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.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0in the loose\u00a0city dust and being licked by China’s strange\u00a0sulfur oxidic tongue\u00a0for 4 hours, i scrubbed my heart out. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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,\u00a0my senses overloaded as i smell market\u00a0food, my emotions oscillating between intense disappointment and anger and then exhilirating pride. \u00a0i’m present. i have to be, or I’ll get run over by a bus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nakias-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}