I was unable to post anything for a couple days, so this one will cover three days. Life has been like a roller coaster lately. I have been experiencing lots of ups and downs. You know… HILLS!! Me so funny!! Anyway, after you regain your composure from the laugh riot my joke surely caused, reading below are the official trip summaries of each of the days. I will follow each of those with some comments…
Wednesday – Day 5: Rongjiang to Diman

Ronjiang is lively in the mornings with a busy market. Stallholders sell fruit, vegetables, local sweets ‘Jaoizi’ and bowls of steaming food such as red bean soup. We cycle on from Rongjiang towards Diman. After a flat start for 7km we tackle the first of 2 big climbs. A 13km (400m) challenge. For the next 22km the road inclines then rises again towards our second 12km (450m) of increasingly steep ascent.

We finish the day with a steep 5km drop into We enjoy fantastic views, timeless scenes, and undulating road. We may hear the sounds of traditional music wafting across the countryside from a reed flute or traditional drums. This evening is one of the highlights of the trip as we are amongst the first tourists to stay in the village of Diman. We will receive an authentic warm welcome from the community.

Me: Diman was a mystical village, very old, very traditional, very nice. What struck me at this place; of all of the many places I’ve been fortunate enough to travel, I’ve observed variations in pacing. You know what I mean, how fast Americans move, thinking they need to accomplish something all of the time, go shopping, or whatever. This village definitely had a much slower pace, of course it was a farming village. But you could just feel the absence of the outside world imposing on their way of life, something unusual in places that most tourists visit.

On our arrival, I noticed a few of the local sitting on the steps of a closed small business there, right on the main town square. This is a small square, not a grand one by any means, just a large open the flat space. Have to be laundered and showered, we went to a place that I had seen on the ride and two old men drinking cold frosty beers. We went to that place, they weren’t selling beer there but she pointed across the square, to a shop with had to be a 100-year-old man running a small store, but he had a cooler full of extremely cold beers! It was a grand moment to find those, for all of sixty cents, sit with my biking gang on those same steps as the old men I saw earlier, watching the village go by at its own pace. Special…

Paul and Bill have desired a handmade wicker basket shaped kind of like a shoe, it’s purpose is to hold an iron scythe that all of the farmers and such carry around, tied around their waist with this basket at their back. On our walkabout, Chu the guide was with us, and we came across this very friendly old farmer and his wife. He had one of the baskets hanging on the front of his house. Paul and Bill asked Chu if the farmer was interested in selling it. But what they really wanted was two, so in conversation with Chu, the farmer offered to check with his friend if Chu came back in 30 minutes, he might have two for them to purchase. He did, and Paul and Bill are now the proud owners of handmade wicker baskets to hold an iron scythe, emblematic of all the farmers and the Chinese countryside. (Fast-forward two days for the moral of the story, as we arrived in Zhaoxing and we walked along the village river to our hotel, I saw the exact same items for sale here for about the same price they paid the farmer! Of course the ones here come without a story attached…)

Thursday – Day 6: Diman to Liping

Bidding farewell to our hosts we take a road out of Liping that follows the river downwards for 150m over 23km. We cycle this section of the route without vehicle support as the road is not accessible to vehicles. We rejoin our support team before starting to cycle our only long climb today. It’s a 7km (450m) steep haul before we’re over the peak for a 43km (550m) descent, taking in a few wee bumps before arriving into Liping.

Accommodation: Guest House
Cycling distance: 72.9 km
Meals included: B, L, D

Me: Li Ping was a pretty big town! I’m pretty certain the hotel we stayed in was the same one that I stayed in 2008 when I was cycling in the same area. We wandered around for a while in that town after we arrived, found a large market, with fruits and vegetables and dead animals and live animals and dead fish and live fish and every imaginable food item.

We had intended to eat for dinner, but that was unavailable at the last minute because there was a Dong traditional singer conference occurring in town and they had most of the hotel booked. But the neatest thing was before we went to dinner, there were several of the Dong singers in the lobby, all males. One of them tried to strike up a conversation with me, I really didn’t understand a word of Chinese, nor did he understand a word of English. I attempted to use Google translate to ask him what job he had, and asked him to speak into my phone. When he did, he unexpectedly sang the most beautiful song you might’ve ever heard a man sing! It was joyous and high-pitched and full of lilting notes, it was fantastic and perfect! Needless to say, I wish to hell I had recorded it, but I was not doing so because I was asking him to speak words not asking to sing a song. While I didn’t record the song electronically, it is certainly in my brain, and a beautiful song I will remember for some time…

Friday – Day 7: Liping to Zhaoxing

Today we cycle on towards Zhaoxing on spectacular quiet road with 2 mountain pass climbs, to begin and end the day both of which are short and steep. On the hill tops truck drivers make stops to refill with water and local women sell traditional crafts here including embroidered slippers and painted scolls. Our approach to Zhaoxing takes us through rice fields etched in the hillsides and we will see the famous Drum towers.

Accommodation: Guest House
Cycling distance: 71 km
Meals included: B, L, D

Me: Much of this ride is on an old road of extremely varying quality that was the original road running between Guiyang and Ghuizo. There is a new superhighway being built, portions of it already open. Much of this old road is deteriorating, but that is the road we are riding on.

I will relay one of the funniest moments of the trip so far for me. I was riding along a reasonably flat portion of the road today for quite some distance at a very good pace. Sometimes you have legs to go fast, sometimes you don’t. But for this portion, I did! Bill, the Aussie, came up behind and drafted me for several kilometers. Of course I knew he was there the whole time, and at some point I made a comment to him about all the work I was doing on his behalf. About then he said “If you ride in the center smooth part of the road, it’s like gaining a full gear!” But this is the difference sometimes between what is said, and what is heard. You all know what I mean… What I heard was “It sure is nice riding behind and drafting you, I should buy you a beer!” When I told him what I heard versus what he said, we both had a pretty good laugh with that!

Zhaoxing is much more touristy than I remember from five years ago, but still a really cool place. It is a Dong village, but also a touristy town with tourist amenities. Had a gin and tonic tonight which was a true treat, but that is absolutely the first gIn we’ve seen since Guiyang! Very nice place, but this is truly the very first time we’ve seen any other Western tourists our entire trip!

Tomorrow is a day off here, it will be great to be off the bikes and to wander around this interesting place. Legs are doing great, body is sore, but happy to be alive!

Some pics from the last three days…