Day 228 (China): middle of nowhere - town I don’t know the name of (disaster strikes …)

daily distance: 18+3km
total distance: 13,345km
riding time: 3h (doesn’t really matter)

This is disaster day … of sorts. It wasn’t a good one and it may be a longer post. We shall see. It started out alright. The weather was stunning when it had become light. The night … not so good. Feverish for most of the night, but OK in the morning I decided to give things a go. As I am typing this … maybe I shouldn’t have. But I felt fine then and things were OK.

Breakfast with Feng and Lee … and then it was back on the bike. Slight cloud cover overhead, but good times really.

The first few kms went really well. The road climbed perceptibly, but things were moving along. The road was in excellent shape and there were no complaints there at all. Not sure how long it will last though given that there isn’t that much asphalt.

I motored on, still doing pretty well and enjoying the deep blue skies up here after the mostly hazy desert stretches. It was cold and extremely windy, so much so that it caused me to crawl up the mountain more than anything else. But all was good.

Then, after taking the first real break disaster struck big time. I had pushed a bit harder as it was steepish and the wind came at me when the chain came off with a clonk and what I heard didn’t sound pretty. It looked and was even worse. Here is the result:

On the left side you see the rear part of the bike from the bottom and you can see that the frame is actually bent. I can’t have caused this on my own and the derailleur (pictured on the left and broken) had been shaky from the start since Kyrgyzstan after the Sary Tash events. The idiot that rode my bike must have banged it up much worse than I had thought. When you click on the pictures you will see what I mean - I am adding notes to make it clearer. This was it then for the tour … What happened was that the chain got sucked in and caused the derailleur to move up with the wheel and … snap. That should not happen with a derailleur in good shape, but this one wasn’t up to par any more. The worst thing though was the frame that was bent. And with it the hanger for the derailleur was no longer in the right place. All of this was going through my head … as well as the thought that the tour was now over.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of things for a few minutes. Wait for a vehicle and hope that one would come soon. Walk up the pass and finish it up. It was only 10km to go. I was about to pack up and do just that when the first vehicle came by. Large SUV, but not enough for the bike as they had a full load of passengers. But they left me bread and just as they were heading out, there came another car - a little truck which could easily take all my stuff. The bike shared the back part with ducks and all sorts of other stuff. The driver was a maniac, but there was little choice and I only found out on the way. There had been less than 10 cars all day in both directions, so I was happy to have wheels to get me someplace at least.

Here is that someplace. One of the most ugly places that I had been in  and I wanted to get away. Easier said than done. After assessing the damage and seeing the bent in the frame was bad I decided to try to bent things as best as I could and see what I could do. I would need a new derailleur and that I would only be able to get in Xining. Or have one sent from Gundula who had already scouted one for me close to Beijing. So that was an option. The question really was whether the hanger would hold up or not. I had no way of knowing until I put a new one on. So, with a big pair of pliers I put the frame back as much as I dared without gonig too hard at it. Ugly affair, but what the heck. Can’t be helped. The way it was it couldn’t stay. Sort of worked. But then out of there ASAP.

As I said, easier said than done. I waited for hours and hours. I had cramps again, but in the end - after having been refused by a number of people going to where I needed to get to - I was picked up by a crew of people that had a motorbike in the back of their pickup. And the bikes and I shared the bed of the truck as the cabin was full. 80km in the wind with the sun setting and on a bumpy road. Good thing I had a good jacket. The landscape was more desert hemmed in by high snow capped mountains on both sides. Beautiful really. Would have loved to ride that bit. But it wasn’t to be.

Then, the search for a hotel was on. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. Every hotel refused me again and again. This was with the help of the guys that took me along. It was frustrating. I was cold and miserable. Then they wanted to give me the Deluxe Suite for EUR 100 and that was the only room that was still left. I refused and left and said my thanks to the guys as they had to move on and had spent an hour with me looking for a place. It was always the same. Do you have a room? For you (meaning my Chinese friend)? No, for him! NO!!!

I was about to head out and then went to the police station and complained. Said that things were full in the foreigner hotel and the others wouldn’t take me. This went back and forth for a while until there were 4 policemen in the room. Including the head huncho. He asks for my passport, can’t make out where I am from. What difference does it make? Alright, we head to leo.dict.org and start the translating business a bit. Then he calls his friend who speaks English and wants to know why I am in the city and the like. Interrogation. Not standing up for that. In the end I leave and decide that I will find a place in a hotel or one for myself somewhere in this city. As I was heading into the first hotel a police car comes up behind me and the four policemen muscle past me into the hotel - they were extremly forthcoming. The first one was full - one goes next door and says no prob, they will take me. Aha … the power of the police here. I was sorted in the end. Had a place to rest and put my head down.

There were lots of thoughts going through my head … most of which surrounded cutting the tour short and whether that would constitute some kind of failure on my part. I must admit that I don’t feel like going on right now. It seems really, really tempting to bag up and head to Germany. Let China be China - not for me. And I have so much to do before heading to Miami - classes need to be prepared, I need to move my life there and having nothing at all … all really tempting. That bus to Xining and then a train to Beijing … we shall see.