Looking Out To Sea

I’ve recently started commuting to work by bike which is both more enjoyable than walking and gets me there quicker. There are a few downsides but they’re small enough that I’m going to continue like this until the weather really forces me off the road.

I was initially quite afraid of the ride through the centre of Glasgow. There are lots of one-way streets, really steep hills and traffic lights. I was even contemplating leaving the bike at the station overnight and commuting through town by subway. But a few more days of the inner-city commute set me at ease. It can be a bit daunting but I know the route now, and I know the tricky points and where to position myself so I’m not trapped by buses and so on.

The train is also good. There’s a bike carriage on every train with six hooks to hang bikes. The biggest problem is caused by station staff who create deliberate bottlenecks (!) on the platform ends during peak commuter times, which cause all the following trains to be late. I honestly can’t believe it’s more worth their while to start off the day behind schedule than to just employ enough conductors for the trains.

My work isn’t the most cycle-friendly environment. There’s nowhere particular to chain up a bike, so mine gets tied to the banister at the foot of a stairwell, next to the mops and Slippery Surface signs. Classy! There’s also no shower/changing facilities and the toilets are a bit of an offence to hygiene, so things could be better. But then who puts an office in an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere anyway?

My next steps are to get some panniers for the bike, to reduce the need for a rucksack (which just makes cycling hotter and sweatier) and get more familiar with maintaining my trusty steed. I would have said “I can probably pump up the tyres without assistance” but since the front inner-tube was involved in a “rapid deflation event” last time I tried to pump it up maybe that’s not true! If I suffer a puncture en route I just have to walk it to my destination as I don’t have the immediate skills or materials to patch things up.

Our first big trip out in Xi’an was to the city walls, which are huge and intact. So huge that you can hire a bike to ride round the entire thing, which takes about forty minutes if I remember.

We first walked through the streets at the base of the walls, past the calligraphy stands and the vendors of tourist tat, and came to rest in a quiet garden just outside the walls. We sat in the shade with other people enjoying the calm, just two minutes walk from the main busy roads.

This was our first step from industrial China into something reminiscent of ancient China from films. The greenery seemed right, the pigeons were suitably exotic and even the concrete shaded walkway was made to a different design than it would in the UK.

The people lazing around us got in some good staring at this point. The gawping never really disappeared, though it was less common in Beijing than Xi’an. The only occasions on which we weren’t the centre of attention was walking down the street with my brother and his girlfriend — a Chinese girl and a pasty Westerner holding hands attract much more attention than we ever could.

When we found the steps up to the wall itself it was a bit disappointing. If the air had been clear we could have seen across the city in all directions. But Xi’an is enveloped in a cloud of perpetual smog. The temperature is in the mid-30s but you never see the sky. In the late afternoon we often looked into the sky and though “oh look, it’s the moon”. It was the sun, shining as hard as it could but still looking wan and inconsequential. There were no shadows on the ground. The temperature didn’t really drop at night. It was all very disconcerting.

We walked a quarter of the wall, or a bit less than, until we were tired and hungry. We then wandered the streets getting stressed and angry, and ever more lost, until we found something to eat. And food fixed everything.