Travel is romantic

Yesterday: the intention of cycling for hours through rolling Chinese countryside in clean air, rice paddies to one side and in the distance sharp mountains piercing the sky, riding toward the mountains, legs burning, chest heaving, mind becoming clear and focused when old man pushing a cart looks up to smile and wave, shouting a greeting, probably, it was several sounds in a language you have none of the facilities to interpret, but it can only mean: you are white and American and tall and wealthy and a stranger here but I can see from the way that you ride that you have spirit and that we are not so different and that we are Good, both of us. We are good.

During hotel breakfast buffet I’d planned to take a train out of the city but hearing of my plans The Local Office insisted on sending a driver and “Representative” and “Volkwagen” and after some argument and picturing the scene when in dayglo yellow jersey and The Shorts That Keep No Secrets I maneuvered myself and my American-sized ultra-light bicycle (fabricated with avionic precision) into a crowded Chinese railway car, knocking askew the baggage of fellow passengers and bloodying noses, I quietly acquiesced and for two hours our black Volkswagen plodded through the smoggy streets till the last tall buildings were behind us and the Representative of The Local Office said: it is time to get out of the car.

There were trucks. Enormous loud trucks with mysterious cargo that must be military-industrial in nature, huge infernal parts for huge infernal machines of destructive purpose, conveyed on giant trucks lurching and clattering and honking and farting noxious gases directly into lungs and mucus membranes, swooshing past I-beams and backhoes and concrete mixers and utility roads, a scene of constant construction as for two hours down the highway I rode through the miasma, eyes stinging and turning and pressing closed one nostril and blowing and don’t hit the shoulder again SHIT I snotted my shoulder, god that’s disgusting, and these lycra/spandex shorts and shirt can’t wipe anything, not snot, nothing, so it will just sit there all afternoon, slimey in the sun, wicking into the fabric. Slippery fabric.