The end of Impermanence - Greensboro

The perfection of the ride to Reidsville was also in the inclemency of the weather the following day.  More rain and headwinds - but with the end in sight a mere 42 km away, one feels bouyed and the load lightened.  Ongoing icing of my knee in the evenings, proper warm-ups and stretching in the morning, and a healthy diet of regular anti-inflammatories were delivering some power back to my right leg.  Leftie was feeling fit with all the extra work done in the days before.  

On a bridge in North Carolina - matching bike and clothes you'll note.

 I had some calls in the morning, and another in the afternoon, so I just hammered the last bit in two hours with photo stops on the way.  The scenery, despite the weather, was fantastic America all the way.

The outskirts of Greensboro - the big dog arrives.

On Big Blue at a traffic light in Greensboro - the season's leaves landing.

Day 5 - Reidsville to the O'Henry Hotel in Greensboro - 42km

All in all I rode just over 500 kms - about 20kms more than Knysna to Cape Town via the N2, to put it in perspective.  What takes five and a bit hours by car, takes four and a half days working hard under human power. 

Arriving in Greensboro was one sort of joy - the hotel was entirely another.  It's a long journey, both figuratively and literally, from the Lake Anna Lodge to the O'Henry Hotel of Greensboro.  Standing in the lobby, literally dripping, I was asked (ever so slightly frostily) "How can I help you ... sir" to which I could answer with a super endorphin cheer "I am coming to stay with you for a few days".

The lounge at the O'Henry Hotel.

My group at CCL - superbright interesting people.  The first part of the program was
FANTASTIC.

I will try to describe what I learned along the way in some other form - but it really was an incredible (and frankly, quite humbling) experience that I feel hugely motivated by.  I will however leave you with this anecdote which made me laugh: one of the group activities was in a big room, and your group had to unpack something from a box and assemble it.  Of course the learning was much more fiendishly clever than the task (which I could do with closed eyes, practically), but it was none other than to assemble ... a bicycle :-)

At the end of it all I was spinning with questions and doubts and optimism and life-regret and all the stuff that a killer learning confrontation contained.  I had not really planned my trip back to Charlottesville where I'm working for the first four days of this week - but thankfully my delightful colleague Craig Linqvist stepped in - he'd driven down in his absolute beast of a bakkie - and I didn't even need to take one of the wheels off to fit big blue in.

Rollin with The Linqvist - what a touring bike limo really looks like.

Beach action on the public holiday

The MTR remains closed down, city seems on edge, what to do?  Run 10kms while it's still rainy, and then go to the beach for a skim and a swim in the October windy season surf.  You won't see it in these pics, but if you waited around out at the back-line there were some cool waves by HK standards.

Ev opted for long skins, I think the colour match was coincidental.  

I love them skimming because it's such a great bit of outdoor cardio at a time when
all their football matches are cancelled and everyone has a dose of cabin-fever

Aiden heads down range - its a cool beach, Shek O.

Ev executes a spin, hard to see in a single shot, but the board is facing backwards, half way round.

Doesn't always work out of course - the long clothes saved skin for sure.

And so onto Sunday

Despite some disquiet about the city, which is bugging me... its hard to see how this plays out... it's been a lovely day because no-one can really go anywhere other than local.  My current bike saddle is on it's last legs (touring saddles have tension bolts so you can adjust them as they stretch), so I thought I better buy a new one (the one below) and set about breaking it in (they being like new leather boots).  It's a thing of beauty.  I've ridden a number of 25s and 45s on it - seemed fine.  So yesterday I rode 70+ and instead of breaking it, it broke me: literally, raw ass in places. wtf.  So with appropriate medication, I took a break from riding today and rebuilt the touring version - carrier mounts for panniers... and the old saddle back again.  Bloody hell.

Fiddly little awkward places, washers and spacers...

Plenty of help from the inquisitive cat

The finished article.  God damn its so cool :-) With the old saddle though - once bitten.

So instead - isolated life out in the New Territories

On the day following the pandemonium that trashed the MTR, out here in paradise the usual, more rural problems were being dealt with; in this instance a sizable python was caught in Siu Hang Hau, if you go down the hill from our house and take the first right.  It would make short work of the good Holly .... who is safe and sound fast asleep on the laundry basket :-)

Ev, I think motivated by a school project, has used YouTube to teach himself how to knit.

Hong Kong's protests - the stuff that can't be ignored.

The Hong Kong protests are a strange and divisive thing.  I feel that it would be really weird not to say anything about them.  So here goes - in the knowledge that this is one lay person's perspective. I can see on one hand how they are driven by inequality, and a rudderless, faux administrative take on leadership that people are understandably sick of.  I can see how people are not optimistic about their futures - which also seems a strange right to want to exercise?  The police, who to my thinking were much more of a get granny's cat out of the tree and arrive in force when someone sees a snake type service have been ineffectual, ambiguous in their loyalties, and not been cut any slack by the public at large.  Then suddenly it all seemed to explode on Friday night into an absolute orgy of (in my view) dimwitted-ness and vandalism, targeted at the MTR.  It's an interesting target - if you want to mess this city's ability to function up, it's the obvious choice.  And I'm left wondering why its a private company (I suppose more lets privatise everything - and further fuel inequality) when it's so strategically central and necessary to the city?  Anyway, the MTR corporation seems in one part to have been judged complicit in allowing gangsters to beat up the public, or keeping train doors open so that police can thrash passengers - who knows - the only thing that seems completely clear is that sensible has left the room.  And so here is the result - in short the MTR is shut, and has been properly thrashed.  I was cycling yesterday morning - and because of it - the queues of normal people trying to get to work on a Saturday (already a bummer) were snaking around the building blocks - at six in the morning.  And I just think fuck that, pointless, backward stepping, clueless - not going to change anything - least of all for the less fortunate who live miles from work and rely on it entirely.  These were sent to me by a friend of mine - inside Admiralty station - a major interchange.  I rode past Hang Hau and Tseung Kwan O - and they looked similar from the outside. 

Ticket booth 

Another ticket booth

Turnstiles smashed...

Now I understand that there is a human story to all of this - but I just don't get stuffing up the thing that everyone relies on, to go to the doctor, to go to work.  And then on top of it, those clad in black, fearing for their futures, also smashed all the traffic lights in the streets around the stations - so the traffic, already bewildering, just won't function.  The youth should try fearing the present. 

Time to catch up...

Lordy, I've been totally woeful.  Part of it is a lack of an itchy photo finger - but mainly its just MASSIVE SLACKNESS.  But the slackness has not extended to the physical realm, where I've been hard at work trying to shed pounds (somewhat successfully) and get fit (more successfully) for an October and November brace of bike tours.  My big plans for Taiwan in October evaporated under the twin suns of work and boys holidays not lining up on the one hand and indifference on behalf of the other parties.  I think I have to accept that this is my thing only.  Bloody hell.  Getting a bit long in the tooth for only pounding the pedals and pavements, I got back into the swimming, though have taken to Clearwater Bay's first beach which is guarded by 302 stairs - meaning that it is without day trippers.  Instead I have a regular haul of only the hardest and toughest grannies and grandpa's, a group of about 10, who I see many times a week and engage in a lovely "we don't share a language, but know each other so lets chat and gesticulate".  It's very cool.

The view from the balcony of the beach house - it's so lovely

Evan's skim board has taken a bit of a pounding - we mixed up the epoxy and did a big fix.

We've had a couple of days of dodgy air - sunrise through some quality South China smog - the shark nets and beach biscuits down below (this is 200 stairs up).

Dylan and Courtney have left to go and study in the UK.  They've been here for such a lovely chunk of time that it feels like they've left all over again - and I suppose that is the drift of life, universe like, expanding, apart, with everything moving away from everything else like dots on a balloon being blown up.  Before they left Dylan asked me to take a couple of CV type linkedin pics for him - which was a rare treat.  I set the lights up, and asked Aiden to stand in front of them so I could measure the light; he's delightfully theatric and insincere - made me giggle:

And here's Dilly-boy, looking dapper for London-life.

 

Sunday between trips