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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.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 9:27 am and is filed under Nakia's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.