#1
|
|||
|
|||
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 |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
The Ugly Bike
why don't you start a blog?
|
#3
|
|||
|
|||
The Ugly Bike
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
My New Bike | brucianna | General | 6 | June 8th 05 08:45 AM |
May 6 NYC NBG Day to Honor Fallen Bike Activist | Cycle America | General | 0 | April 11th 05 04:15 PM |
Windosr Tourist Bike Revisiited | Earl Bollinger | General | 16 | February 13th 05 08:04 PM |
Rec.Bicycles Frequently Asked Questions Posting Part 1/5 | Mike Iglesias | General | 4 | October 29th 04 07:11 AM |
How old were you when you got your first really nice bike? | Brink | General | 43 | November 13th 03 10:49 AM |