9/24/2012

    Finally able to leave Mengzi, cold has been overcome, or at least batted down enough that I can keep going.

  Distance covered today: 95 km

Total mileage to date: 454 km

Time in saddle: 5h18m

Max Speed: 53.5 k/h

Average Speed: 22.3k k/h

Time from departure: 7.5 hours

So I thought since I was recovering from illness it should be an easy day, nothing to stress the system.  Instead I pulled my second longest ride so far. 

    The night before I went by the local bike shop for some quick adjustments on my rear axle and pedal axle.  Mengzi does not have many bicycles and I was only able to find one shop in the whole town.  However, there are some dedicated riders and as the evening wore on they started to gather at the bike shop.  My quick repairs ended up taking about 1.5hrs so I had some time to talk with the local riders.  They never really had a reason why there are so few bikes, the two ideas floated are money and laziness.  Money seems to be the one I would bet on.  Never have I seen children so young driving scooters around town.  Maybe once or twice, but in Mengzi I saw at least four kids (10-12) driving bikes with 1-4 similar children passengers.  The bike with 5, 12 year-old kids was very impressive.

     Anyway, after talking for a while, and telling them my plan to head out in the morning, it was decided that they would join me for part of the ride.  So a plan was set to meet the next morning, I wasnt sure what to expect.

       At 8:30am I was at the bike shop ready to go and was joined by 4 other riders.  This was the second time that I have been able to join up with Chinese riders and both times it has been really nice.  The local knowledge is very helpful, especially when entering and leaving a city as the roads can be confusing.

         They only stayed with me for about 20k, they had a different destination in mind and were also going back to Mengzi the same day.  All the same it was nice to have an escort out of town.  After going the 60k to the fork in the road, left the wrong way to hotels, right the correct way to village oblivion, I had a choice to make.  I decided I dont like to back track.

      I was rewarded with 30k of downhill mountain track.  It was awesome, no pedaling, amazing speed (30-50k the whole way), such a pleasant change.  After about an hour I stopped at a small shop to grab a bottle of water and check my progress.  To my amazement I was at the highway junction I thought I might have to push to before finding hotels.  10 more minutes and was in a small town with hotels and hot water.  70k to Vietnam.