Due to the invitation to stay several days and the fact that my bike was parked in a garage in a front the family I was staying with decided to do some more maintenance on the bike since I found out that I’m behind with a few things and also my rear inside brake pad is gone as I found out on my way yesterday.

As I was getting to the air filter to clean it I found out that one of the main supporting nuts for my left pannier and tank frame was missing together with an important round distancer piece to support it. I could have probably survived without it until I was passing a suitable workshop to make it for me but right now I could ask the girls to explain to the men that were always around my bike when I was doing something on it (do these people work at all?) what I lost and what I needed.  Maybe one of the could help to get it somewhere.

When the girls explained what I needed I was told to take off one of the other identical parts from my panniers so I did. When I was done they studied it for a while and then said that they couldn’t help me. “What?! There must be somebody that can make these. It is just peace of round metal with a hole in it…” I was not prepared to give up now after spending the energy dismantling it. After another half an hour they were ready to take me to the city to have it done. I paid Twinkle Star’s (the girl’s English name) brother 20 Yuan to help me and we went. There it took a bit of walking and traveling by tricycle taxi to find somebody who could help us but it didn’t take too long to find a workshop with a lathe even though the guys (they were two with me) originally seemed not to have any idea of where we were going. They talked to the man, then I tried to explain what I needed and he agreed to make it for me. The price was 30 Yuan. The two young guides I had with me told me 50 Yuan at first. It was quite clear that Twinkle Star’s brother figured out that they could make some money from their new white visitor. I roughly knew the local prices already however so I objected and the price went down to 30. I still think that it was on the higher side of the “range” but it was acceptable anyway.

I stayed watching the man working closely so that I could correct any misunderstandings before they become a finished product. Among other little misunderstandings that the man understood that I needed two of those parts made and two bolts while I needed only one. Having a spare crossed my mind before though so I let him to make two. He even had to create the bolts from other, bigger bolts. For a set of two the price of USD 3.50 was pretty good J.

Back in my temporary home I installed the parts, cleaned the air filter, adjusted my headlight finally after having it shine into the eyes of passing drivers for the whole time of my journey until now and lubed the chain. I thought that if I was ready by 3PM I would still leave to clock up some more kilometers. It was in fact 4PM when I was all finished, but I still decided to go as I was sure I would be bored to wait until the evening before there would be some social gathering again. All the girls were watching Chinese movies on VCDs so no fun for me.

Before the girls could comprehend that I wanted to leave and why it was 4:30PM. Since I already told them though I packed up, dressed into my riding gear and went to thank and say bye to the mother and father, who was back from … work? (see below) by then. He actually asked me to stay for a few more days again. However, I couldn’t had stayed for more than another night anyway and by now I was in riding gear. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to refuse since they were really nice people.

OK, on the topic of work as mentioned above: To the contrary of what I knew about working days and hours in China people at least in this region don’t seem to work much. The father and mother left for what I thought was work in the morning (about 9AM), but later, when we were in the city, we actually visited the mother in a pharmacy shop getting an intravenous drip and before we left the city we met them at another shop which also distantly resembled a pharmacy where the father was sitting around his water pipe together with five other men smoking. Was that his job? ;-)

I actually saw people smoking the water pipes in every second shop or workshop we passed, including the one where my parts were made. These people do spend lots of time smoking…

So I was in the seat of my bike again, going through some stunning green mountain scenery. “I knew why I wanted to go today…” I was thinking to myself. The sun mostly shined on my back as I was heading east and so the landscape before me was very nicely lit.

At the end of the day I was already running on my reserve when I started going on a very nice road along a river. It was not too windy, which I was happy about as the time of sunset was close and on this road I should reach my chosen destination before it. Unfortunately things changed quickly when I crossed the bridge to the other side of the river. As I wrote before somewhere in my past articles the Chinese have expressways everywhere here and where they don’t they are building them. Before, during the afternoon I was only crossing sections of the building site that make for a slow and bumpy ride, but they are usually only few dozen to few hundred meters long. This time the building site had no other way to go than along the river as the river is surrounded by steep mountain hills. That was where the original road was at some point in the past, so now I was going on a very bumpy narrow path, getting stuck behind convoys of clouds of thick dust creating lorries, trying to pass them from either side any time. I had the chance. Talk about a very dusty business… I was starting to fear that I would run out of petrol thanks to the slow going and I wasn’t happy with the idea of riding in this in the dark either as there were some muddy patches as well. At least I was happy about adjusting the headlight vertically today so I would at least see what was on the ground before me if a night ride in this really eventuated. It was exactly the time of sunset when I got out of the about 10 km long dusty building site onto a nice new road. I was happy. Soon I had my petrol tank re-filled and was in a new hotel for 20 Yuan a night.

If I had known that they still had no running water I would have negotiated a better price at least but I had already paid by then and trying to explain what I wanted would surely be close to impossible. I refused a dinner in the hotel as I was still full from three warm meals I had today before I left the nice family I stayed with last night. These people eat warm food 6 to 8 times a day!

My elevation is dropping steadily and now I’m at about 11 hundred meters above sea.

(97 km)