6th November
I glanced behind me. He wasn’t there.
Unusual.
I pulled over and rearranged the clothing causing concurrent overheating and freezing, and waited.
Just as I was beginning to think about rolling down the hill again he came grinding up.
It was a tedious hill, with more traffic and less space than we’d prefer. But as usual in China, just when you are about to get utterly fed up it gives you a stunning section of road that makes you forget your weariness for a while.
Today is not Jamie’s day though.
I’d overdone it on our day off, running up and down up a few thousand steps and had spent the last two days fairly miserable. Today I felt not better exactly, but not wincing every time I put my foot down.
Jamie, on the other hand, looks like he’s about to fall over.
We like to take these things in turns.
Yesterday we’d ridden long and late and hadn’t been able to find anywhere to eat in the tiny village we’d stopped in. We’d made do with some instant noodles which isn’t enough for weary cyclists, especially when they come in Jamie-size.
So today we’re running fairly empty and it’s not til we’re nearly at the top of the first huge climb that we stop to eat our second breakfast. It’s welcome, but the freezing mist we’ve been admiring on the way up has descended to meet us.
We’re not on top of things today. We put on extra clothes too late, we’ve got chilled and are about to descend. Novice mistake.
The tunnel we have to go through is freezing cold and we didn’t think to get the full finger gloves out. I’m attempting the reckless trick of folding my fingers into my palms instead of covering the brakes, just to keep them above freezing. Luckily it’s quiet.
The temperature rises a few degrees as we approach the other end of the tunnel and we immediately pull over again to put on the rest of our clothes. Overshoes, gloves, wooly hats.
By the bottom of the descent we’ve burnt through second breakfast and are ready to refuel. Jamie recovers over lunch, I can see him visibly rouse, despite fumbling with his chopsticks, hands frozen. He manages to feed himself without resorting to anything that might embarrass us. We get back on the bike and he looks like he’s back to normal… powering on ahead.
But I find soon I’m in front and he’s sitting – a little irritably – on my back wheel.
Ok, sometimes it’s like this.
We’ve got a long climb still to come.
