, and I’m horrified when the man wakes up two younger guys who are sleeping there. Half-asleep, they ask me who I am, and I sheepishly ask them if there is somewhere where I can sleep. To my surprise they agree and offer to make up a bunk for me.
I ask them how much it will cost and they tell me not to worry about it. So I sit down next to the heater and eat my supper Oreos, declining their offer of noodles, but accepting a refill of my thermos, with more hot milky tea. The guys are friendly and stay up to chat to me, before finally heading back to bed at 1:30am.