Exhausted again

This is what I look like after 50 kilometres on a bike.

Trail etiquette, dude!

Today is a holiday in Hong Kong, commemorating the handover back to nChina in 1997. Rather than celebrate the erosion of the British Empire by staying in bed all morning, I got in a van with my bike and headed up to Tai Mo Shan for a ride.

Perhaps I overdid it at the gym yesterday. Or perhaps if you get back on a bike after a month without riding, you shouldn't expect to keep up with the others. Either way I was tragically slow.

Night riding in Hong Kong

So I bought some cheap lights in Sham Shui Po, put them at the back of a cupboard and forgot about them for weeks, only getting round to charging the batteries last night and then going for a ride this evening.

Crashing in Chiang Mai

There's certain things that stick with me from today's riding. The quiet ting-ting of brake discs cooling as we stopped between runs. The skittering boulders bouncing past you as you skidded down a gulley. Warm wind blowing in my face rolling down the road between runs. And the ground shooting up towards me half way through the last run today down the Bamboo Trail.

Riding in Chiang Mai

Today started very hard for me. We probably shouldn't have been up until two in the morning drinking and looking for a massage, and when the cockerel crowed at five it was earlier than I really needed. I dragged myself to breakfast, and then faffed about trying to get my bike ready for today.

Back in the saddle again (again)

I've got a bit of a farmer's tan: the first hot day of 2011, and I spent it riding my bike around Tai Mo Shan, not realising that all the sunshine was going to colour my arms in a shade of puce. Since I never took my gloves off, my hands are still deathly pale; I look like a mime artist viewed on a malfunctioning television.

Tai Mo Shan

Today I got up, bright and early and without my hoped-for shoes, and hopped in a van heading up to Tai Mo Shan. Because I've been diligently studying Cantonese for the last three years (cough cough), I can tell you that means 'Big something Mountain'. And although it's not a mountain on the scale of Everest or Mont Blanc, neither of them have a road conveniently taking you to the top, where you can then ride down.

Cycling in Hong Kong - again

I went for another ride on Lantau, this time demonstrating the truth of Noel Coward's maxim about mad dogs and Englishmen. As a sign of how hot it was last week, the midday heat was more bearable than 8am had been last Sunday.
Chi Ma Wan at Garmin Connect

Riding tandems in Hong Kong

Today I had the day off, so I was rudely awaken at eight by a thunderstorm, and then rudely awaken again at nine by another thunderstorm, and rudely awaken for a third time at 9:30 by m girlfriend telling me that I couldn't be a slugabed. And then it was off to Tai Wai to hire a tandem.