With only a day’s rest, and jet lag recovery still needed, the next invitation to ride came that evening saying there was an opportunity to ride with a Bangkok representative of the Thai Office of Tourism, who wanted to see all the sights around Trang in order to promote cycling in this region.
Thinking this would be another group ride I opted in for the 6 AM start time only to find that the woman from TOT was 60 minutes late and that the only riders would be TigerSong, our inveterate cycling diplomat from Trang, myself and Chris, a visiting English tour guide who has been tour-less in Trang the last two seasons, who comes anyway for his slotted time frame.
Once “O” got on her bicycle she never stopped pedaling the entire 125 km ride unless it was time to photograph an attractive site or refuel. It’s not often that you see cyclists who pedal continuously, a technique I aspire to practice. All the Thai riders here coast along whenever they have an opportunity. Nevertheless, the ride took me over 10 hours and I bailed from the touring pace at the 100km mark as soon as we crossed the estuary ferry, heading home in time for dinner.
It was an interesting ride because TigerSong took us to several sites I’d never been before like the elevated Mangrove pathways on the maritime university campus parkland on the coast. Most of the day’s photos are on Facebook which is the life-blood of Thai biking culture; if you “friend” TigerSong you can see them. (I’m still avoiding that mandatory mendacious medium as much as possible.)
On Thursday we recovered Stanna’s “yellow bike,” the road bike she brought to Thailand 5 years ago. The rear wheel was swapped out on my Trek over the summer because it was easier than fixing the flat my bike suffered. (We encourage our friends to ride our bikes where they are stored, but they don’t use a gauge to keep the pressure up and commonly ride at 60 PSI.) Of course we had a long lunch first catching up with the local bicycle politics, which ended up being a filibuster effort to persuade me from meeting with local politicos who’ve installed a meter and a half solid green bike lane around the city at the curb beneath all the parking spots. Local opinion posits that the lane was purposely installed erroneously in an effort to get paid twice to do it correctly. (This happened 3 years earlier when they placed a motorcycle lane on one of the main roads.) “We love Thailand” is all we want to say in the political sphere.
So my wheel required a new tube and locating a presta value pump with a pressure gauge, which isn’t always an easy thing. Fortunately we have a back alley mechanic who specializes in higher quality bikes and has a limited inventory of parts we might need. Now our bikes have their proper wheels and the pressure up to our 100 PSI standards. Next will be getting my mountain bike back to our location, just a matter of asking to pick it up at this point. The only reason to belabor these simple matters is that it takes all day to chat and find a tool, and chat and make a trip to one bike shop and chat. For those who wonder what we do all day long this should suffice.
As we were posting this blog, our landlady surprised us with afternoon “tea and cakes.” Another thing we do with our time. Photo outside our back door.
