Woke up feeling pretty tired … and moved
slowly. Decided to ‘blog’ a bit … and tried to load some pictures. (When wifi
works, it does not work well to load pictures.)
I had met Ms. Sisu last night at the street
stall I had supper at. She invited me to her bakery for breakfast.
Kind of a dry egg sandwich & luke warm
weak coffee.
It wasn’t the jolt I needed. I moved slowly – spending a bit of time
looking for sun screen. I saw a big ‘Chinese’ hotel with a big door, and
decided to go search for a good coffee.
I met Chic, who was very kind & spoke
good English. He guided me to the restaurant, the toilette’s and later on to
the market across the street. We found a wee tube of something that had a SPF
factor of 50 on it. (It was a brownish cream … and was been marketed at women
to ‘stay whiter’.
I started riding at 11:20am … and was
planning on what I thought was 150km.
The road was spectacular with lots of ups
and downs. The scenery outstanding. 12km into my ride, I was screaming down a
curvy hill on a right hand turn. A bus was coming up and around the sharp curve
turn (going left). The bus was in my
lane, so I hit the brakes – no problem.
However, the brakes were really weak – so I
had to really turn into my corner at a pretty good speed.
I stopped shortly after.
With all the jarring and breaking of last
night, I had lost a front brake pad.
Oh … I wish I had packed a better repair
kit!
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| Chris Pountney biked from England. He lent me some patches! :-) |
I continued my ride on the ups and downs
and thought, “The only way this could be better would be in a peloten.”
You could really get some great speed with
the assistance of a group of riders with similar fitness.
Only about 20km from the boarder of China,
I met 3 different groups (5 people) who had cycled from England, France and
Spain!) Sunny, quite road &
extremely beautiful – I stopped and had long chats with these folks, as well as
stopped often at street side vendors – looking for good food. (I felt
hungry). Mostly I was only able to get
biscuits, and Coke.
Chris Puntney from England - His Blog - The Really Long Way Around! Lent me some patches - I'm 100% out! (EDIT - Dec 28 ... I made an entry in Chris's blog. So Awesome - here I get a mention & a photo about a quarter way down! :-)
I’ve been finding it difficult to maintain
a high heart rate, and a good speed – for this entire bike trip. While I’m touring, I want to have fitness
gains while here. I was so slow for the
first 50km of the ride today … (with the many stops & street side
observations I suppose.)
After meeting Eric and seeing his good map,
I realized it was only 70 to my destination.
In 30 km, I could find some food.
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| I was hungry a lot ... stops looking for food were super fun! |
I pushed my pace – and really enjoyed that.
Still - my heart rate was around 130 and only once did it reach 150. When riding in Alberta to ‘train’, I suspect
my heart rate would rarely be lower than 140, and often at 155.
I found a guest house about 5:30pm – no wifi
in this town. Pang showed me a hose where I could wash my bike & gave me a
beer Lao. I was thankful I did not have to be concerned about having wifi.
There was none – that was it.
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| Eric rode from Spain. "I hate facebook, twitter & blogging". |
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