James and Tim's World Tour 2012: Bicycle race

Tuesday, 27/11/2012 – 166 A.D.

Hotel rooms with thick dark curtains are confusing. You can never be sure what the daylight is doing outside. Tim’s alarm went off at 08:00 this morning, but I refused to trust it. I think I have some ulcers coming on, but I’ll take them over any other kind of local ailment. And I didn’t notice them as I chewed my way through a hearty breakfast, the first I’ve had on this tour when I could have eaten as much bacon as I liked, or until I burst in a big streaky explosion.

Here is the rule – the better quality hotel it is, the more they will charge for laundry services. It’s not even worth me quoting what the Days Inn charge to do a pair of jeans, you won’t believe me. And so a teeny-weeny bit of hand washing was all that held us back this morning before we got out into the Xi`an sunshine. This was indeed a bright, sunny bonus, as the forecast had said it would be cloudy for the rest of our time here. But what do forecasts know? Predictions are just predictions and not guarantees. And I'm rambling already.

We headed to the South Gate of the city. As explained in the previous post, the ancient heart of Xi`an has a wall running around it, which is, on average, 18 metres high and 15 metres deep. They hold a marathon up there on 3^rd November each year. But we’d come to do this classic rectangular circuit on bicycles, the only way to travel on ancient Chinese masonry!

It cost us 40 yuan to get on the walls themselves, then another 40 to hire the bikes, leaving a 100 yuan deposit in case we rode off into the sunset. The bikes actually looked pretty well maintained and definitely worth more than a tenner, but where was I going to store it in my luggage? Earlier we’d toyed with the idea of getting a tandem between us, but realised we wouldn’t be able to get very good video footage. Plus one of us would have the other’s arse in their face, which kinda sealed the deal. And looking at people who were riding the tandems, they were situated very close together indeed! Yep, only appropriate for couples who regularly get that close anyway. Tim and I only get that close under protest.

For our 40 yuan we got 100 minutes of biking time. That seemed like an enormous amount. The saddles weren’t the most comfortable (are they ever?), but the bikes were easy to ride. They only had the one gear, which I’d say was akin to gear number 5 on a 15 gear cycle. And then it was time for PEDAL POWER!!!

[The view from the handlebars!]

We headed west along the southern wall, trying to do endo’s and wheelies and the kind of skids I could pull off with ease when I was a kid who was surgically attached to his BMX for every single day of the school summer holidays. Every now and then one of us dismounted to take some piccies or video footage of the other engaged in a fancy move, such as riding cross-legged, or just happily riding along without a care in the world, i.e. before the saddle-soreness kicked in.

By the time we got to the halfway point along the north wall, we realised we were only just above schedule, but then again we had been messing about a lot. Was it not Ernest Hemingway who claimed that, “Nothing is so much fun in life as messing about on bikes?” Then again it might have been boats, not bikes, and it might not have been Hemingway who said it, but you get the idea. We peddled harder and increased our pace, zooming along the east wall like a couple of Lance Armstrongs (minus performance-enhancing drugs, plus complimentary hotel fruit).

In the end we returned to the drop-off point for our trusty steads with about 25 minutes to spare. It had been a great ride and no mistake, made all the more easier by there only being a smattering of other riders to avoid – probably a very different story during peak tourist season. And some sections of the wall were less well-maintained than others, particularly bumpy was the area around the south eastern corner. I found myself walking rather gingerly for the first ten minutes after dismounting for good. Great fun through, and I’d recommend it to anyone (just remember to wear your thickest underwear).

The afternoon passed in the blink of an eye, with a bit of wandering here and there, though we stumbled upon nothing much of note. Maybe four months ago the things we saw in the park would have made it into this blog post, but not now. These days it needs to be something different, something dynamic, something…dangerous! Otherwise I don’t write about it. But that’s what journalism’s all about, isn’t it? Sensationalism!

Nothing sensational happened in the evening either – we trekked a long way across town to find a restaurant called The Small World Café. Owned by a Dutch woman, it came recommended by Wikitravel and though the décor was fine, the menu was sparse. I was disappointed to find almost a complete lack of Chinese food on offer – only two more days in this country, need to nosh it while I can! Strange to find me going on about food so much these days? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – that’s something that means the same thing the world over!