February 7th: sent boxes and broken brakes

Day 144

Woke up sucking a lemon, as Thom Yorke says. The weather is killing me. At least it was dry today. I assembled the gifts in a box for the 'nati folk, braved the post office and holiday crowds, sent the bastard air mail because the waiting game is torture. On the way to the internet cafe my remaining bicycle brake cable snapped. Great.

I could only fathom the deafening gameplay and standing guy bumping into me for so long, left and cautiously pedaled my way to a bike repair chap, using my foot and gritting teeth to stop. I had him fix both brake sets while his crony rattled off Chinese at me like an auctioneer despite my "ting bu dongs" and "edyen pu tong hua." I at last made it to Dongzhou, hung out with Mike and watched the rest of "The Butterfly Effect." Then he, Rhys and I went on a quest for ground beef to make Cincinnati chili tomorrow. Mike led us to a market behind Dongzhou that had goats in all forms except standing there bleating. No ground beef.

We went into Times, picked up some ground pork (the closest we could get) and stood in one of the several holiday-jammed queues. The Haimen Ozzy Osbourne got in line behind us and launched into some high pitched drunken gibberish through his rotted out teeth and straggly hair. He kept holding up two sets of vegetables, smiling, with the intent I assume of cutting in front of us since he had so little. we only had one item, and he was next anyway, so I told him to chill. I looked in my phrasebook to say it but all it had was "next to" or "next month." "Hey dude, you're next month. Relax!" He didn't. Rhys, being right next to him, was deeply unnerved, afraid at any second Ozzy was going to hold him up with a Cronenberg chicken pistol.

We picked up a can of tomato paste at Kedu and retreated back to the confines of safe and Ozzyless dorm. We often ate snacks and drank for a while (Mike had picked up some "Hot Welsh Onion" crackers, had Rhys, our inhouse Welshman assess their authenticity) then headed out for noodles around the corner. Rhys had stolen the appetite of a lumberjack; he finished his noodles, mine, and Jeni's.

The weather, still being a big burlap sackful of bullocks, made us stay in. We watched "Xiu Xiu the Sent-Down Girl" about a girl in the the Communist youth program forced to leave the cities and go into the country as a way of breaking down the class system, then being abandoned to be at the mercy of cruel opportunists who promise to aid her escape in exchange for sexual favors. Intensely sad film, difficult to watch sometimes. We chased it with "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" to cleanse the sadness, but for me, the opening shots in Arches National Park gave a new flavor of sadness. In less than five months I'll be out there again. I wonder how it's going to feel.

After the film, Mike played around with some photos of the trip, like trying to fix Dr. Thumbwars' teeth. They're really beyond help and I feared staring at them at great lengths were going to influence my dreams. I pedaled home, excited to make chili tomorow and praying the weather would break.