My wonderful memory of the National Day Holiday－－By Don

My wonderful memory of the National Day Holiday is made up of many events,
and I just choose a few events to detail.

1. The scary night ride on day 1. From 6.60 pm to nearly 8.00 pm, I just
followed the blinking rear light of the biker ahead, as I had not brought a
front light of my own. When a car approached us, even though I tried to look
away, I was often caught in the glare of its headlights, and so for a few
moments afterwards I was dazzled and could not see. In that time I was
actually riding blind, and with great relief finally caught sight again of
the little red light twinkling ahead. I never looked at a star in the sky so
intently as that twinkling red light, or ever found a star as beautiful as
it was that night.

2. The steady leading of the peleton by Sonic and Kent. For hour after
hour they pulled the rest of us along in their wake, like two big tug boats
pulling a string of barges along behind them. By reducing the wind
resistance it cut the effort by 20 percent, and even then I had to call for
a rest quite often. I am sure that those two strong young men could have
gone a lot faster and stopped less often if we were not there to slow them
down, but they always agreed willingly to stop, and never hurried us.

3. Riding past paddy (rice) fields of a brilliant fresh green colour, both
on the coastal areas and even in folds up in the hills, where there are
terraces. The countryside seemed to me to be quietly prosperous, and there
were often new houses being built, or improvements being made to the farm
buildings.

4. The beautiful red brick house of Kent's parents, where we spent the night
of day 3. I now have a picture of the house and courtyard as the screensaver
on my PC. Its beauty was only matched by the gentle courtesy of his parents,
who were so natural and made all of us feel quite at home, at once.

And I could go on to describe the ferry crossings, the huge meals, the towns
we passed through, the friendly people we met on the road, the amazingly fat
pigs, the thousands of ducks and geese, and so on. I have lived in China for
nearly 2 years, and this ride has been the highlight of that time. I look
forward to the next unforgettable bike ride in the varied and ever
interesting Chinese countryside

Yours Don Miller