Me and Chris have been talking about making the great bike trip to Chagan Lake for months... its 50km away. In preparation we went there by bus first... hehe. It only took about 50 minutes.... i watched as we drove and memorized the route. We started to plan our trip... we kind of wanted to camp.. but decided getting a tent and shit would be to annoying... so we decided we would just make a fire by the lake... roast some fake marshmallows and sausages.
So the next week... we packed up very small bags of essentials and hit the road at about 8am. I started out a little tired.. which was bad..... we made a few random breaks to walk the bikes for a bit and have some water and food occasionally. We still had the plan to make the fire when we got there.. but we weren't sure how it would work out... since we would have to college all the wood we needed... and not sure if we are really allowed to. .......but luckly... on one of our random breaks I stepped off the road between to bushes to pee and whats there right in front of me....... a box of charcoal! .... Chris said i found my burning bush telling me to light a fire!
The trip there was pretty tiring....we got to the lake around 12:30... and road around it for awhile.. we searched around at the different hotels.. and found some pretty cheap ones... but then we went to the nicest one on the lake... and damn was it nice! It actually wasn't much more expensive than the other hotels.. so we stayed there! Went around and collected some small sticks to start the fire with... added our charcoal.. built our fire on the little lake beach... had a pretty damn good night...... crashed at about 8pm!
The way back was a little more eventful. Before we left Chris bought some cool Christmas presents for his family.... and we stopped by the guy that rents bikes and asked to use hit pump and things to tune up our bikes real quick before we hit the road. Since we had the great luck of finding the charcoal on the way there... .i told chris... well maybe next time we stop to pee.. you will find a hot chick in the ditch.... hehe.... and we kinda did.
The trip back was so much easier... I felt like I had so much more more energy the second day. We had to make far fewer stops.. and just powered through most of the day. When we were about an hour away from home we saw a baby chick on the side of the side of the road... REALLY close to the cars... I am amazed it was still alive... not sure where it came from.. but we stopped and picked it up. For some reason we decided we should take it with us.... so i tried to stick it in my bike basket.. but that moved to much... so we put it in the top of chris's bag... but it tried to jump out (the bag was pretty full)...... so we unzipped the front pocket of his bag... shoved it in.... and zipped it back up..... i know it sounds horrible.. but its better then it falling out of the bag on the side of the road again.
We got about 3 or 4km away from Songyuan when we went by some construction and BOOOMB... chris's tire is just gone... he hit a little piece of metal in the road. So we start walking the bikes back... thinking there are little towns around... there has to be a bike repair place somewhere. I see an old man on a bike so i ask him.. he might get his fixed up somewhere..... but no.. he is terrified of me. We keep walking and end up walking past this beekeeper on the side of the road selling honey.... I decided to stop and look at this as chris moves towards the big area of buildings behind the bee keeper to see if there is a bike repair place. The honey was really tasty.. so I bought some... and then ask the guy if he knows where to repair a bike.. and tell him my friends tire is busted. He calls over his friend that works at the big truck repair place behind him.. and i call chris back... they start taking the tire off of his bike and putting patches on it and stuff.... of course the guy selling craps across the street comes over to see whats going on and helps as well. The honey salesman's wife is sitting in the doorway of the little shack with a like 2 year old kid.
For some random reason... I get the great idea to pull the chick out of chris's bag.. and take it over to the little kid.... kid loves it... so we give it to the kid......who knows how long it lasted. The kid is happy.. .the honey salesman is happy.. and after about an hour and a few patches... they get chris's tire fixed up.... I really wish i would have taken some pictures of this group of people.. it was a very interesting group...... the honey salesman did take a few pictures of me and chris holding his baby..
When the bike was finally fixed up and ready to go.. chris tried to pay them for at least the patches.. but they wouldn't let him... so he bought 3 pounds of honey... hehe... after that the guy selling crabs was like "Do you want to buy some crabs!?" ... me and chris look at each other and are just kinda like..... uuuuhh.. no we don't....
We were back on the road and ready to go... made it home in no time... got some KFC and crashed. It was definitely an interesting trip... it felt kinda of like it played out almost like a video game..."you find a random box of coal"....."fill plastic bag with random coal and shove it in your bag"..... "you find a baby chick......" "shove it in the bag".... "talk to random honey salesman"..."man is fixing your bix.. what should you do" ..."give random baby chick to man's son"..... people are talking to you while fixing your bike.... you gain 5points of chinese speaking experience.
It was definitely a fun adventure... and the last bike adventure we will have this year.... its getting COLD!
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