Initial Bike Rides

Elli helping Mark build the tandem

We went on our first bike ride last Saturday.  Mark spent the morning building the bike (it was still in its suitcase) so we didn’t start until 1PM.  We’re at the end of the rainy season in Sanmen and it had rained every day except Saturday, so we wanted to seize the opportunity to ride even though it was 93 degrees and very humid.

Coastal road view of the plots where
they harvest clams from the sea bed

While our immediate living environment (the nuclear plant compound) is very modern, as soon as we exit we are in suburban/rural China.  We don’t really know what to call it.  It is more density than you would suspect to be classified as rural, but it is not suburban either.  Maybe industrial rural?  There are a lot of small towns that utilize all available land (think shoulders of a highway and parts of mountains even being cultivated) for agriculture but there are urban aspects like population density and brick factories mixed in.  And then full blown cities with skyscrapers are not far away.

The coastal road

Elli fell asleep during
part of the ride

Anyway, as soon as you exit our home, we are very much in a foreign place – that is for sure!  Since the nuclear plant is located on a peninsula, there is a very cool coastal road that we can pick up as soon as we leave home.  It is a one lane concrete road that is in excellent condition.  It rolls a lot so it is like climbing Blue Hills – without the monotonous repetition.  Since it is wrapping around the coastline there are lots of sharp corners (with signs telling you to sound your horn when approaching since the road is narrow and it is a blind corner) and little villages along the road.  That road comes to an end at a village with a fish market – the seafood is fresh off the fishing boats!  We haven’t shopped there yet but we will soon.

Cattle along the road

Remnants of a quarry

We rode over a bridge (similar construction to the Zakim Bridge) on the highway and followed a fellow expat’s directions to try to find a beach.  We never made it to the beach (we made a left turn too early) but it was great riding.  The rural (fields with goats and ox driven plows) and industrial (quarries, brick factories, shipping yards, etc.) create quite a lovely backdrop for riding.

Lots of cool views

We did 24 miles in two and a half hours on that Saturday ride – stopping to take pictures along the way.  Our average speed was only 12mph because the hills are steep, the descents are winding, and the flats are often crowded with people.  We ended at the little convenience store (everyone calls it the 7-Eleven) here at the nuke compound where we got ice cream (Magnum bars) and a watermelon.

Elli likes ice cream!

We also went out for a short evening ride on Thursday night after the temperature dropped a little – we only had one hour until sunset but we were able to ride down to a local marketplace in Liu’ao, past a brick factory, and then did that same coastal road the opposite direction.

It seems the riding here is going to be great!