Colin Campbell said:Marian said:I was hanging out at the bike shop tonight having an absolutely lovely
time when I notice that this fairly tall guy with a bit of a gut who
has been wandering around for a really long time. It isn't that big
of a shop and there isn't that much to look at. I mentally class him
as 'window shopper' and ignore him. Since I'm not actually employed
by the bike shop I have the right to ignore customers if I want to.
After a while it's obvious that he's listening in on me explaining to
one of my Sanya riding buddies why mountain bikes normally have quick
release seatposts but road bikes almost never do.
Quoted message said:At a pause in the conversation I expect the inevitable "you speak
Chinese really well" that I always get in these situations. Instead I
get "nice legs, did you used to be a pro rider too?"
Quoted message said:I'm in the middle of saying "no, just someone who likes bikes" when I
mentally process the "too" that was in that sentence.
Quoted message said:We talk for quite a while after that. He never went above Club Team
level (so far very few Chinese riders have) but he did get to the
point where his full time job was riding bikes but so far as I'm
concerned if someone gets paid to ride a bike and doesn't do anything
other than ride bikes then that someone is a professional rider.
Quoted message said:And he thought I had nice legs.
Quoted message said:🙂
Quoted message said:-M
Marian,
Your posts are always entertaining and interesting - thanks for that!
Would you mind telling us how you came to be in China, How long you've
been there, how long you're staying, where you are from, and some of
that sort of data? (A picture of the legs is entirely optional!)
I decided to spend a year overseas between university and graduate
school.
One year turned into a year and a half making a September entrance to
grad school difficult.
Which resulted in moving to Hainan. Which resulted in deciding to
spend 'one more year'.
Which resulted in my deciding to Officially Study Chinese because I
would be embarrassed to go to grad school and tell people that after
three years in China I possessed the incredible ability to tell a taxi
driver where to go and could read most of a simple menu.
Which resulted in discovering my amazing talent for foreign
languages. Four courses of Advanced Accelerated Immersion Chinese
completed in three semesters.
During which time I started biking seriously.
Which is how the bike shop owner told me I _must_ register for one of
the infrequent races we have because if I didn't race there wouldn't
be enough women.
Which eventually resulted in my finding myself in one of 'The Man With
the Colnago Pedals' periodic month long training sessions. (It was a
nearly two year process of discovery from his being 'that older guy
people tend not to argue with' to 'executive coach of the women's
national track team'😉
Which resulted in my being introduced to the first edition of the Tour
of Hainan.
Which resulted in my being introduced to the Tour of Qinghai Lake.
Which was one of the many causes of my being on the organizing
committee of the second Tour of Hainan.
Which is how I was introduced to the Provincial Sports Academy.
Which is why I agreed to make a phone call to Florida for the Tornado-
class Olympic racing catamaran team. And translate a few emails. As
a favor.
Which is why I got a ten day contract with the Chinese Yachting
Association when the coach from Florida came. A very very expensive
ten day contract.
Which is one of many (many) reasons why I think I'm going to be here
for a very long time.
Quoted message said:Just to be fair, I was born in Texas, and live in Southern California.
I'm soon to be 64 years of age, and I'm riding more than I ever have
(18,800 km so far in 2007). I've lost about 10 kg this year, and I'm
riding faster and climbing better than I have for a long, long time.
I logged 13,000km in my first year riding. I was on track until I
moved to Sanya in May (no one to train with, thus boring) but still
had a chance of at least making 12,000 when the TdQL happened. It's
been all downhill since then.
I'm embarrassed to say that I've had a beautiful custom titanium
Habanero race frame that I home-anodized iridescent purple and
equipped with a mix of Shimano 105 and Ultegra for two months now and
haven't even logged 250km on it yet. Before I started working in the
Chinese professional sports world I was doing between 250km and 350km
a week.
Quoted message said:We actually had a good rain here yesterday (I measured 2 inches with my
rain gauge), so I didn't ride, breaking my current streak of 44 straight
days on the bike. I also had streaks of 90 and 165 days earlier this year.
Colin
Since mid-July, I've gone up to 20 days at a time without riding.
-M
