TdQL

Quoted message said:

We got to Qinghai Lake a mere three hours before the racers. Even
though the altitude (3231 meters above sea level) rendered me
completely useless at anything that required skills such as carrying,
lifting, or moving the other people in my office were all long time
residents of Qinghai who had no problems and everything was set up and
ready within thirty minutes of our arrival. After which we had
absolutely nothing to do...

EPO testing?

Stage Two: Qinghai Lake -> Bird Island

Another very early start.

I tried not to feel guilty about having won the cafeteria argument
because while it meant that I was transferred back to the main site
where I got to eat breakfast it also meant that the van driver (who
was not given the privilege of that cafeteria) had to wait outside for
me.

Having some idea of just how much time our time of departure left for
us to get things ready at the other end (and even with four of my
coworkers also being podium girls and having to do their makeup there
really isn't all that much we needed to do at the other end until
after the comissaire's panel had the results) the driver went a bit
slower and we even turned off the road at one point to stand by the
seashore, look at the birds, and skip rocks.

It was weird being at a seashore that had no seashells.

And the waves weren't big enough.

And something was subtly wrong with the color of the water.

I'm not sure if the absence of trees was due to us being on a gently
rolling prarie surrounded by low mountains that belied our actual
elevation or if the absence of trees was due to us being above the
tree line. How high is the tree line anyways?

The main hotel at Bird Island was purpose built for the race. Although
the area does get the occasional tourist during the warmer months of
the year (especially when the birds are passing through on migration),
the town is just far enough away from the lake that it doesn't get
much of any temperature moderation effects caused by large bodies of
water and winter temperatures of 30 degrees below in the daytime
combined with general inaccessibility make it a less than
popular or populous place.

It's one thing when the dancers and welcoming committee are wearing
suspiciously shiny looking traditional garb. Under those
circumstances you know it's costume rather than real. It's another
when a significant percentage of the bystanders are decked out in
traditional garb. Some of them were sporting sneakers under their
robes and some of the silver jewelery wasn't Tibetan but there was a
definite feel that this stuff wasn't ready made costume but was, in
fact, special holiday costume. Not everyone was wearing fancy old
style clothing and it wasn't always easy to tell who had on old-style
because they were too poor for anything else and who had on old-style
because it was what they had on. The brand and price of the mobile
phone being used, however, was generally a decent clue.

I was lucky enough to be in the group of people who did not have to do
a 50 kilometer transfer to get to my night's accomodation but unlucky
enough to be in the group of people that didn't get a bathroom. The
soigneur from the Danish National team let me use his for a hot shower
that ought to have been lovely but which was spoiled by a near total
lack of water pressure.

After dinner I spent nearly three hours listening to Lucien Bailley
tell stories about some forty years (I'm guessing) of being involved
in international bike racing. That was pretty cool. Okay, that was
more than pretty cool.

A strangely placed window in my room, lights permanently on in the
hallway, and low oxygen levels all conspired to make a poor night's
sleep but I had at least, by now, made up with the head of my office
which is a good thing since she was my roomate and our beds were not
quite two inches apart from each other.

-M

Stage Three: Bird Island -> Xihaizhen

Although my roomate was not exactly what one would call a quiet riser
I successfully managed to completely ignore all of the sounds she made
and all of the sounds of people tromping up and down the stairs
outside our room.

I did such a good job of ignoring these sounds that it wasn't until
ten minutes before our schedule 8:40am departure and her coming into
the room to pick up her luggage that I actually got out of bed.

I did a quick run to the cafeteria where I picked up sandwich makings
enough to serve as an in car breakfast. Even though there have been a
few places which look alright to me in terms of food outside the
cafeteria and even though I've spent nearly five years in China I'm
not quite brave enough to go with the local stuff.

One of the reasons they are so very paranoid about cleanliness in the
cafeteria is the same reason why I refuse to eat anywhere except the
cafeteria. There are some interesting local bacteria which, one year,
in one stage, resulted in losing thirty riders to diarrhea. The local
food looks clean enough and I usually prefer fresh local foods but I
don't want to risk it. Especially not when I've been told that there
is a
problem and that the two acceptable solutions to the problem are to
either let your immune system go through a bout of the [censored] or go to
the super clean somewhat bland western cafeteria.

Since I'd rather eat with the media, athletes, officials, and other
interesting people and since the food in the western cafeteria is
really quite good (identical from day to day but really good) I know
which one I'll pick. Some day at a later date when I get around to
riding my bike to Qinghai and in Qinghai I'll try the local cuisine,
but not now.

Going over a mountain and dropping a hundred meters in elevation
brought us into a real town with trees. The altitude was still giving
me issues and it's entirely possible that the previous lack of trees
was caused more by the local soil than the height of the local soil
but it felt really good to be back with trees. Unless you count big
cities (which I'm not a real big fan of anyways) I've never been away
from trees before.

Xihaizhen had a large group of high school kids (many of whom spoke
some English) who were eager and willing to volunteer to carry things,
wash bikes, and so on. One of the photographers (I think the
Australian) was telling how this one girl kept pestering him to help
out and carry his bag until he finally relented and then felt bad
about watching her struggle with carrying his bag.

There was less traditional Tibetan clothing was on display in the
crowd at the finish line and that that was there was all being worn by
the older generation.

Only one big hotel in town and that one was hardly big enough to
accomodate one hundred and forty seven racers, one hundred and five
team staff, twenty one partisan translators, twenty one team drivers,
the commissaires, radio tour, the anti-doping staff, motorcycle
commissaires, journalists, photographers, other members of the press,
non-team drivers, ... about six hundred people altogether.

People were placed all over the place in hotels big and small and even
a field just outside of town where fake Tibetan style tents with
electricity and hot and cold running water were set up. My hotel was
definitely on the low end of things and I was in the low end of rooms
but at least there was a private bathroom with a western toilet and I
only had one roomate. Team China and Team Qinghai (officially China
Merida Team, and also known as China National #2) were also in that
hotel but in the top level rooms which, absent a price board at check
in, I would guess from previous adventures in the Chinese countryside
were probably no more than 100 rmb standard rate.

I hung out in one of their bike rooms for a while. Hard to remember
exactly which team's bike room it was since the two teams are pretty
close. Only one of Team China's riders at this race is originally
from Qinghai but the pro cycling community in China is not exactly a
large one and the top end equipment used by any Chinese team probably
has "CCA" for Chinese Cycling Association written on it somewhere.

Walking to dinner I threw caution to the wind about local bacteria and
had a bowl of fresh yak yogurt from a halal butcher at the Tibetan
market. It was good enough that I'd come back and have my breakfast
there instead of from the cafeteria and chug a bottle of juice so I
could have an empty container in which to put fresh raw milk.

The third day is usually the worst and it was now my third day above
3000 meters. My head was absolutely throbbing like a frat party
hangover without the benefit of the alcohol beforehand so I spent much
of the evening at a local hairdresser getting a neck, shoulder, and
scalp massage that coincidentally also left my hair clean.

Six years of bike race coming through town and it doesn't matter that
they still haven't quite gotten the hang of promoting the race to the
spectators the way races in other countries are. A fourteen year old
who was presumably related to someone at the hairdresser's spent much
of my massage chattering enthusiastically at me about bikes, bikers,
and bike racing. His mom has even been letting him stay up late to
watch the live coverage of the Tour de France on CCTV5. I haven't
even managed to catch any of the bottled with commentary coverage of
the TdF yet though I did fall asleep one night with the tv on and wake
up in the morning with the vague feeling that I might have seen bikes
somewhere between soccer and snooker.

He was a fit enough looking kid so I told him that if he gets a bike
and practices real hard maybe he could make the provincial team by the
time he's 18. It might be true. Given the overwork conditions of
Chinese high schools it isn't very likely but it might be true and the
mere fact that a real staff member of The Race said this to him had
his eyes absolutely glowing. Judging by his bike enthusiasm I suspect
someone has already been nagging his parents for years about getting a
bike and I suspect that I may have done his parents a disservice by
saying this.

On my way back to the hotel I passed a store where the forty five
minute race program had just started on tv and I stayed and watched
that until the end.

-M

Stage 5: Xihaizhen -> Xining

Somewhere out there there were people riding bikes and I was very very
glad that I was not one of them.

The weather really was that bad.

On the other hand, since it was raining so heavily, my severely dry
skin briefly stopped flaking and even up at the 3820 meter peak of the
Hors Categorie King of the Mountain the air was still more breathable
than it ought to have been.

I'm not joking about the severely dry skin. I didn't know dry skin
this dry existed. I've got arm dandruff!

Before the real climb started we passed two or three places where work
crews were anxiously trying to remove mudslides from the road. Since
the mountains over this part of Qinghai are made of very clay heavy
soil that isn't friendly to grass or trees or even moss it doesn't
take a whole lot of rain for entire sections of mountain to decide in
favor of entropy and go with the flow of gravity. It's quite accurate
to say that the peaks are fabulous twisted shapes of eroded land
because that's what they are. With nothing growing on them to hold
the dirt in place a small rivulet wears into a runlet wears into a
crack, a crevasse, a streambed and so on. It's beautiful and strange
and alien all at one and the same time.

Once the real climb started the mist made it hard to tell how far up
we really were. I amused myself by trying to find signs of the old
road that had been here before it was decided that a bike racing
worthy road should go here. It was steeper and the curves were even
sharper but what was left of it looked to be in pretty good shape. In
fact, if it weren't for the width and the need for serious banking at
the speeds you get when you are professional racer pumping your way
down a 40km descent in 53/11 the road probably would have been
alright.

Since it was misty and there were lots of sheep it looked for all the
world like we had somehow taken a wrong turn through a space time
wormhole and ended up in Scotland. Never having been to Europe, I
suspect, however, that Scotland has rather more castles and rather
less yurts. But the landscape really did look like pictures of
Scotland. With every twisting switchback the one below us became
invisible and we were treated to still more misty, drippy, wet, rolly
moor with lots of sheep, somewhat fewer goats, and the occasional
yak. The yaks were definitely a very non-Scottish touch to the
landscape. So were the stupas. But I still half expected to hear
bagpipes any moment now...

Sometime shortly before we got into Xining I fell asleep. The fun of
the up, the terror of the down had worn off and the bottles of beer
the night before had caught up with me. Get my room key, watch the
others set up the office because even if I'm now almost moving at
normal speed I'm still not real good for carrying and lifting, and we
pile back in the van to drive to the finish line.

The guys from Discovery are trying to do something paperwork related
with the guy from anti-doping before the riders arrive. I don't quite
understand what it is they are trying to do and, even if I had
understood, my ability to help them as a translator is quite limited
since the head anti-doping inspector is from Japan.

At the finish line my job is to translate the names at titles of the
people who will be presenting the flowers and champagne to the day's
winners and to make sure that the guys give us back their wreathes,
tell us the right size jersey, and go over to the press conference
area. I don't get why someone needs to be responsible for telling the
day's winners that they should go over to the press conference area. I
mean I suppose there is an outside chance at a smaller race that a
newer rider who hasn't won in the past might think he's immediately
free to go for drug testing, lunch, and a massage but I really don't
think so. I think any rider who has made it to the stage and gotten
the long sleeved jersey with the velcro back doesn't really need to be
told that this isn't the jersey he's wearing tomorrow and that he
should give interviews. Or if he doesn't know this himself, his team
manager certainly knows it.

One of the German riders had to translate for one of the Italian
riders. No Italian speaking translator. Or Spanish speaking. Or
French speaking. English, Russian, and Japanese were the only
languages available other than Chinese, Qinghaihua, Tibetan, and
Arabic. Surely there must be some translators for these other
languages who wouldn't mind coming to Qinghai for the chance to put
something like this on their resume but I get the feeling that the
organizing committee hasn't looked outside the province and the only
reason I'm here is because of my connections with the Tour of Hainan
and because I'm, as Lucien Bailley said when I first met him, "that
American [he] heard about who has gotten involved with the
organization."

After dinner I go to the infirmary to get two wounds (one on each
ankle) cleaned out and bandaged. I know how the one on my left leg
showed up. It was a tiny scratch from before I got here that, with
the very dry air, didn't heal and proceeded to get worse until it
became infected. The one on my right leg has me somewhat more
confused. Because of nerve damage I'm supposed to do daily checks to
make sure I don't have any wounds and to clean them if I do. I had,
in fact, thought I'd been being pretty good about that routine but
even though this is down on the ankle in the fairly normal area I
didn't notice it until it was already swollen and gross.

I've got a lovely single room with ADSL to myself again. Rainforest
shower with water pressure from two different shower heads. Water as
hot or as cold as I want to make it. It's good being back in the
city. I stay up late working on the laptop doing my real job.

-M

The reason for the race bible is so that you know what's going on,
when, and where, and how to get in contact with the right people.

My responsibilities at this race are somewhat lighter than my
responsibilities were at the Tour of Hainan. Despite asking what
phone number I planned to use during the race my phone number was not
published anywhere. Only people who already know who and what I am
know who and what I am. Even after five days of racing and my having
been in town for five days before the race I'm still coming across
people who don't know that I speak Chinese or that there is an
American translator working in the race office.

Oops.

Since no one is asking me questions about anything other than
translating announcements and since the places the race is going are
really only meaningless names on a map to me rather than roads I've
ridden and towns I've slept in I haven't really looked at the race
bible.

I'm up real early with my bags packed and ready to put in the office
for storage until we get back to Xining.

Little do I know we're not leaving Xining.

The race is leaving Xining at 10:00 am but it'll be back at around
half past three. So, since I haven't managed to bum myself a good
place in the caravan I take my luggage back to my room and go back to
sleep until around 11:00am.

I'm having an interesting problem that I'm not entirely sure how to
resolve. I never asked about recompense. One of the justifications
for going to something like this is what having it on my resume does
to my salary potential. And that's worth a whole lot more than
anything they might pay me.

My airline ticket to here cost a lot more than I expected. When I
first went to buy my airline ticket back it cost even more than that
one did. Feeling a bit embarrassed about it all I sought out Director
Zhang and explained the situation. I didn't have enough renminbi in
my Chinese bank account to get home.

Didn't I know they were paying for my ticket?

So I get the ticket from Sanya to Xining and I get the money from
that. I use that money to buy the ticket from Xining to Sanya but
when I go back to the room they've been giving out enough
reimbursements to enough people that they don't have enough cash on
hand left. Don't worry. Lots of days left between now and when you
leave.

But then, this morning, I see the woman who gave me my first chunk of
money and she says something about how they're only going to pay for
one way. So now I've got to make sure to find someone from the
organizing committee and ask "what the heck is going on?" It isn't
like I'm particularly far out of pocket on expenses (especially when
you consider that the only things I've spent money on in the last ten
days were batteries for my camera) but in slightly less than twenty
four hours I've gone from no reimbursement to full reimbursement to
one way and I'm kind of confused.

At the urging of one of my friends from Shimano I grudgingly take four
"Sixth Tour of Qinghai Lake" memorial books with me to stage at the
finish line and ask the day's winners to sign them. I feel like an
idiot. It isn't like I don't occasionally want something signed
myself (I've got a blue best Asian jersey from the Tour of Hainan with
Li Fuyu's much faded signature on it) but four books that aren't even
mine in a place at a time when no one but Headquarters Staff and Press
are allowed back there.

The photographer from England has some real impressive wounds. His
motorcycle had to stop somewhat suddenly and he went through the back
window of the Relax Gam team car. I find this out when I make the
mistake of thumping him on the shoulder.

I have a brief argument with an old lady who is collecting trash for
recycling because I want to rescue one of the Tour of Qinghai water
bottles and a Trek water bottle from her sack and she's vehemently
insisting that they're her garbage and I have no right to come and
steal her garbage! Later it occurs to me that I should have offered
to buy them.

One of the Australians is looking pretty bad at dinner, he's got the
chills and a fever and a doctor needs to be called. I suspect that
he'll be on Stage Seven's Did Not Start List. There isn't much I can
do to help, enough translators as well as people who actually speak
English have converged on him as well as the team doctor from another
team so I go back to my table, enjoy my Wldorf Slaad and Regetarian
Pizza while reading an espionage thriller set in 1970s Lebanon.

(It isn't like I haven't made multiple offers to the Xining Hotel to
write up correctly typed bilingual cards for the buffet...)

-M

Quoted message said:

The absolute best thing I saw was a group of about twenty or thirty
kids and young adults between the ages of 12 and maybe 25. They said
they weren't a bike club. They said they didn't have the money to be
a bike club. They said they didn't have the time to be a bike club.
But they had bikes. And some of those bikes were road bikes. Some of
them were even decent enough road bikes to have brake hoods and
downtube shifters though I'd've personally been a little worried about
quick release wheels in that price range. The special thing about
these bikes and these kids who were not a bike club was not the
helmets or the wide collection of team water bottles but was instead
the home-made frame numbers. Nearly every bike had a piece of blue
paper with a large number written in black magic marker on it taped to
the top tube. It didn't matter whether it was a Flying Pigeon work
bike, a mountain bike, or a race bike look a-like, nearly all of them
had numbers. Some of the kids also had homemade bib numbers pinned to
their t-shirts. I saw numbers as high as 140 and was told that the
numbers were sequential. As soon as the race took off and while the
road was still closed they planned to line up and see who could make
it to the end of town first. It was a very good start to a very good
day.

That's awesome. I don't suppose you have a means of contact? My bike
club might be interested in sponsoring that sort of mottly crew.

--
Dane Buson - [email hidden]
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
you wore home from the party and there aren't any.

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:05:40 -0700, Dane Buson <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The absolute best thing I saw was a group of about twenty or thirty
kids and young adults between the ages of 12 and maybe 25. They said
they weren't a bike club. They said they didn't have the money to be
a bike club. They said they didn't have the time to be a bike club.
But they had bikes. And some of those bikes were road bikes. Some of
them were even decent enough road bikes to have brake hoods and
downtube shifters though I'd've personally been a little worried about
quick release wheels in that price range. The special thing about
these bikes and these kids who were not a bike club was not the
helmets or the wide collection of team water bottles but was instead
the home-made frame numbers. Nearly every bike had a piece of blue
paper with a large number written in black magic marker on it taped to
the top tube. It didn't matter whether it was a Flying Pigeon work
bike, a mountain bike, or a race bike look a-like, nearly all of them
had numbers. Some of the kids also had homemade bib numbers pinned to
their t-shirts. I saw numbers as high as 140 and was told that the
numbers were sequential. As soon as the race took off and while the
road was still closed they planned to line up and see who could make
it to the end of town first. It was a very good start to a very good
day.

That's awesome. I don't suppose you have a means of contact? My bike
club might be interested in sponsoring that sort of mottly crew.

Yeah, that's a cool and trippy story.

Thanks for the reporting Marian.
--
JT
****************************
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Dane Buson said:

Quoted message said:

The absolute best thing I saw was a group of about twenty or thirty
kids and young adults between the ages of 12 and maybe 25. They said
they weren't a bike club. They said they didn't have the money to be
a bike club. They said they didn't have the time to be a bike club.
But they had bikes. And some of those bikes were road bikes. Some of
them were even decent enough road bikes to have brake hoods and
downtube shifters though I'd've personally been a little worried about
quick release wheels in that price range. The special thing about
these bikes and these kids who were not a bike club was not the
helmets or the wide collection of team water bottles but was instead
the home-made frame numbers. Nearly every bike had a piece of blue
paper with a large number written in black magic marker on it taped to
the top tube. It didn't matter whether it was a Flying Pigeon work
bike, a mountain bike, or a race bike look a-like, nearly all of them
had numbers. Some of the kids also had homemade bib numbers pinned to
their t-shirts. I saw numbers as high as 140 and was told that the
numbers were sequential. As soon as the race took off and while the
road was still closed they planned to line up and see who could make
it to the end of town first. It was a very good start to a very good
day.

That's awesome. I don't suppose you have a means of contact? My bike
club might be interested in sponsoring that sort of mottly crew.

I had one kid write his email address down on a piece of paper which,
since I haven't thrown out any pieces of paper and have been trying
hard not to lose any, I ought to (in theory) be able to find.

-M

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.

Quoted message said:

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 said:

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.

Quoted message said:

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

Quoted message said:

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 <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

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 said:

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 ?