One day forward and one day back. Well, I think I'm well (no pun intended). Well, maybe not quite. So it goes in my life but not nearly as miserably as it was a week ago. My life is so much better than it was then. I rode to Heping western market today to get some coffee and other things. It took me 45 minutes but it was busy and I was very cautious and not in any hurry. It was my first ride of any distance since Linda's accident. She seems more anxious to get back on her bike than I was. Anyway, I made it with no incidents to speak of - only one close call. I did the shopping, loaded the stuff on my bike and began the journey home. I had turned down a street I had never been on before and was taking a new way home when I heard a bang about the same noise as a little firecracker going off and realized that I probably had a flat tire. Sure enough I did. If I had gotten a flat tire within a mile of home I'd have known several little corner bike shops that would fix my tire cheaply and quickly and get me on my way. But I was on a major street without much corner commerce and I wasn't sure where to go. I walked my bike a ways and finally found some people to "ask" by pointing at my tire and making exploding noises. They told me they did not fix tires there but pointed me to take a left at the next corner (the exact opposite of the direction I needed to go to get home, so if I need to walk all the way home I was adding to the distance I would have to walk). I walk down this street asking periodically where I could get my bike fixed and being directed ever westward. After asking three people and being pointed in the same direction, I finally saw a fix it shop on a corner. I showed the proprietor my flat and he began to pull my inner tube out. During that process he found a spot on my tire that was worn completely out and when he pulled my inner tube out he made disgusting sounds when he saw all the patches on my inner tube. Wondering if I was going to have walk home with my rim rubbing on the sidewalk, I made motions for the proprietor to sell me a new tire and inner tube. Well, he just happened to have a tire my size and an inner tube as well. The interesting thing is that he had to dismantle a major portion of my bike to replace the tire. While he fixed my bike I took my camera out and took some pictures of his work and his grandchildren who were playing nearby. He did it all in good time and charged me 22 RMB (just a shade over $3.00). I cannot get over how cheap some things are in China and how expensive other things are - a 1/2 pound of coffee is 42RMB ($6.00) and a jar of peanut butter is 32RMB ($4.50). Labor is still very cheap here. We have decided to get a cleaning person because it will cost us 12RMB / hour (<$2.00/hr) - it really is too cheap not to have someone do it for us.
We are off on Monday for the Mid-Autumn Festival on September 14th that celebrates harvest. It seems early to me because it is still so warm here during the day. Nights are down in the 60's. The tradition is that families unite (per a student of mine) and eat moon cakes and drink tea and then have a "big"meal together. You will see a picture of a moon cake which has a cookie-like outer that is soft but firm and is filled with a date/walnut mixture, sweet black beans, strawberry or peach sweet jelly stuff and a peachy coconut one, too. The walnut date and peach/coconut were not bad but the others I did not like. I was given a gift box of them from the nursing school and James and I both got a bigger box of them from the university along with 2 12-pks of whole milk in individual servings. We have enough milk for the rest of our stay. The gifting of the moon cakes and the milk are also a tradition. Monkey is coming to spend the afternoon with us and eat dinner. She will probably bring mooncakes. We are going shopping together for the ingredients to make a Chinese dinner together, not sure what it will be. You will hear about it later.
I have been picking up my exercise and feeling so much better. My energy is returning and I am ready to work this next week. It is nice to have Monday off, though. The timing was good. We bought little colorful covers for our bike seats today for about 25 cents each. The seats get dusty between use so you take the cover off and put it in your purse and then replace it to cover the dusty seat to ride again. Good idea, huh? Looking forward to trying it!
I'm going to have to take a picture of those seat covers, Linda's is special.
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