I like to ride my tandem bicycle

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  Dali, Yunnan Province, China
Sunday, September 6, 2009

Oh good Lord why did we
ever think a tandem would be a good idea. Oh that's right, the night
before in a bar after a very stupid game of higher or lower.



We were planning on taking
the nice the green bike but on seeing it had a flat tyre we opted for
the bright pink one. As we very gingerly made our way out of the
courtyard I joked that I couldn't get my legs anywhere near under the
handlebars. It is that this point something should have clicked that
this may not work out too well. We were wanted to see some of Er Hai,
the lake around Dali but it quickly became apparent that we wouldn't
be covering too much distance.



We got off the main road
and headed towards the lake passing proper rural Chinese villages for
virtually the first time since arriving. I was already in pain while
Damien was doing an exemplary job of steering at the front. After
cycling along narrow lanes for a while we stopped for water and
shortly after this that we had a crash. It didn't seem to bad at
first but my leg's been sore since. I would ordinarily blame the
driver for this but given how bad I was when it came to my turn, I
think a crash was inevitable.




Things then went from bad
to worse, we had to head back uphill to the main road where we were
told our destination was another 4km. Not too bad on a bike we
thought, but of course at that moment the tyre burst. Long story
short we walked that horrendous bike for hours in the baking heat
(Damien has very funny sunburn on his hands) before getting to the
shore. Imagine if you will two young men pusing what is blatantly a
girls tandem up a main road. We weren't even in the right place but
at that point we didn't care. We were tired and hunger but happened
to be in the only village in China without a restaurant. After a rest
we walked the bike a lot further before finding someone how would
repair the tyre for 2RMB, that's 18p.



The cycle home was
absolute hell, maybe our legs hadn't quite recovered from the
mountain but either way we were suffering. After the 14km into town
we were gasping and enjoyed a ice cold Tsing Dao. We were settling in
for a night in town when the sky to the east over the mountains went
a very ominous grey and thunder quickly followed. It was clear a huge
storm was overhead so downing our beers we legged it the tandem and
powered our way uphill for the remaining 2km to the hostel only
narrowly avoiding the worst of it.



Found a cool pavilion in
the back garden where we played guitar and mandolin all night.
Thanks god Damien has just reminded me of his adventures in said lily
pond. I'll leave to him to explain how this happened, unfortunately I
missed it, he left for a wander and came back soaked through with the
words “Chris, you're not going to believe this”. Very Very funny.





Probably the least said
about the next day the better. Woke up ridiculously early again
thanks to our not overly considerate Chinese dorm makes and had
another breakfast of congee (rice with a strange sticky dough ball
with a very spicy sauce). Decided to spend one more day in Dali but
given our aches from the day before it would have to a quite one.
Found a place that let you watch DVDs and with ourselves the only
patrons we made ourselves at home and watched five films back to
back. I know this definitely isn't what we should be doing in such a
beautiful part of the world but at the time it was needed. What
wasn't needed however was the beer that Damien was continually
ordering, let's just say he can't remember even putting on the last
film.

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