Folding Fetish: One of the weirdest cycling subcultures

Sometimes I’ll be on a long solo ride laboring against a strong headwind. I’ll see someone up ahead in a proper bike kit, and I’ll start thinking, “Ahhh, maybe it’ll be someone who can take turns pulling with me.” But when I get closer, I realize that …aaggghhhhhh…it’s another one of those folding bike dudes!

There’s a big group of them in Guangzhou. I think the folding bike is the second most popular type of rig in the city, after the rusty, grimy dinged-up work bikes ridden by migrants. On some Sundays, many of the folding bike fans get all decked out in Euro team outfits, and they gather in the city’s university district. They mostly seem to pose and prance around with their tricked-out, small-wheeled bikes. Some of them even bring their girlfriends with them to snap photos.

I got a kick out of this guy. He’s a rebel all right.

I guess when I see these guys in their Euro team kits riding those miniature bikes, I kind of feel the same way a Harley rider probably feels when he sees a guy decked out in leather on a moped. Maybe I’m a bike snob.

The cool thing is that many Chinese – well, not that many actually – now have the leisure time and income to indulge themselves with such hobbies. Life isn’t all about posting rip-roaring GDP numbers. It’s about finding time to get out and do something fun and interesting. As more and more Chinese can do this, the country will be a much nicer place to live in.

Crash & Punch: Money solves everything

There was a happy but expensive ending to yesterday’s bike crash, fight drama. A deal with police was cut close to midnight, and the expat cyclist had to fork over 20,0000 yuan (US$2,930). It was unclear who got what of this hefty sum. No doubt, the police took a cut. And some of it probably went to pay medical fees for the alleged victim. On the positive side, no one was seriously injured and charges weren’t pressed against the expat cyclist. After the money was paid, the police left the hospital and the expat was able to go home this morning after the doctors determined his internal injuries weren’t serious.

The expat was able to give me a few more details today. He said he was flying down the descent when the Chinese cyclist riding the wrong way plowed into him. The expat was able to break his fall with his arm and his shoulder hit the ground as he did a roll. After coming out of the natural momentary shock, he saw the other cyclist – who wasn’t seriously hurt – and gave the knucklehead a smack on the head. OK, this wasn’t the best reaction, but when someone does something stupid and causes a nasty spill, you definitely feel a need to express your anger. If you can’t do it with the local language, you reach for the universal language – like an openhanded pop on the head. Again, not the best move but understandable – and certainly forgivable.

As the expat got on his bike and tried to ride away, a bystander grabbed him and wouldn’t let him go. When he tried to pull away, the bystander hit his torso. The expat then punched the guy in the face and he went down, apparently hitting his head on the pavement. As they struggled, a large crowd of gawkers surrounded them. “It was like ants on honey,” he said. The crowd held the expat there until the police arrived. In China, it doesn’t take long for a mob to form, and most of the time, the crowd won’t take the foreigner’s side.

The expat never had a chance to assess the injuries of the violent bystander. He thinks the guy needed stitches and possibly broke his nose. It’s unclear whether the guy had to pay any kind of a fine or was assigned any blame. I seriously doubt he was.

On China’s roads, a foreigner has little or no leverage. I once heard (from a third-hand source) of an accident involving an expat who was cycling down a road when a jaywalking pedestrian jumped out in front of him. The pedestrian suffered some serious head injuries and the expat had to pay the guy’s medical bills. In many cases, the police are under pressure to nail the foreigner because if they don’t, word will get out that they kow towed to the expat, and this could spark a protest or riot, especially in a village.

In an authoritarian society like China’s, everything looks orderly and stable on the surface. But a small incident can quickly explode into a big one. People are often walking around with a load of grievances that they feel they are not allowed to vent. But all it takes is a little spark (e.g. a rumor that a rich foreigner ran into an elderly man and got away without paying compensation), and you can have an inferno by the end of the afternoon.

Tips: Never throw a punch in China

I got a text message today from another expat cyclist in Guangzhou. It said, “I crashed my bike against another cyclist going the wrong way and I slapped his head. A bystander intervened. He hit me and so I punched him. He went down. Now I am in police custody.”

I called him and found out the situation was much more serious. He sent the text from a hospital, where he was being treated for possible injuries to internal organs. He wasn’t able to talk long, but he said that he was still in police custody at the hospital. The details of the incident are still sketchy.

I’m completely sympathetic. I’ve been in the same situation many times before, and I struggled to maintain my cool. This rider said he was descending a small mountain when he hit the cyclist who was “salmoning” – one of the national pastimes of cyclists in China. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been climbing or descending and had to find my way around someone who was riding against traffic. You would think that it was the responsibility of the salmon to find safe passage around the person going the right way. But that’s not how it works in China. It’s one of the few times a Chinese cyclist will hold his line, i.e. when the line really belongs to you.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. The point I want to make is that it is NEVER a good idea for a foreigner to hit a Chinese person – NO MATTER WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. It’s dumb for two reasons:

1. Cyclists look ridiculous in a fistfight. We’re wearing clippity cloppety cleated shoes and Spandex that looks cool on the bike but extremely dorky on the road in a fistfight. If you don’t believe me, check this out.

2. In China, a Chinese person can rape your women, burn down your home and key the new paint job on your Colnago … but if you hit him, oh man, you’re in big trouble. I know a guy whose crazy Chinese neighbor threw his wife’s bike off the top of the apartment complex. He confronted the Chinese guy, things quickly got heated, he punched the Chinese guy and pinned him to the ground. Before he knew it, the Chinese guy called the police and the foreign guy had to write a mea culpa “self criticism” letter and pay a small fine to his lunatic neighbor. The police weren’t at all interested in hearing about how the neighbor tossed the guy’s wife’s bike off the roof. They just focused on the fisticuffs.

I have another friend – a pretty strong bike rider, actually – who was on a training ride when he got doored and hit the ground really hard. As he was picking himself up, he noticed that a Chinese passenger in the car was laughing at him. He went over to the passenger and clocked him. Well, the police showed up at his house later and threatened to expel him from the country if he didn’t apologize in writing and pay a fine.

The Chinese take assault very seriously, especially when a foreigner is doing the punching. As soon as you strike out, it doesn’t matter what triggered it, you’re guilty.

Gear: The news is boring, the bikes are cool

Chinese newspapers are generally boring. But their bikes are cool.

Most of the papers have a fleet of their own customized delivery bikes. They’re painted in the company’s colors, and the publication’s name is often on the frame’s top and down tubes. Custom panniers are a must.

Here’s a delivery guy for Guangzhou’s most popular papers, the Guangzhou Daily and Southern Metropolis Daily:

I love the double top tube construction. Chains in China only get lubed once in their lifetime.

Bike Traps: An instant endo?

I came across this wicked little bike trap during a ride over the weekend.

It’s a crumbling drain cover reinforced with rebar. The sinister thing is that there’s a series of these covers in a long line. So when you’re riding along looking at the undamaged covers, you get lulled into complacency, stop paying attention to them, stray a little bit off your line, then “BAM!” you ride over this one and go over your handlebars. OK, this is unlikely because any fool knows that you should never ride over any kind of manhole or grate in China – and probably in most other countries. So many are ill fitted, unstable or just nonexistent.

This bike trap is along a narrow road that goes through a semi-rural area. On the right side of the road, there’s a big banana field. But there’s also a farmer’s market nearby along with a university district and an industrial zone. So there are always trucks, buses and tractors and three-wheel carts that you need to avoid. It’s easy to ride into a bike trap like this while doing an evasive maneuver to miss a swerving container truck.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes to fix this thing. The stretch of road has long been a disaster, but about four months ago, road crews patched up some of the roughest parts. I chalked it up to China’s US$586 billion stimulus plan. But it didn’t take long for the road to become a nightmare again. Maybe I should start riding a cross bike.

Pics: It’s the Tool Time Guys and the Yam Man

I saw a few interesting things on my 97-kilometer ride. I set out about two hours later than I usually do because I wanted to wait for the morning to get warmer, and I wanted to get a nice big hot bowl of oatmeal into me for fuel. I saw a group of interesting workers that I usually don’t run into when I get an earlier start. They were about 20 guys who gather under an overpass about five kilometers from my home.

They ride these battered black work bikes that are covered in mud, rust and grime. On a rack over the rear tire, they strap on all sorts of power tools. Most of them have a power drill tied to the side of the rack and there’s some sort of drill press tied down on the top of the rack.

I asked them what the tool was for and where do they work, but they spoke in a thick, funky dialect that I couldn’t understand (My usual explanation for not understanding folks because my Mandarin isn’t fluent enough.).

They seem to be freelancers, hired drills just waiting for a job. For me, they really embody the spirit – maybe desperation is a better word – of the Chinese worker. There they were on a cold Sunday morning, hanging out under an overpass with their tools, hoping to get a little work. Sure, China is reporting sizzling economic growth again, but times are really tough for people like this.
After riding for 70 kilometers in a icey cruel, relentless headwind, I felt like the unforgiving conditions had really nailed me into the ground like a tent peg. I was fighting the bike and struggling just to turn the pedals over. I couldn’t get rid of that cold and clammy feeling. Then I smelled something that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. It was the unmistakable scent of Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. Slightly sweet with some nutty hints. It was coming from the three-wheel bike cart that I was closing in on fast. Ahhh, it was a Yam Man!

I foolishly didn’t buy a yam because about an hour earlier I had eaten half of a mashed-up peanut butter sandwich I stuffed in jersey pocket. I wasn’t hungry but I was at the point where I should have taken on board some fuel. A baked sweet potato was exactly what I needed. A hot football of carbs in my stomach. I passed on it and started paying for the price five kilometers down the road when I started to bonk. I rode home the rest of the way on auto pilot set on slow survival mode.

Pics: Turtles and tires!

I was at the end of a 100-kilometer ride this morning when I passed this guy selling turtles on the side of the road.

Last summer, I frequently saw migrant workers on the roadside near my apartment complex selling soft-shell water turtles. They did it just like this guy: punch a hole through the tailend of the shell, thread a piece of twine through it and either hold the turtles up to passing traffic or dangle them from a stick. I’ve never seen anyone buy them.

It’s really hard to get a picture of these turtle dealers. They’re not supposed to be hawking reptiles on the side of the road, so they’ll usually turn their back to you as you try to snap a photo. This is the first time one of them let me shoot him. I played the be-nice-to-a-foreign-friend card and he went for it. First he wanted me to pay him, which I wouldn’t do because I don’t want to encourage people who mistreat animals.

The turtles were looking like they were having a VERY BAD DAY. It was really cold and they were barely moving.

Like all the other turtle peddlers, this guy wouldn’t tell me where he got the creatures. The turtlemen usually wear hard hats and dress in work clothes. I assume they’re construction workers who stumble upon a nest of turtles and try to make a little extra money.

The Cantonese are famous for being adventurous eaters – dogs, cats, snakes, frogs, civit cats – and they’re maniacs when it comes to freshness. They usually like to buy their critters live and supervise the slaughter or do it themselves.

When I first came to China in 1990 as a language student, I went to Guangzhou’s Qing Ping Market, well known for its head-spinning variety of creatures in cages. It was there where I saw the cruelest thing I’ve ever seen. There was a small wild deer-like animal stuffed into a cage. Because the cage was so small, they had to chop off all of the deer’s legs at the knee to fit it into the container. It just peered out at me looking terrified, with its bloody stumps sticking out of the cage.

Today, I was able to photograph another character who has eluded me many times. Some migrant workers pedal around the city collecting old tires. I guess they sell it for scrap. I’m fascinated by the way they hang the tires on their bikes. This guy has a car tire and motorcycle tires as well as a bizillion bike tires.

Training: The morning schizoids

I’m going to stop setting myself up for failure with these morning rides. They’re just not going to happen until the cold front moves away.

Last night, I laid out all my riding clothes on the kitchen table so that I could dress in the morning without waking up my wife. I put out my knee warmers, thermal booties, fleece vest, jersey, neck warmer hat thingy, arm warmers … the whole works.

When the alarm went off at 5:15, I woke up and felt well rested. But I just couldn’t get out of bed. Most homes in Guangzhou don’t have central heating, so the mornings can be cruelly cold.

I stayed in bed as my mind started making a list of reasons why I should skip the ride. It said, “The wind is going to be brutal and you’ll be miserable. You won’t be able to ride that fast in the cold. Why practice riding slow? It’ll be dark and there might be more of those broken bricks in the road that are so hard to see. When you rode Tuesday, a gust of wind almost blew you off your line and into traffic on the Pazhou Bridge. It could happen again.” Then came the most persuasive argument: “The little Japanese girl next door just caught H1N1 and your daughters’ schools have been closed to slow the illness from spreading. It’s best not to push it now. Stay healthy and do everything possible to avoid sickness. Getting sick sets you farther back than skipping a workout.”

So I didn’t ride and stayed in bed until 6 a.m. – the point of no return for my morning workout. If I don’t get out the door on the bike by 6 a.m., my workout plans are blown to hell. My narrow window of opportunity is between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.

I just watched the seconds tick past 6 a.m. At 6:01 a.m., another voice started whispering in my ear. The first thing it said was: “Loser! It’s not that cold out there. After about 10 minutes on the road, you would have felt fine. Embrocation! The tough, unpleasant workouts are the most memorable and meaningful ones. You would have felt so proud of yourself if you would have gone out. You’re going to lose precious fitness. In Belgium, this is summer weather!”

What will happen now is that I’ll move my workouts to the evening. I’ll like it at first and wonder why I even tried to ride in the morning. But then the negatives will start building up. I’ll have to work late and will miss a key workout or two. Or I’ll just want to relax and unwind during the evening and will resent having ONE MORE THING to do in the evening. The workouts will cut into my precious reading time.

Then I’ll shift back to the mornings and it will begin again…

Embrocation: The experiment goes awry

Following the success of my embrocation experiments on the road, I decided to try out the stuff on one of my roller workouts in the morning chill on my balcony. I squirted out a blob and rubbed it into my legs, and the wonderful warm feeling kicked in right away. I was riding bare legged when I usually have to wear tights. It felt great.

But 10 minutes into the workout, I discovered a problem. When I’m riding on the roads, I don’t really smell the embrocation all that much because the wind whips it off my body. But when I’m riding in place on the rollers, the scent rises up from my legs and goes straight up into my nose. For the first few minutes of the workout, the sinus-clearing sensation was enjoyable. But after 10 minutes, I began feeling like I was riding in a cloud of embrocation. I got lightheaded and a bit dizzy. I couldn’t focus on my workout. All I was doing was thinking about how overwhelming the smell was. I felt like I had rolls of wintergreen Lifesavers jammed up each nostril.

Note to self: Get unscented embrocation for the rollers.

It turned out to be the roller workout from hell. Apart from the embrocation overdose, there were a few other annoying things. As usual, I was on a tight schedule. I had just enough time to do a one-hour workout before showering, shoveling some oatmeal down my gullet, checking e-mails, cycling to school with my little daughter and then hopping the shuttle bus to work.

When I got on the rollers and started pedaling, I noticed my Trek bike computer wasn’t working. I got off the bike and jiggled the sensor on the fork, but that didn’t work. I didn’t have time to mess with it, and there was no way I was going to spend an hour on the rollers without feedback. So I had to do a bike change and go back into the apartment to get my trusty steel Colossi.

I got on the bike again and tried to zone out while pedaling and listening to my iPod. Then I started to wonder, “Hmmm, since when has ‘Kissing the Lipless’ become an eight-minute song?” For some reason, my iPod was continuously repeating songs. The Shins were stuck in some kind of weird loop. I had to stop again and try to debug the iPod. I tried an Arcade Fire song and it started repeating, too. Resetting the device didn’t work, and I couldn’t waste time fussing with it. I went to a Podcast of a “Shout Out Louds” concert, downloaded from All Songs Considered, and that took care of the problem.

Once I passed the 10-minute warm-up mark, I tried to pick up the tempo and do intervals of three minutes hard followed by two minutes of recovery. But for some reason, my legs had no power. I was struggling to spin at a pathetic 30 kph, when I can usually easily ramp it up to 36-40 kph. I tried to shift up to my big ring, but my 8-year-old geriatric Dura Ace front derailleur just couldn’t complete the task. It usually works fine on the road but falls short on the rollers. I’d greatly appreciate an explanation from all the mechanical engineers out there.

That’s when I decided that some workouts just aren’t meant to be and this was one of them. All the delays had eaten into my hectic morning timetable. To complete all the other essential tasks, I had to cut the ride short to 30 minutes.

As always, with lessons learned, I’ll try again tomorrow.

Embrocation: Better than melted butter on hot waffles

I just want to know why everyone has been keeping the marvels of embrocation a secret from me. Oh man, what a revelation. Slathering the stuff on my legs has solved a serious problem I’ve been having keeping them warm and limber on rides.

When I was an unspectacular-but-determined cross country runner in high school, I ran in shorts through most of the winter without any problem. All it took was a five-minute warm-up to get the blood flowing in the legs and they would be fine.

But now (I won’t say how many years – or decades – later), I just can’t get rid of the chill. I’ve had to abandon a climbing workout because the legs weren’t warming up, and I was afraid I was going to pull something. I did a 130-kilometer ride over the weekend, and my quads felt like semi-unthawed hamburger meat throughout the workout. At the 100-kilometer mark, I felt an aching pain deep in my quads. It got so bad that I thought I might have to get off the bike and hail a taxi. When I got home, it was painful to walk. I’ve never felt that sensation before. I’m thinking now that my muscles were aching because they weren’t getting enough blood. The sensation went away as soon as my legs warmed up.

The other day I went out for a 30-kilometer morning ride before work. The temp was about 8 degrees Celsius, and I felt like I was riding in a wind tunnel set on “maximum Arctic blast.” Ordinarily, it would feel like ice crystals were forming on my quads and hams – even if I were wearing thick tights or leg warmers.

But before I went out, I rubbed some embrocation (cheap “Cool Heat” from Rite Aid) into my quads and calf muscles. This made a huge difference. My legs felt great. Warm and limber. They stayed that way for the entire ride. I think I’ve solved my problem and the solution was simple. I love it when that happens.

I don’t know why it took me so long to connect the dots with this embrocation thing. I’m embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t sure what the word meant until recently (It’s derived from the Greek “embrokhe” or “lotion”). Sure, I’m an English major who has also completed coursework – but never finished the final paper, as my mother frequently points out – for a master’s in another language-related subject. But I just haven’t come across the word “embrocation” until lately. I’ve always called the stuff “liniment” or referred to it using a product name like “Ben Gay” or “Icy Hot” or “Heat.”

I’ve kind of known about the concept of embrocation for awhile. It’s been on the edge of my radar screen. I was well aware that Rule 20 of OREC (The Official Rules of the Euro Cyclist) says: “The Euro Cyclist shall ALWAYS have liniment applied to his legs before appearing in public.”

There’s even a mighty fine cycling Web site and magazine that uses the term in its title:

Then there’s the brief scene with the embrocation junkie in my all-time favorite cycling movie “A Sunday in Hell.” The guy is getting ready to head to the starting line of the 1976 Paris-Roubaix and his trainer lifts up his woolen jersey and peels back a grungy gray undershirt and starts rubbing embrocation all over the guy’s chest. I doubt I’ll go that far.