Post # 92 Yiang

Day 106 884 days to go. Distance today 45km total 8444km. It’s 8.20pm Thursday 15/3/2012 Yiyang. It was good to finish up earlier today and do some timeframe planning for china and for the trip overall. I’m having such a simple nice time of it into out thing each day. I’ve decided I want to cycle the way to Beijing as a milestone for rube and I. This means letting go of Xian but Im not having any residual since deciding. So the day to day cycling pleasures amongst the discomforts mean more so it’s all very good.

Rubes all happiness bypassing two bus trips while I play tourist so were super thick as thieves. I’ve juggled the kms and route again and have a good mix of distances averaging 78km per day through to Beijing arriving 5/4. The last day I’ve pretty much left to navigating to and through the city to our hotel. We meet family there for 10 days and blissfully happy and excited about that. Such an understatement (20 sleeps hip hip yayyayaya). The other pretty hugs thing is that my partner and I had a financial setback with the recent sale of an investment property. This means instead of three years I’ ve chosen to afford two.

Since this decision I’ve spent allot of waking and sleeping hours re-routing. Some of you may be saying you’ve got plenty of time to decide that. And you’re right. The thing is that I’m one of those special Virgos who has to have a plan. I’m totally happy for plans to change but one must be in place particularly for things that count. It gives me peace of mind that Im on track to where I want to be. As you’ve gathered by now through the posts I’m prone to butter flying and not big on missing bigger picture stuff because of it. So back to finishing up early today.

We were actually having a good ride albeit a muddy one. It had rained most of the night so we rode through lots of red mud water and puddles. Actually it was kinda fun two big kids playing in the puddles after the rain. This meant we were very dirty girls when we stopped for our lunch break at Yiyang 45km into it. I found a servo to use the loo and we had just sat down to enjoy a steamed bun bought earlier when a woman came up from the servo all smiles and wanting to chat. Fun. We gestured about her job and rube and cycling and no babies and the weather and being so dirty. At that point she took it upon herself to clean my girl and did an awesome job of it. Sparkling like watered roses she is. Then I thought mmmmmmmmmmm my turn lets stop and itll give me a chance to do some planning and quieten the brain up a little. We bid our servo lady goodbye with a photo and thanked her for our freebie clean. The next corner was a bunch of moped men who pointed us to a hotel awesome!! The hotel lady shared her friend snacks with me while I was sitting outside sending the spot message. They were a sort of cabbage mixture and yummy but I’ve enjoyed them all afternoon burp! I did some much needed washing and cleaning of the wet gear. Then after polishing myself up, went out for a look about. It’s a homey place with a small town feel for a reasonable sized dot. I found the local market and park area and mooched about taking what subtle photos I could.

There are some festivities on currently with lots of fire crackers in the evening and day time and I’m seeing cars with red cloth tied to them. I don’t know what this is about and will ask when I get the chance next. Later this arv I came back to the hotel and have been busy planning since then. I’m happy with the mix of kms to Beijing and am working on a world route for two years.

I’m pretty excited about the options one in particular. Instead of doing longitudinal routes of Europe and the Americas we can do them latitudinally (Is that a word?). It keeps the theme of cycling across Asia, Middle East, Europe, North America South America and Africa. We loose cycling Scandinavia and Central America and although this stings the loss is minimal given the loss of time. LOL It sounds allot like management are restructuring due to financial change stuff doesn’t it. I suppose in a way we are. It’s all good. Where’s there’s loss there’s gain and it means cuddling my family 365 days earlier;-] It also means cycling through Germany and seeing my sisters and their men in April-May 2013. I haven’ told them yet so don’t let it slip ok? For now its all china and continuing the experiences with every day folk in their every day. Time for dinner and bed. Talk soon x