The Ugly Bike

I've mentioned it on here a few times before.

My third bike in China, a second(third?)hand Emelle that I bought for
75 rmb.

After buying it I put it in a cab and went home. On the way home I
passed a real Emelle shop but I didn't stop. Instead I took the bike
to the shop closest to my home, the place where I had purchased my
first bike.

I had a doozy of an argument with them over rehabbing that bike. In
the end, if I recall correctly (I didn't write it all down in my
journal at the time) they only replaced the rear derailleur, and they
removed the broken front derailleur. After which they pronounced the
bike to be as good or better than new.

Even then, when I still thought 20 kph was ridiculously fast, I liked
it when my bikes had brakes that worked. As the brakes on this bike
did not actually succeed in stopping the wheels from moving when I spun
them by hand, I thought that the bike still needed a bit more work.

They disagreed with me.

So, I took the ugly bike to the real Emelle shop I had seen from the
cab. I don't particularly remember that ride though thinking about it
brings forth a sympathetic memory of pain in my butt and groin from the
saddle it had at the time. And it makes me remember other scary
brakeless rides in traffic.

Such as the time my Chinese boyfriend got a flat tire late at night and
we walked his bike back to my place then he rode my bike home. The
next day, after walking that bike to the street corner repair stand, I
was in thick traffic, coming to a red light, and a herd of bicycles,
when I discovered that the brake cables weren't actually connected to
anything. His answer "I've got feet, why do I need brakes?"

Or the first time I crashed my last bike. Just finished my first 50
kilometer ride on that bike (first ride of more than 30 klicks in more
than a year). Dragging ass on my way to dinner. Cold mizzly rain.
The kid runs out into the bike lane from practically nowhere.
Predictable result. The screaming and finger pointing was over quickly
because I couldn't be bothered to take it to the inevitable end-game
and make the mom take responsibility. I only wanted food, preferably
hot food, and someplace dry to eat it. I'm back on the bike, halfway
across the bridge to Haidian Island, on the downslope when I discover
that the brakes aren't working.

But I don't remember that ride. I'm sure I rode. I must have ridden.
I know what my Chinese skills were like at the time and I would never
have taken a taxi unless I could say exactly where I was going. In
Shijiazhuang, unless I was with someone else, the only places I ever
went by taxi were the train station and my school.

Again, an argument. Because when I've told them what I want them to do
to the bike we're talking a significant price tag. Almost as much as a
brand new bike of the same type. More than a upright comfort bike.

In the end, they did it for me. They gave me my ugly bike. And I had
my first taste of high-end bicycle shops in China. I know now that I
must have inadvertently stumbled across the place where the bike people
hang out. In the three hours I spent in that shop waiting for the bike
to be finished (plus two hours not in the shop) a surprisingly large
number of people wandered in to the back room to go shopping. Very few
of them bought things. Mostly they came to talk. And some of them
talked to me.

One English speaker even gave me a website for a true high-end bike
shop in Shijiazhuang. I remember the black background, the flashing
graphix, and the astonishing renminbi price tags. It wasn't the right
time, my Chinese wasn't good enough, my body wasn't strong enough, and
the bicycling bug had only just bit ... the infection hadn't quite
taken hold yet.

The front room with the cheaper stuff. One uber-expensive bike hanging
off the ceiling. The middle area where the grease monkeys do their
business. The back area with the expensive bikes, the frames on the
wall, the glass cases with small spotlights showing the different kinds
of gears. The rear wall with the selection of spandex.

It could be the place in Haikou where I wander in to go shopping on a
regular basis, without hardly ever buying things, and with a lot of
time spent talking to whoever else is in the back also not actually
making a purchase.

The infection has taken hold. I have a gorgeous expensive road bike
that I'm crazy enough to get boxed up and take with me to other cities.
I'm eagerly looking forward to the round-the-island winter trip. And
I'm planning to go touring across much of north China during Spring
Festival.

On the October Holiday trip to Sanya (which for me only went as far as
Wenchang) I got a flat tire right before the first tea-break. The trip
leader had me ride his bike in. Mountain hybrid. Comfortable mountain
hybrid. I liked it.

I'd had my gorgeous expensive road bike for all of six days and I was
already contemplating the purchase of a completely different second
bike.

(I'm currently the only person in the club with a bike over 1500 rmb
who only owns ONE bike.)

Well, I figured if I was going to do something like that, I was NOT
going to go the route I just went with this bike. If I've been bitten
by the bicycling bug then I've been bitten. And, if I'm going to be
silly enough to have two bikes, then I may as well build something from
the frame out rather than buy something already assembled. On the way
I'd get to learn a bit more.

I already knew that the local secondhand bike markets suck. The new
frames at the store for the purpose of building are all way WAY more
expensive than I am set to even consider spending. Once accessories
are factored in I came 1600 rmb under budget on this bike. By that
logic I have 1600 rmb to spend.

I know, the semantics are somewhat twisted, and I just came back from a
VERY expensive holiday in Shanghai and will be spending the next few
months on a fairly tight budget. Based on the spending trends of the
last three years I'm currently able to live without working for at
least the next two and a half years. I'd like to do that. Too many
expensive treats and I won't be able to do that.

Recently, I decided to try to find out what happened to the ugly bike.
When I left Shijiazhuang I gave the keys to a coworker, with
instructions to give it to a bikeless student who I knew had money
problems.

Somewhere in Hebei there is a nice but ugly bike that I'd already had
all sorts of stuff done to once before. If any of the people I'd given
it to had any idea where it had migrated to, I was willing to consider
buying it and shipping it down to Hainan. I was willing to go as high
as 300 rmb including shipping.

The response:
I am sorry the bike has been lost.
Joy gave it to me. And I shared it with my roommate Sun, who had joined
us some times (when you gave the key to Joy, you said about Cui Ziyi
whose English name I forgot, but he didn't live with us). The bike was
much older and when I once rode it to buy my train ticket home, the front
fender dropped, making the front wheel suddenly stop. It was real luck
that I hadn't reached the downhill path between our school and the train
station, or I would have been badly injured.
When the final term came, you know, time to use the bike became very
little, so we put it in a bike port. I really thought about how to deal
with it after I graduated and at first decided to hand it over to a
student in the next grade who had offered me a bottle of water when I
was very tired playing in the playground and who must be a money-lack
student judging from his clothes and the way he spoke. However,
when my mother and I went seeking it after we had just canceled my room,
it never appeared.
What a pity! But maybe that kind of frame is not so rare, try finding
it in more big stores and markets. Perhaps it is now inside the door you
next enter.

The irony of this, not just in that the bike eventually did get stolen,
is that the fenders were one of the things that the Emelle shop tried
to get me to replace that I did not replace. The reason I wanted them
was the reason they wanted me to replace them. They went far beyond
merely being hideously ugly. Far far beyond. They rattled, and
creaked, and had streaks of unidentifiable dirt on them.

At least for now, my madness has been thwarted. No second bike. The
ugly bike has been irrevocably lost and will never return to me to be
stripped and rebuilt once again. What a pity!

Instead I'll have to use my energies on planning the Grand Tour ala
Spring Festival. I've got friends in other provinces seeking out local
maps for me. And I'm working on a shopping list. I'm very excited.

The plan - to fly to Beijing and, over the next six weeks, somehow make
it back to Hainan without using any form of transportation where a
ticket costs more than 200rmb.

-M

why don't you start a blog?

I've got one. ... currently subscription
only. It has all my stuff in it, bicycle and non-bicycle.

Most of the people who read my blog read the bicycle stuff because it
is there, but few of them actually find it anywhere near as interesting
as the general China stuff.

Since getting pointed at crazyguyonabike (by someone from
teflchinalife), I'll be putting more of my long bicycle stuff there and
less of it here.

Needed a place to do the long bike write ups where the audience might
actually care about it. I've got a semi-captive audience for my blog
(hey, they subscribed to get it in email) but I already know that bikes
don't fascinate them the way they do a lot of the people here.

wrote:
: I've got one. ... currently
: subscription only. It has all my stuff in it, bicycle and
: non-bicycle.
:
: Most of the people who read my blog read the bicycle stuff because it
: is there, but few of them actually find it anywhere near as
: interesting as the general China stuff.
:
: Since getting pointed at crazyguyonabike (by someone from
: teflchinalife), I'll be putting more of my long bicycle stuff there
: and less of it here.
:
: Needed a place to do the long bike write ups where the audience might
: actually care about it. I've got a semi-captive audience for my blog
: (hey, they subscribed to get it in email) but I already know that
: bikes don't fascinate them the way they do a lot of the people here.

I'd be interested in the bike stuff and the china stuff....post a link here
to your blog when you update it with bike stuff. Or just post here, either
way, I'd read it. Might save you some work, though.

For reasons far too long and complicated to explain and probably no
longer even relevant after three years it is subscription only.

However, if you want to subscribe, it's pretty easy. Just send an
email to

-M