Day 123 608 days to go. Distance: today 106km Total 7923.
It’s 7.30pm Sunday 1/4/12 Gaobeidian. What a perfect way to start the first day of April by yahoo chatting with my partner this morning yay. I miss spending time and our pooches and our home and our property and our trees and our birds and our paddy-melons. I’m very lucky to have so much special cool stuff to miss 🙂 So about today…. Rube and I got under way just after 9am and encouraged each other along through the headwind which made it manageable.
I spent a little time this morning thinking about Mongolia only a bit down the 107 away. It feels a bit big and scary so TBC, We had our first break in hunters and gatherers city of Boading. Rube and I peddled across a street market that was wonderfully basic and full of yummy treats. Rube has mouth envy cause I get all the tastes. She’ll have to wait ’til next life for that one 😉 I bought some pancake bread from this old dear and bananas from an even older chap. I found a possie to Chinese squat and enjoy some people watching over brunch.
I managed to snap a few good pickies of the comings and goings. It was really cool just savouring the colorful folk and market atmosphere. Boading was like a city sized country town, well kept with a good healthy vibe and lots of young folk. It’d be my pick if I ever came back to teach English. I had heaps of people pull alongside us in their cars to say hi and offer help. We must have a permanent lost look 🙂 It was then onto Xuishui at the 65km mark. Here I thought we’d stop for the day and enjoy the small dot town for the afternoon. Unfortunately it was a ‘we don’t foreign diplomats’ small dot town. We blew them raspberries and cycled onwards to three robots. At the 99km marker we snapped a milestone picky.
10km down the track this Chinese fella road up and alongside us for the last 5km. He loved Rube and was a chatty cyclist. We smiled and listened and nodded and generally had no idea what he was saying but he didn’t seem to mind 🙂 He gave me his bottle of poweraide and wished us well with a parting photo. I soon spotted a hotel and the woman started down the ‘we don’t take……’ I cut in calmly with ‘would you like me to keep cycling to Beijing…’ She totally got it, laughed and showed me to my room yay. While the spot tracker sent I enjoyed a slideshow of photos over coffee.
It’s been huge and significant and jammed with cool memories indeedy. Every photo Im right there in that moment. Weather permitting we’re going to cycling into Beijing tomorrow. We’re both very happy but ready to step off the peddles and enjoy the capital. Family arrive on the 5th so that gives us a few days to do some stuff for Mongolia. Im busting about hanging out with the fam. 10 days of blissful bonding in Beijing yay big time. All going well the next post will be downtown there. We’ll see if mother nature gives
us one more thumbs up day 🙂 Talk soon x
shecyclesolo 