TdQL

Stage Seven: Xining - Menyuan

It began with a gradual uphill. 50 kilometers of gradual uphill.

It continued with a slightly steeper uphill. 30 kilometers of
slightly steeper uphill.

There was a brief and bumpy respite. For up to a kilometer at a time
the road even went downhill.

And then the real climb began. Only 20 kilometers. Only 9% grade.
Only another Hors Categorie King of the Mountain that, this time,
finished at 3792 meters above sea level according to the race bible
but 3860 meters above sea level according to the sign on the side of
the mountain.

It's the highest tunnel in the world. Before they built the tunnel
this road went even higher.

My day started on the expressway. That was very boring. But it only
took a little more than a hour before we turned off onto the race
route and got some nice things to look at.

From the Tibetan highlands of the earlier stages we were now in Muslim
country. There was little evidence of stupas and I didn't see a
single red robed monk. Mosques, on the other hand, dotted the
countryside, nearly all the men were wearing white skullcaps, and the
woman (even those in form fitting shirts and skin tight pants) had
their hair covered.

One of the ways you could tell there was a festival atmosphere in the
air was how many of the women had foregone the usual black lace veil
in favor of colorful silk veils. A few of the older women were still
wearing the black lace but had fancy hats on top to go with outfits
that wouldn't have looked out of place on Easter Sunday in a Christian
part of the world.

I made few friends among the people I was sharing the car with by
insisting on having the window open so I could take photos. It wasn't
that cold outside and it wasn't like there weren't an abundance of
jackets in the car if they really had a problem with it. Mostly I
just didn't care anymore. If they were going to insist on leaving
early and driving fast and refusing to stop for pictures except when
they wanted to be photographed standing in front of something famous
then I was going to insist on having the window as far open as I
wanted it open.

As we got into the real climb, however, it became cold enough for me
to want the window closed but every time I closed it much more than
halfway I'd notice that I, once again, could only get enough air by
mouth breathing. So the window stayed down.

I've been told by a friend of mine who has done some stuff with small
unpressurized aircraft in the past that it is generally recommended at
these sorts of elevations (at least when flying) that you not go
without supplemental oxygen for more than ten minutes at a time due to
errors in judgement and the like. Pulling his cellphone out of a back
pocket the driver of our van nearly swerved us into a drainage ditch.
Good thing it was only nearly. Good thing that was the mountain side
of the switchback rather than the cliff side.

The next time he went for his phone I went ballistic at him. He
retaliated by saying that if I was going to keep my window open and
make everyone cold I had no right to complain about anyone else. I
retaliated by opening my window the rest of the way. He re-retaliated
by driving ever more slowly. It didn't work. I liked him driving
slow. It was less scary that way.

At the very top of the mountain it had escalated into a full on
argument and he wanted me out of his van NOW. This was fine by me. I
was more than happy to switch vans. I didn't know anything at all
about the driver of the other van but was pretty sure that the head of
my office (who was in that van) was unlikely to put up with that kind
of scary driving after the tongue lashing she gave him when I said
that I had problems with him dialling his phone in that kind of
environment.

Coming down the mountain we stopped for being photographed in front of
things. No picture of anything is worth taking if YOU, the star
attraction, aren't standing in the middle in front of it. People in
the US do this too and I find it just as annoying in the US. In this
case it was a snow covered peak in the distance.

Down below the tree line.
Down until the goats began.
Down until the fields began.
Down until the yellow flowers.
Down down down down down down down down.
Up.
Down down.

We stopped again by the side of the road to get another photo standing
in front of the snowy peak this time surrounded by waist high yellow
flowers that are actually a local kind of vegetable. Trotting back to
the van at a half jog I got the feeling that maybe I shouldn't be
moving so quickly.

In the parking lot of the main hotel in Menyuan one of the podium
girls said to me it was time to get out of the van. I said I
preferred to sit and rest a bit.

A little while later another one of the podium girls was back out at
the van getting her luggage and she suggested to me that it was time
to get out of the van. I said I preferred to sit and rest a bit.

By the time the third podium girl came by and made this suggestion I
had come to the conclusion that it wasn't just that I wanted to sit
and rest, it was more of a needed to sit and rest. I didn't exactly
feel bad per se, I just had this nagging feeling that if I tried to
move it was going to be a bad idea.

Then the driver came. He wanted to move the van. I had to get out of
the van now.

So I got out.

I took one step towards the hotel.
I took a second step towards the hotel.
And he caught me just before I hit the ground.

I was right. Moving was a bad idea.

Heart rate normal. Temperature normal. Doctors' cars and ambulance
not here yet so we can't check anything else. They put me on a sofa
and I drink water and I feel perfectly fine so long as I don't try to
do anything more strenuous than blinking.

After about an hour I'm feeling a lot better. Moving slow as molasses
but feeling better.
I sit in the sun for a while watching the crowds and feeling, if not
exactly confused, overwhelmed by the profusion of sounds and sights
and colors and noises. By the time the racers have arrived I'm
actually walking around like a normal person instead of taking baby
steps and I can say whole sentences at a time without stopping to
breathe.

Awards ceremony over. I walk to lunch with one of the translators and
the Danish team. She blushes alot as I teach them (per their request)
dirty words in Chinese. At lunch I sit with my Shimano friends
including the manager of my local bike shop. He's got these memorial
books that he wants to take to the post office and get postmarked and
then I'm supposed to try to get Allan Davis and a couple of others to
sign them for him since he's too afraid to use his limited English
skills with people who are not merely strangers but who are important
strangers.

I have to keep telling him to slow down as we walk to the post
office. I feel perfectly fine but whenever I try to go just a little
bit faster at an almost normal walking pace it's like I've hit the
wall. There is no energy there to move that last little bit faster.
I'm drained.

Fumiyuki Beppu from Discovery is in the post office trying to buy a
postcard. He not only has a Chinese teammate, his team has a Chinese
speaking mechanic, a Chinese representative from Trek China, and a
translator. This clearly explains why he is in the post office alone
trying to explain to the woman behind the counter that he'd like to
know how much it costs to send a postcard to France.

That dealt with and my friend's books dealt with I head towards my
hotel and he heads towards his. The books aren't really all that
heavy but I'm already drained of energy and they're heavy enough that
I feel myself slowing down and slowing down and s l o w i n g d o w
n. I'm not just taking baby steps anymore. I'm barely able to lift
one foot and move it all the way forward a whole footstep at a time.
I try flagging down some of the race related cars but by the time the
'move hand' signal makes it from brain to hand the cars have already
gone past and I'm still there in the middle of the street trying to
walk.

I've just eaten. It can't be low blood sugar. But it feels sort of
like low blood sugar. I've bonked before but never like this. Never
so bad that I really can't find the energy to move. I keep inching
forward. I've only got another 250 meters or so to my hotel. But
I've gone beyond running on empty to running on fumes to having
nothing left and I find myself standing in the middle of the road
concentrating on my balance and trying to find the energy necessary to
open my eyes.

That was when I fell down.

This time they called the doctors.

This time, instead of having me rest on the sofa in the lobby for a
while, they took me to the hospital.

Heartrate normal.
Blood pressure normal.
EKG normal.

They take a sample of my blood. Who knows for what since I'm never
given the results of any bloodwork. While the needle is still in my
arm someone puts an oxygen mask on my face and as soon as the other
person has stepped out of the way turns on the gas.

My eyes open wide and I immediately sit straight up in bed. It feels
so good. I've never before felt anything in the world that feels as
good as this feels. It's like every nerve in my entire body is on
fire with pure energy. I mean wow. At 2876 meters above sea level
we're not really all that high (at least compared with some of the
places we've been) but it's pretty much immediately obvious from the
second the flow of that precious precious air was turned on what's
wrong with me.

They still make me stay at the hospital for the next two hours. With
the mask on. Which is a good thing because I find out when I get up
to go to the bathroom that it doesn't take very long without the
oxygen before I'm swaying and moving slow again.

For the rest of the evening, after I get out of the hospital, no one
will let me do anything. I cannot carry so much as a bottle of water
without someone offering assistance and my luggage makes it up to the
fourth floor of my hotel without any effort on my part.

-M

I don't much like the person in charge of my office. It's one of a
number of things about this race that has me dissatisfied at one level
or another (especially when I compare it to the Tour of Hainan).
However, it's not that big a problem since I'm not particularly likely
to ever come back to Qinghai in a bike race related capacity. I'm not
even sure if I'll come back to Qinghai because even though I do,
someday, want to go to Tibet, the oxygen incidents have me scared.

At dinner in Menyuan one of the commissaires who is deeply involved
with this race and who is partially responsible for my getting my
position at this race says, albeit with a smile, that you get one
chance and one chance only to fall down in the middle of the street
from oxygen deprivation after which you aren't welcome to come back -
ever.

The countryside outside Menyuan isn't very friendly to photographers.
A single row of close planted trees along both sides of the road means
that everything is visible at speed but the instant slow motion of a
camera makes for pictures of trees. After a while I give up taking
pictures.

Since the podium girls are in the far back sleeping, the driver is
humming tunelessly, and the person in charge of my office is having a
loud conversation in Qinghaihua with the Team Manager for Team Qinghai
(who hitched a ride in our van) I don't have much to keep my thoughts
occupied on the drive.

I alternate my time between staring out the window and going over, in
my head, the instructions I got the night before from the Merida
mechanic on how to adjust a rear derailleur. The guys at the bike
shop have generally refused to teach me bike mechanics on various
grounds ranging from my Chinese not being good enough to me being
hamhanded. The guy from Merida (who I find out in the course of our
discussion is not just a mechanic, but also the guy who designed the
bikes for Team Qinghai and the head guy for Merida China) was not only
enjoying a chance to show off his English he also got to talk with a
female someone instead of standing out in the freezing night air
adjusting rear derailleurs on his own. (On his own plus a crowd of
about 100 bystanders.)

Even if I am hamhanded and not particularly inclined to do anything
much mechanical on my own I collect knowledge and I like mechanical
things and I find it interesting to now know, in great detail, how to
adjust a rear derailleur for perfect shifting to race standards. No
one has ever taught me that before.

Besides which there's nothing much else to do in the car except stare
out the window and get snarled at whenever I open the window to take a
photo. We're going through a national park that's got beautiful roads
surrounded by even more beautiful mountains. Very alpine. We see
snow a few times.

Today's real climb is yet another Hors Categorie. That's four in four
days.

The race bible is maddeningly lacking in detail. Just enough to tempt
but still missing lots of stuff. I won't go so far as to say that the
race bible is bad just that, like so many other things, the Tour of
Hainan did it better. I tried really hard for the first few days I
was in Qinghai not to compare this race to that race and not to make
those comparisons based on the way my friends did things but it didn't
take very long before I began to understand why, on the very last day,
the Chief Com said that it was astonishingly well run for a first year
race and that if he hadn't have known it was a first year race then he
wouldn't have known it was a first year race.

I've looked at the topographic profile on Stage Eight. I've estimated
the elevation and I've done the math. It comes to a 3% grade. There
is no way in hell that was a 3% grade. You don't get switchbacks like
that on a 3% grade.

The climb was in the middle of nowhere. It's kind of hard to be in
the middle of nowhere in China. You are always somewhere in China.
There is always a town or a village or a crossroads. You think you
are in the farthest outpost away from humanity and you stumble upon a
motorcycle repair shop that also sells beer. But this climb was in
the middle of nowhere. And this climb, like all great climbs of all
great races was jam packed with people who had come to watch the show.

You could tell they had come to watch the show because the area around
the climb was a veritable parking lot of shiny cars and the drainage
ditches were full, not of water, but of motorcycles. Along the sides
of the road there were tents, people with picnic baskets, people who
had brought mahjongg tables to pass the time, people who had brought
not just a picnic but also the kitchen stove and a gas cannister,
vendors selling beer not by the bottle but by the case of bottles, it
was one big party. There was even one fellow who had even gotten the
idea to write encouraging messages in chalk on the road.

We stopped pretty close to the top. The people I was with wanted to
get out, stretch a bit, talk to some people they knew, take same
photos of the switchbacks, and the like. At 3448 meters above sea
level by the race bible I felt fine. None of the previous day's slow
movement hard breathing issues. Really nothing at all felt wrong.
There was a lack of resistance to the air that made walking in it feel
strange and my feet felt heavier to pick up than they normally do but
all in all I felt fine.

I apparently wasn't fine.

Other people started panicking about my state of non-fineness and
insisted that I get back to the van NOW because we were going to
finish the climb NOW and start going back down NOW. First I started
moving fast and then when they panicked at me some more and told me to
slow down I started moving slow.
I told them I was fine.
They told me I was not fine.
I insisted I was fine.
They insisted I was not fine.

This was when I started giggling. And couldn't stop. It was really
funny the way that they were worried about me when everything was fine
the way it was all fine and nice and fine. And then it was funny
because someone was giggling and that someone was me and the giggling
was funny so the funny giggling which was fine made me happy and made
me want to giggle.

Come to think of it, I wasn't fine.

In fact there was a little place in the far back of my head that was
screaming warning signals about the non-fineness of it all. That was
the part of me that was trying to walk in a straight line. The rest
of me thought swerving was fine. Thought swerving was funny. Thought
swerving was a good reason to giggle. Thought giggling about swerving
was fine.

Getting into the van the me that wasn't giggling noticed my continuing
deterioration of motor skills and worried about it. The rest of me
thought it was fine.

I lolled bonelessly against the back of my seat. At the very first
turn I slumped over almost completely onto the driver. This was when
the no longer giggling part of me decided that maybe the non giggling
part of me was right for agreeing with the silly people who thought I
wasn't fine.

The driver stopped for a minute to push me back onto my side of the
van. Someone in the back asked if I was asleep. I said no, just
feeling sort of like I'm drunk, feeling okay, but also feeling like
feeling okay was not the feeling I was supposed to have. I slurred my
words. She told the driver to go faster.

Descending into oxygen wasn't quite as extreme an experience as having
a mask strapped to my face but by the time we were back below the tree
line I was sitting up straight. Since it was now mixed rain, sleet,
and hail and still a steep descent in the mountains with a Chinese
driver, in retrospect, I think I would have preferred not being alert
for that part.

The last bit was pretty flat. The topo profile in the race bible says
the last bit was downhill. Says the last bit was at almost the same
grade as the rest of the descent. The race bible is wrong. The last
bit was flat with some very gentle undulating ups but mostly flat.
Coming into one town we nearly hit a goat.

Parked behind the stage in Huzhu I fell asleep and managed to stay
asleep all the way through the final sprint and through four or five
groups of riders arriving. I even slept through being asked to do
some translation work and slept through the doing of that translation
work with periodic wake up prompting on the part of the person holding
the paper. I no longer felt fine. I felt like I'd done today's 168
kilometers by bike rather than by van and just needed a bit of a nap.

Woke up long enough to wander vaguely over to the press conference
area, where I'm supposed to be, get the two almost hypothermic Italian
riders into my van, and get them lots of bottles of hot water while
the driver turns the heat on. Later he complains to me about my
audacity in handing one of them his personal towel and not making sure
to get it back before said rider went to the podium and now he's not
going to get his towel back.

Finally a transfer to Xining.

-M

Stage 9: Xining - Xining - Xining - Xining

Finally, I get to see some racing.

A criterium is a type of bicycle race that takes place usually on city
streets that have hopefully been closed to traffic. Although one lap
is normally less than 3 kilometers long, a criterium can be anything
from 20 laps to 1 hour to 150 kilometers long and still be a
criterium.

Criteriums are like track racing only without the track. They're a
lot of fun, both to participate in and to watch. And, unlike your
normal long distance stage a criterium is something you can actually
watch a fair bit of.

After breakfast I spent a while unsuccessfully engaging in everyone's
favorite last day of the race activity - begging for goodies. Jelly
Belly's 50 kilos of jelly beans had, by now, made it out of customs in
Beijing but were now, instead, stuck in customs in the Xining
airport. So I didn't get any candy. All I managed was a cycling cap
from the Italian team and a lot of Tour of Qinghai water bottles which
will go to friends in Sanya since I'm pretty well equipped with water
bottles of my own.

Off to the race.

I spent the first while talking with a local American cyclist who had
only managed to get himself a good place to watch the race (ie on the
road side of the barrier) because he was talking to me and we
pretended he was also staff.

Then I hung out with the Merida guy for a while. I think we spent
nearly an hour talking about nothing but the comparative differences
of our favorite bicycle components in different price ranges and for
different uses. I don't think I'm going to be making any (many) more
changes to my mountain bike but I also think that I'm going to lean
heavily in the direction of his favorite picks when I build my race
bike. After all, unlike my friends at the bike shop, his job is not
to sell bikes and expensive bike bling to customers... his job is to
design the bikes and choose the components that will go on the bikes
that the bike shops will then sell to customers. His favorite picks
for the combination of price, weight, and reliability are probably a
good starting place.

Every five minutes or so our conversation is interrupted by the bikes
whizzing by and the need to take pictures. I decide to go over to the
first turn and get very weirded out by the number of people who know
my name. The first person who comes up to me and asks me if I'll sign
something who uses my name is wearing bike clothes so could
conceivably be someone who knows someone who knows me (but why does he
want my signature?) but by the time the third or seventh person calls
out my name as I walk by I'm getting kind of edgy.

Later on I find out that I was on Qinghai TV the night before. I
hadn't realized that the various times when I'd been filmed working
and the interview I'd given as well as the questions i'd answered
weren't going to be footage sandwiched into the middle of something
else, they were going to be a five minute feature mini-biography on
the American translator working in the race office. Wish they'd told
me. I'd've liked to have seen it.

I snag a bunch more cycling caps, have a conversation with some
American spectators, and make it to the press conference late. I
wasn't as concerned with being on time as I ought to have been, with
the exception of Qinghai TV everyone has someone who speaks English
and even if being there to help with translation is one of my
responsibilities I haven't actually been needed for that yet.

Lunch, nap, find out I'm not invited to closing ceremonies, dinner,
and then I go to closing ceremonies anyways. The head of the
translators takes me aside and wants to know why she hears that I've
been trashing the translators' English skills, it isn't like she is
going around saying things about my Chinese. We talk. I give
examples of bad translation. Every example I give is one which she
says her translators aren't responsible for. By the time we define
what her translators are responsible for it is determined that I not
only haven't been saying anything about her translators I haven't been
in a position to see what her translators are doing and I haven't been
given the opportunity to say anything bad about them. She still isn't
satisfied and we part angry.

It is an unfortunate truth that people in China who have exceptionally
good English skills are not translators. They may have been
translators once but the people with exceptionally good English have
long since risen above that to being officials and businesspeople. I
think that the interview process by which only the college students
with the very best English are chosen to be translators at the Tour of
Qinghai Lake produces better than average college student translators
but I also think that they are not only volunteer translators they are
also college students who haven't even finished their course of study
yet.

I drink with the guys from Jo Piels Cycling for a while. I join them
on the trip across the street to the Heineken bar which, with only
them, Denmark, and Jelly Belly is being drunk almost dry and cannot
keep up with the demand. Some of the guys want to go to a club and I
end up in the taxi with three of the Jo Piels guys on the way to the
disco. Apparently in Europe they also still call it a disco. It is
not just a disco, it is the disco ... although there may be more than
one in town this is the one the race goes to on the last night.

The Polish team (something mumble Whirlpool), the Russian national
team, the Ukraine national team, Discovery, the foreign journalists,
Giant Asia, Relax Gam, the Italians with the unspellable team name,
everyone is there. The guys well outnumber the ladies. With the
exception of the sprinters the guys are often taller than me and none
of them care how badly I dance just that I'm a pretty girl and I'm
willing to dance with them. I've got guys waiting to dance with me
while I'm still dancing with other guys. I've got two guys dancing
with me at the same time. And even the ones who aren't buff muscular
biker boys are still buff muscular biker boys when compared to the
general population.

Because of their willingness to not care about my near total lack of
dancing skills one or two of them gets a squashed foot, and my
stumbling at one point into a fellow who was very suggestively dirty
dancing meant a knee in an unfortunate location after which I blush a
lot, he goes and sits down, and someone else takes his place to dance
with me.

A very tall shirtless man who I'm pretty sure is on the Russian team
picks me up at one point and swings me around. He's one of those guys
who is good enough at dancing and good enough at leading a dance
partner (how did we end up doing ballroom dancing in a packed club?)
that my lack of skill doesn't matter. Can't say I've ever before
danced with anyone sufficiently taller than I and sufficiently good at
dancing and sufficiently strong that I've been picked up and whirled.
That was cool.

I go back to the hotel to collapse earlier than I would have liked but
later than I should have since I still need to pack and since my
flight leaves at 7:40am.

-M

Marian wrote:
I drink with the guys from Jo Piels Cycling for a while.
[stuff]

Funny stuff.


--
E. Dronkert

Very nice reports. I enjoyed reading them. Thanks.

On Jul 25, 4:14 pm, wrote:
Very nice reports. I enjoyed reading them. Thanks.

I enjoyed having the experiences that went into writing them

I'll have the pictures posted soon.

-M

wrote:
I'll have the pictures posted soon.

Start with the latest batch! You know, where you were swung about by a
tall strong shirtless Russian.


--
E. Dronkert

On Jul 26, 3:38 pm, Ewoud Dronkert
wrote:
wrote:
I'll have the pictures posted soon.

Start with the latest batch! You know, where you were swung about by a
tall strong shirtless Russian.

Sorry, if there were any pictures taken at the nightclub, it wasn't by
me. My card was full and I didn't bring the camera.

Being one of the few girls (I'd say there was a better than 5:1/M:F
ratio) in a nightclub full of mostly non-sober pro bike racers was
definitely one of the personal high points of the trip.

I had a thing for men with muscular legs before I personally got into
cycling. Major Bonus for me that cycling is a male oriented sport
full of men with muscular legs. And now this whole being bilingual
thing means I get to hang out with pro racer boys... ahhhh ...
droool. Bring the eye candy on!

-M

Marian wrote:
I had a thing for men with muscular legs before I personally got into
cycling. Major Bonus for me that cycling is a male oriented sport
full of men with muscular legs. And now this whole being bilingual
thing means I get to hang out with pro racer boys... ahhhh ...
droool. Bring the eye candy on!

Do you like sprinters ?