On Tuesday, and Wednesday, and again on Thursday it was announced that
Saturday morning's 7:30am practice would be moved to the evening.
Whoohoo! Since I stopped doing merely crazy levels of physical
activity and started doing ridiculously insane levels of phsyical
activity I'd be able to catch the weekend breakfast buffet at Peace
City on Renmin Road.
I don't make myself particularly popular at buffets but they especially
dislike me at this buffet.
I usually glom all the bacon, after which I spend the next hour asking
whether or not they will put more out, ask for at least a four egg
omelet, insist on milk (instead of whitener) for my coffee, and drink
lots of the fresh juice. I rationalize that I'm making up for all the
people who only get one plateful of food.
Friday was a rest day. The schedule called for 20km. By the shortest
route it's 22km from my home, so I didn't bother going to the beach.
After thoroughly washing my bike I ended up at Kaituo Bike Shop where I
found out that the Tibet crowd and a few others were planning on a
little 100km jaunt Saturday morning to test out their luggage.
Breakfast buffet or bicycling?
Massive quantities of food or massive quantities of endorphins?
I'm a junkie. The bicycling won out.
Unfortunately, the bicycling didn't happen. Our first stop was a
warehouse near the docks to pick up some newly arrived stuff including
two guys' rear panniers and one guy's front panniers and rack. But
someone who happened to be the person to whom the package was
officially addressed neglected to bring his ID card and they refused to
give it to him...
While he was going back to get his ID card we ate breakfast.
Then when he came back we had to open the boxes. Now all the toys
(including a suspension seatpost and suspension stem for Yang Wei's
tourer) had to be thoroughly examined... by everyone.
Since we were already near the port anyways how about stopping by the
wharfs and double checking the prices and sailing times so the going
away party can be appropriately scheduled.
And soon enough it was 11am and really hot and if I wanted to be back
in town for coach's class at 6pm it would be ... well ... how about
let's all go back to the bike shop, sit in the air-conditioning and
drink tea instead.
....
Sunday morning's schedule called for 60km. I got to the beach late and
instead of doing three full laps spent my time turning around whenever
I saw friends riding the other direction. By the time the last person
(who'd been on time) made it in I had 40km and even if I skipped
stretching and went straight home would be missing the buffet _again_.
However, I remembered seeing advertising for Sheraton's Friday night
seafood buffet. And I rationalized that if they had a Friday night
seafood buffet there was a decent chance they might have other buffets.
High end western food buffets are not uncommon in Asia. If they
didn't, well, then I'd just go from one resort hotel to another until I
found a lunch buffet. It wasn't going to be Peace City's 18rmb but
damn it I wanted my bacon! I earned my bacon!
They all headed off towards town and I headed off towards the train
station. When I got back to the Sheraton I was still about fifteen
minutes early for their lunch buffet which started at 11am.
So, while I waited for this 124 rmb buffet I sat in the lobby drinking
ice water and reading the newspaper.
124 rmb lunch buffet. Fifteen dollars US. In the pre bicycling days
that could very easily be a week's food budget for me. I don't believe
in cooking for myself when I can pay other people to wash the dishes.
It better be worth it.
And it was. I spent 3 1/2 hours occasionally reading the newspaper,
briefly napping, and mostly eating. I particularly annoyed the
waitress because I insisted on sitting outside (sweat soaked bike
clothes combined with cold five star air conditioning make for sick
bicyclists) and she had to go out into the weather to retrieve my
plates and fill my glasses.
I remember having:
9 250ml boxes of skim milk (2 1/4 liters)
8 blueberry danish (I think eight pieces, it was rather definitely
_all_ of the blueberry danish)
7 glasses of fresh squeeze orange juice
7 mocha macadamia nut fudge brownies (not as good as the blueberry
danish but there wasn't any blueberry danish left)
3 apples
3 pieces beef wellington
2 croissants (toasted and buttered)
1 very large plateful of disappointingly low-fat bacon
1 large plate romaine lettuce with ceasar salad dressing and (canned)
black olives
1 small plate pasta salad with parmesan cheese
1 bowl cream of mushroom soup (needed salt)
1 piece sour cherry pie
1 piece carrot cake
1 piece raspberry mousse cake
1 almond roll
1 breakfast sandwich (the sign claimed "eggs benedict with hollandaise
sauce" but it was actually a sunny side up fried egg on a slice of ham
on a lovely butter soaked toasted english muffin)
Oh, and to top it off, although I spent the evening at a going away
party for one of the foreigners eating real pizza with real cheese made
by real Italians, today I went and took my Giant jersey to the tailor
because it was too loose and needed to be taken in again (this would be
the fourth time since December).
-M