{"id":656,"date":"2010-05-24T14:57:43","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T06:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=656"},"modified":"2010-05-24T14:57:43","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T06:57:43","slug":"adventures-in-biking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=656","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Biking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a little geography lesson about Beijing:<\/p>\n

At the center of the city is the former Imperial Palace\u00a0and the Forbidden City.\u00a0 Just south of that lies Tian’anmen Square and other important government buildings.\u00a0 Between Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City is Chang’an Street (Eternal Peace–which I find incredibly ironic, actually).\u00a0 Encircling the\u00a0Forbidden City\u00a0is the 2nd\u00a0Ring Road.\u00a0 A little further out is the 3rd Ring Road, and after that, the 4th Ring Road.\u00a0 Beijing actually has six\u00a0‘ring roads’\u00a0that\u00a0encircle each other with the 5th and 6th being furthest away from each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A while back I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to\u00a0ride my bike around the 4th\u00a0Ring Road (about 42 miles, or 68ish kilometers)\u00a0for a challenge.\u00a0 I was thinking\u00a0about\u00a0doing it over the May\u00a0holiday but ended up traveling instead. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 So, an\u00a0American friend and I decided that we were going to\u00a0do it!\u00a0 I decided to ask my students if any of them wanted to join us.\u00a0 On Friday in my business class, I\u00a0began by drawing Beijing on the board. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0(This was actually really funny because as soon as I started drawing they started\u00a0guessing!)\u00a0 It didn’t take them too long to figure out what I was drawing.\u00a0 Then I labeled some key places (Forbidden City, the ring roads, Tsinghua University, my home, etc.)\u00a0so they had a frame of reference.\u00a0 Then I drew a bike on the 4th ring road and an arrow all the way around it.\u00a0 A few of them caught on to what I was ‘telling’ them.\u00a0 Then I asked them, ‘who wants to come with me?’\u00a0 Most of them said, ‘you’re crazy!’ or ‘too far!’\u00a0 But, I ended up with two students who said they would come with me. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/p>\n

I told them where we were going to meet and at what time.\u00a0 (Actually, I told them a little earlier because they are notorious for being late.)\u00a0 The plan was to meet at 7:40 (for them) on the corner of the 4th Ring and another street close to the university.\u00a0 I got a phone call from one of them at 7:15.\u00a0 I answered.\u00a0 He said, ‘where are you?’\u00a0 WHAT?!?\u00a0 I said, ‘I’m at home. Where are you?’\u00a0 He said, ‘we are on the way!’\u00a0 AAAAHHHHHH!!!\u00a0 Then, I got to where we were meeting and received another phone call from\u00a0a different student (a student who didn’t actually tell me he was coming on the trip–four students ended up coming!).\u00a0 They were on the opposite corner of the intersection and wanted to bike the other way because they didn’t want to look into the sun.\u00a0 I guess I didn’t really care which way we biked so I agreed.\u00a0 So began our journey ‘around’ Beijing.<\/p>\n

I had warned the men that we were going to go fast. (I’m used to Chinese people biking slowly and I didn’t want to be biking for 12 hours.)\u00a0 I was impressed with their speed and was happy that we would finish the journey in a reasonable amount of time!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42 Hehehe….ever the optimist…\u00a0 Dexter brought his map so that we wouldn’t get lost. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 (apparently Dexter doesn’t read road signs).\u00a0 And, the map didn’t help anyway.\u00a0 In the first hour of the journey, he and Edward led us astray 5-6 times.\u00a0 Aaaaahhhhh!!!\u00a0 Each time I said to them, ‘we need to go this way’ and they wouldn’t listen.\u00a0 I may not speak Chinese but I’m really good at reading road signs that are IN ENGLISH!\u00a0 After a few wrong turns, they finally figured out that the foreign girls might actually know what’s going on.\u00a0 There were a few times where we didn’t even let them stop long enough to check\/ask.\u00a0 We just kept going so they were forced to follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then… my friend and I were pretty hungry at about 11:15-11:30ish.\u00a0 We’d been riding for a few hours.\u00a0 So I said, ‘let’s find a place to stop and eat.’\u00a0 Dexter said, ‘we’ll eat at 12.’\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Then we had a little exchange about how I eat when I’m hungry and not when the clock tells me to eat and how he thinks one should have an eating schedule….blah blah blah.\u00a0 This concept was so foreign to him.\u00a0 We ended up stopping to eat (at one of the nicest restaurants I’ve been to in China–in sweaty athletic clothes!).\u00a0 Lunch took way too long because they assumed that we wanted to have a sit down meal.\u00a0 I would have been fine with baozi from the street or some other street food.\u00a0 After our hour-long lunch we got back on the bikes.\u00a0 (this was pretty painful)\u00a0 About another hour into the trip, Dexter’s bike chain came off.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42 He immediately got out his tissue so that his hands wouldn’t get dirty. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 The chain was stuck and he wasn’t able to pull it out.\u00a0 So, he went off the road to find a branch to use for leverage.\u00a0 While he was looking for the branch, I pulled his chain out (sans tissue) and proceeded to put it back on his bike.\u00a0 It was pretty humorous to hear the reaction of the other three guys.\u00a0 Clearly they think that I am not capable.\u00a0 (Thanks, Dad, for all the times you ‘let’ me help you with handy things around the garage\/house\/cars\/etc.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, we were back on the road.\u00a0 About 30 minutes later, my tire went flat.\u00a0 I ran over a nail-like object. \u00a0At the same time, the spring on Hubert’s kick-stand broke so it wouldn’t stay up. (I fixed that one with a piece of ribbon I happened to have in my\u00a0bag)\u00a0 So another 30 minutes was spent finding a bike guy and repairing my tire.\u00a0 Edward wanted to send me home in a taxi!\u00a0 No way was I going to stop when I was so close to finishing!\u00a0 After fixing the bike and having a popsicle we were back on the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We were on the final stretch home when we lost the guys in the last kilometer.\u00a0 They decided that we didn’t know where we were going and went a different way.\u00a0 Who ended up in the right spot?\u00a0 That’s right…the two foreigners.\u00a0 They never did show up at the original corner.\u00a0 They just found the back road back to the university.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of the journey, I was sore in the rear and burnt in the face.\u00a0 But, it was a fantastic day!!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 See below for a map of our journey.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The red dot is where I live. The line from the red dot is where I bike every day on my way to the university. My original idea was to go clockwise so that we didn't have to worry about crossing intersections on the corners. They wanted to go the other way because the sun would have been in our faces for the first hour. Total time for the trip including wrong turns, extended lunch, flat tire, and broken kick-stand: just over 7 hours. A bit embarassing for 42 miles. Next time I hope to beat that time!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a little geography lesson about Beijing: At the center of the city is the former Imperial Palace\u00a0and the Forbidden City.\u00a0 Just south of that lies Tian’anmen Square and other important government buildings.\u00a0 Between Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City is Chang’an Street (Eternal Peace–which I find incredibly ironic, actually).\u00a0 Encircling the\u00a0Forbidden City\u00a0is the 2nd\u00a0Ring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}