D0: Saturday 唐山

May 28, 2022

Coming back the next day for final tweaks before I hit the road, I was going to photograph that Specialized Balance Bike, but it had already sold

Although what I've seen of Tangshan so far does not speak to it being a particularly affluent area, there are obviously some people who have quite a lot of money. I wouldn't have been aware of it had not a customer picked it up and been asking them questions but the bike shop had a carbon fiber balance bike for CNY 7,000 (USD 1,045). They also had race bikes up to 70,000 yuan.

In my role as bored customer who thought she was going to arrive to an already assembled bike, I spent a decent amount of time trying to explain to this customer that even if the 9,000 yuan flat bar road bike wasn't as sexy as the race bikes, it or one of the hardtails was a far better choice for someone "thinking of getting into cycling" because he wanted to "lose some weight".

And then, since he really wanted that Dream Bike but was asking if they had anything secondhand since it was a bit outside his budget, they asked him how much he wanted to spend: "Somewhere around 30 or 40 thousand" for getting into cycling.

Forget the cost of living in China, nobody (not even dentists having a midlife crisis) should be getting into cycling with a USD 4,000 bike.

In the afternoon, after a lunch of tuna fish salad on cumin flavored crackers bought from my hotel, I push the science paper that's due on Friday off another day in order to go over a set of movie subtitles.

Then, I explode my stuff all around the room in order to sort it into panniers and decide what to get rid of.

Given what a hard time I had finding socks or bike shorts, I'm pleased to say this is because there were many lots of both in the panniers that got shipped up here. There's also a USB powered tent fan that would make a lot more sense if I had been planning on having a tent.

I decide to ditch a 16 year old jersey and the ratty Spiderman backpack which I brought knowing it was going to be thrown out, and I'll ship back 1 t-shirt, 1 pair of quik-dri shorts, both pairs of toe socks, and 5 pairs of underwear. I will also ship multiple sets of house keys, a necklace that shouldn't have been in my backpack, and some sandalwood essential oil as my forthcoming "smelling nice" concerns will be more along the lines of "not smelling too bad".

I absolutely love the picture of Sanya's Deer Looking Back Park with a cyclist in front of it

But, even if I gave them their English name, I've had nothing to do with that club for a decade. It's a ¾ zip and there's all kinds of runs in the pattern from the seamstress doing a bad job at making a too large jersey less large.

Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 62 km (39 miles)

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Samuel HaydonThe guy was obviously looking for a “just getting into cycling but with a bike that gives me a lot of face..” bike. Amazes me these days the people willing to spend that much money without even the knowledge of how to change a flat!
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1 year ago

Marian RosenbergTo Samuel HaydonExactly
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1 year ago