Biking Study Reports

This morning we woke up at 6:45am and had our first western meal of ham and eggs with toast in the Holiday Inn Sanbu Hotel. This was our only 3-4 star hotel and the only opportunity to get a western menu. We dressed for biking , packed up our belongings and loaded everything onto the bus. We walked to a very large cookie factory and saw how they made, filled, and packaged cookies. The factory employed hundreds of workers - most of them did the filling and packing by hand. We got two packs of cookies and ate them on the bus.

We got on the bus and drove about 18 km to Changcheng where we unloaded the bikes and started our biking. We biked slowly and visited small villages on the way. Lunch was in Longshang at a cafe where the owner let us bring in our sack lunches and eat. We did buy allot of extra soda's and Jianlibao. We had some greasy French toast and bao (roll or bread) filled with meat. We biked on another 21 km to Rencun where we loaded the bikes, boarded the bus and drove to XinXing (pronounced Sunhing). It was a really fun day of riding through the beautiful countryside complete with small villages and green rice paddies.

Once in XinXing we unloaded the bikes and biked another 13km to Jicheng and to a Buddhist temple near our hotel - the Longshan foreign merchants hotel. About 6 km south of XinXing a huge storm suddenly started. We put our ponchos on just in time before the rain fell - it was like beebees hitting you from an AK47. It became really dark and hard to bike into the driving wind and rain. We could see lightning and hear the thunder. Ahead we saw a break in the storm so we keep on riding, and it finally cleared as soon as it started. We went to the Buddhist temple and it started to downpour again. We were all totally wet. Some went into the temple and other waited outside out of the rain and looked at some pretty awesome firecrackers. Then we biked ano ther km to our hotel. The parking lot was a huge mud puddle, 3-4 inches of water from the rain. We couldn't get any wetter than we already were so we all had a big water fight. Some people in the group didn't get a hot shower because the hotel only serves hot water during certain hours. We biked about 50km today.

I like being this soft, sticky, brown, moist, chocolate cookie dough. Wow! It looks like I'm going down a long narrow path with other blobs that look similar to me. I'm nearing the end of the path now. Another fall. Yipes, that was some fall. It looks like there are other blobs all around me. I'm getting shmushed by two hard, cold, metal rollers. They have a funny design that resemble tire tracks. Now I'm going down another path, just this time I'm getting stretched and I'm getting flatter. I'm as flat as a pancake! Now down another path - oh no I'm getting flattened again. So far it seems like an extremely long race course with absolutely no competition. A few more paths and some more rollers. This one seems really short. Now I'm going through something very familiar: it's another set of rollers. It seems to me that I'm now as flat as a piece of paper. Not again, it's another roller just one on the top and path on the bottom. I've suddenly become allot smaller - about the size of a human thumb. I'm entering a dark tunnel - who turned out the lights? It's really hot in here. I'm turning hard. I can't remember anything after that; I must've passed out from all that heat.

- I interviewed Matt Townsend, an HKIS student, about his week biking through Southern China.

The most fun Matt had on the trip was when he could splash and play in the rain. He loved biking in the rain because it was refreshing compared to the boiling heat. On the final day of biking (today) when we arrived at the Long Shan foreign Merchant Hotel where we had a huge water fight. Matt really enjoyed that. By contrast Matt disliked the visit to Wu Xi Middle School the most. I think it was because all the girls wanted his address and autograph. He was like a celebrity at Wu Xi.

The groups visited a number of villages through out the trip. Matt's favorite village was on the 2nd day between Taishan and Duhu. It was a very hot day and we got invited into a farmers house for tea. The man saw how hot we were and turned on his fan to cool us down. The man and women were very nice people.

Matt's favorite breakfast was the western breakfast at the Sanbu Hotel. Matt loves orange juice, but I think he also loved the eggs because he ate John Laws too.

Matt's favorite Lunch was at the ChongLou Middle School (south of Taishan - day 2), where Mat enjoyed a game of basketball with the local students - even though the court was dirt and difficult to play on.

Matt's favorite dinner was on Monday at the hotel in Taishan. It was the only meal when we had French fries. Matt loves French fries.

I asked Matt about his favorite biking day. He loved Tuesday the best because he got a long rest on the bus after biking over 45km from Tai Shan past Duhu. A tornado came up just as we all boarded the bus and blew several trees down on the road.

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