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I have sticky fingers. I went to the bathroom this morning, but there was no running water. I left without washing my hands. The morning hastes and I need my walk. So now, beneath the dessicating sun full of blaze and glory, full of itself, I feel itchy. At least my hands do. But these are the same hands i use to write. And writing itself makes me antsy.

I wish i had a camera to take a picture of the woman in the mansuit swirling her clothes in the murky river. I wish i could get a shot of the deaf woman who pulled up the leg warmer on my right leg and motioned in the direction of the wind, huddling her shoulders: cold. But i only have a pen, and my hands are itchy, so i write.

I perch like Buddha, pernisciously, on this narrow concrete ledge shuddering beneath the weight of scooters. The weight of my notebook balances on my knee and my concentrated gaze cuts the heads off of shocked passerbys. From my vantage point, there are only shoes, leather or green cloth, curled around mine, paused in reflection as a disclocated head appears in shadow on my pages. I look up and smile a few times to be sure im not being rude, then lean down again, putting the heads and torsos back in their respective places. Back to shoes and wheels and corners of notebooks.

Back to rivers. The one this bridge arches over steals kisses from the conceited sun, its rays sucked onto the waves like words rolled onto paper.

Words. There are so many i do not know. So i pull the other legwarmer up to my left knee to show the deaf woman i am grateful for her concern. She laughs and leaves, then comes back with two more women, the crowd pulling out and drawing in with her like breath, like waves with rippling sun on their backs. I tell them where i am from, what i am doing in thier river town, and where i am going today. They invite me to come to thier house and talk, though by now they are aware of the limits of my Chinese. Words. They do not matter so much. But what am i building a case for? What is my spin if all that one can say has already been said?

The morning is fast like an opportunity. I am morning amusement for the busy bridge passengers, hauling their loads in carts and tricycles. The sun makes the green moss in the river browner like the skin it lashes daily in cotton fields, reaching up beneath yellow headscarfs and straw hats to lick the sweat from a farmer’s brow, feeding its pet clouds with moisture.

We’ve had some great days for riding, but i worry that where there is sun, rain awaits on the dark sides of the clouds. Words written for worry.

Back to my shoes. Or shapes. Triangular black things connected to verticle stems shivering. Shape becomes symbol becomes meaning. They ask me to come with them. And i want to get lost with them in this village. i want to explore. i want to get intimate with the rural countryside. My hands itch as i check the time. I’m late. Its time to ride. Notebook in. Legs stand firm. I begin to run, high on imagery.

I’m sitting alone amidst the pot clanging jangles of probably 12 year old Chinese boys. I say probably bc they could be 15. Chinese kids often look younger than they actually are. The shelf that makes my cubicle private is stained with old sugar and licked by flies. I honker down behind it to avoid eye contact with anyone. Kids can be scary, especially kids in a foriegn language. I might be paranoid though.

I left our lu dian this morning looking to wander around, find a spot to rock and watch and read and write and wring the chaos of winding rice fields out of my head. But breakfast was a fiasco. I sat down slowly, bushfully making eye contact with the laban (boss) before easing down on a wooden bench hastily made empty for me. The whispers snook up behind my ears, making them hot. Nimbly, I chopped up a banana to eat with my bean porridge and fried bread. Chagrined, exposed to the mustering masses, i began to shake, as maybe a gladiator would in his moment of self doubt, right before. They poured in as i sipped. They leaned in as I snapped the hot grilled bread in half to dip in my soup. I could hear myself crunch.

I looked up and smiled to escape the sound of myself eating. Faces, round faces, leathered and tanned, mouths threadbare where teeth had gone missing, eyes stuffed into smoldering holes like the lit ends of cigarettes, lips pressed into skulls like raincoats suctioned against wind, difinitive shock swirled above me in the form of large humans from my diminutive bug eyes. They talked to me, and after realizing that i could not answer beyond the five introductory questions in Chinese, they talked to themselves about me, prodding my hair with thier fingers, pulling it out and watching it spring back into its kinks, nodding in aggreement of some successful assessment.

This must be what Tibetans feel like when tourists storm into their monasteries and take pictures without asking. Only now, the Chinese have successfully turned tourist into attraction site, subject into object. I have become Invertibrata, like the flies prodding this cubicle for cover.

Its day 2 of our bike trip and we are taking refuge in a cheap motel to ride out a thunderstorm that caught us an hour outside of the nearest town in Hebei province (we have officially left the provincial municipality of Beijing. Yatah!). We were soaked when we got here and then found out that they didnt have running hot water, leaving us in one big pile of drenched emotion and squishy clothes.

My stomach was hollow because we hadn’t eaten lunch (we got a late start after oversleeping and eating breakfast, and then the rain came). The time it took for us to wring out our soaked T-shirt and socks, and find a way to fit 5 bikes in a 2 person room (50 RMB a night. i heart China!) lagged, and i began imagining things like apples and bananas floating through vertical hoola hoops above my head. I felt wetter than i did when i took a shower last night. The skin at the tips of my fingers puckered in rejection of the cold moisture that was settling into my body.

Luckily, the people at our hostel think we are rock stars and helped us carry our bikes in. We sat down, ordered a feast, and ate anxiously (thank you Akiko for your generous donation) to relieve our quivering bodies. Tea leaves and a little hot water were the best thing in the world to me at the time.  So tired were we from having ridden all afternoon on empty stomachs and then having to battle against the psychological self-forbiddence of riding in rivers, we sat for 2 hours and talked and talked and talked about the rain about our feelings about the trip about new idioms to introduce into the English language like, “You’re pulling an Adam” if you fall asleep by 9pm, or “Don’t do yoga with the chopsticks” if you’re trying to do things in an unnecessarily difficult way.

The vulgar lethargy loosened us up for our first concert on the road. It was time to see if our water proofing had saved the guitars. We brought down the instruments and treated all who ventured into the hotel lobby to an unplugged, interpersonal jam session by the Shenme Shenmes! Our rock star status was sealed thanks to the lady in the lobby who came up to our room afterwards and dragged me out to take pictures (about 5 shots of the same pose).

The rain has lightened up outside but its fray threatens. I am uneasy about the possibility of waking up and getting wet again, and it is a struggle to remind myself to stretch my boundaries and push myself into handling less comfortable situations. My mind moves slugglishly through this panic. It tugs at my body like a coat hanger in my collar dangling me from a rack on wheels. I could go backwards or forwards or completely crash on to myself, a pile of ideals soaking up the muck from the tile floor.

Last week, we took a 3 day test ride from Beijing to Tianjin, a city about 120km southeast of Beijing. Let’s see, with a baozi breakfast on plastic chairs outside on a dusty sidewalk, we left Wudaoko at about 8:30am and reached our destination by 8:00pm. My muscles weren’t crying, they were shrieking obsenities at me, and i was in turn shrieking obsenities at Drew and Peter for riding like speed demons with no rest. I am no athlete. I like lipsticks and high heels. Skaterboys and garage dance clubs. So this, being my first taste of what is to come on my one year bike trip around the world (never rush into anything), was the first realistic glimpse of what its going to be like. I could feel myself breaking down emotionally as i wondered when and where the end was, then pushing myself to go faster and then getting a little ahead of Drew and Peter (the real athletes on the trip) and then feeling a rush from my body’s accomplishment and riding that rush like a new muscle.

Apart from the physical strife, other aspects of the trip felt like breaking muscle fiber as well. The second lu dian (inn? minimalistic motel in rural China? use your imagination) we stayed at had a shower equipped with a large bin for rain water and a dirt floor. After riding in the loose city dust and being licked by China’s strange sulfur oxidic tongue for 4 hours, i scrubbed my heart out.  

But this was also after riding through Tianjin’s markets varnished by the rain that fell as we rode into the city that morning. The light from beneath the tarp awnings of the baozi and bing stalls dimmed and glazed beneath the fuzz of the rain, umbrellas became walking lamps, old european buildings split open by weeping willows crawling up through them became secret gardens with doors that framed pictures of daily life, the fish in 4 inch tall square tanks had to swim sideways to breathe, a small lady sitting in the middle of the street next to her vegetables touched my arm lightly, and smiled as if to bring my awe down to earth. touch. intimate. like a pinch.

i guess in pushing my body and my comfort zone to extremes, im definitely more aware of myself. I’m feeling my muscles, im feeling my exhaustion, my senses overloaded as i smell market food, my emotions oscillating between intense disappointment and anger and then exhilirating pride.  i’m present. i have to be, or I’ll get run over by a bus.