sore butt

First 140K ride this year. It was suppose to be about 90 some K but my wife and another friend kept changing the destination. Not good when we had to be at the gym by 2:30pm ;-) My Personal Trainer was waiting for me.

A quite windy day today. I was spent before we sat down for lunch at 9:30am. Yes, lunch as we left the APT at 5:30am. One thing about biking in away from Shanghai, I could shut off other senses and just use my nose to smell where I was closed to. Along the way - EARLY IN THE MORNING, I smelled nice flower fragrant, home cook breakfast as we were close to homes. Then when we were close to water, I could smell the "lovely smelly" of dead pool idling in the sun. These were the senses I picked up using my nose. O yeah, I saw someone on a silent electric bike with golf shoes, except he wasn't going for golf (Let's put it that way). The morning fragrant of the bygone filled my nostrils this morning. I enjoyed it. These were the smell that one would not get in a city.

Unfortunately, on the way home. The nice fragrant smell gave way to industrial strength glue, chemicals and fume exhaust. Yuck. At last people woke up and went about their money-making scheme.

We owned the street at 6am but by 10:00am, we gave way to the industries, tourists and people abound. Yes, the streets became congested and accidents waiting around the corner. At one point, we had a water buffalo came out to the bike lane w/ the owner. They just stood there looking at us as we approached. No moment at all. Then an out of province driver drove at the wrong direction at us signaling left but turned right. With so much momentum on my bike, I narrowly avoided a collision. Momentum = mass = speed = overweight? Then these two kids on bikes wanted to hand w/ us, to show their stuff. One kid almost caused a piled up because he passed with on-coming traffic coming at us. Basically, he was playing chicken. I hanged back after that. One of those kids passed us on a low end bike. Iron-wife said "that was humiliating". Not so. Life preservation. Didn't care.

Yes, if we could just ride early in the morning and then had a van picking us up at the other end. Early morning fragrant.... lost forever if we don't take advantage of it now to smell them. Urbanization will snuff the old way out.