October 16, 2024
Miles: 15.5. Total: 7,953 miles.
It's not for lack of trying that I have not left Ürümqi.
Today, I set out for Dabancheng, a town about 63 miles southeast of here. For the first time in China, I spotted two cyclists out for a joy ride, and we stopped for a fun photoshoot together.
But then, well outside the city, amidst dropped signals and glitchy apps, I made a rookie error: I assumed I could enter a highway from a toll road that seemed to intersect it on the map. Not only was I wrong, but when I stopped at a police station for help, translation app barely eeking out sensible sentences, the police told me that bicycles cannot ride on the G30, which was the road I was intending to use.
It was too late in the day to recover from this error, and so I tucked my tail and scooched back to my hotel. On the way back, I noticed my nemesis on the roadway: steel filaments from disintegrated truck tires, which were responsible for all three of my tire punctures this trip. The last time I got a puncture, on the shoulder of the I-40 in Arizona, I wound up sleeping in a ditch by the roadside.
As I gazed upon a landscape somewhere between the moon and Mars, I recalled that two stretches of my Xinjiang route did not have food, water, or lodging for more than a hundred miles. I felt the wind chilling around me and remembered that snow is in the forecast for tomorrow.
When I had "planned" this leg in China's beautiful but forbidding frontier, I had reassured myself with a few thoughts:
1) I went to Russia alone in the 1990s without a cellphone and survived; surely I can figure out China in 2024 with bad cellphone reception.
2) With a little rejiggering and creativity, surely I can carry enough food and water on my bike for a couple of days.
3) If I wear all my clothes at once, surely I can camp in sub-freezing temperatures.
4) My heroes, Zoe and Stew of www.roadtoframe.com, rode this same route together five years ago; surely I can, too.
But as the possibility of crossing a desert, in winter, in China, alone, without reliable translation, navigation, or connectivity became a reality, I realized the gross errors in my thinking:
1) I went to Russia after studying Russian for three years, so I could actually read signs and ask for help, which I cannot do in Chinese.
2) I haven't actually tested whether my rig can carry several days' worth of food and water, nor have I actually tested how low my camping gear can go, temperature wise.
3) Zoe and Stew had a stove, sub-zero sleeping bags, and each other to keep them warm on cold nights spent outside. I have only my clothes, a summer-weight bag, and my poor choices to keep me warm.
For the first time in a long time, I started to cry.
When I got back to my hotel, I was overcome with the desire to just get out of Xinjiang, by hook or crook, as soon as possible. I lay in bed eating stale popcorn while researching train and plane tickets, although a yummy night market was right outside my hotel's door.
The hotel staff noticed that I didn't emerge for dinner, and sent some congee and a banana up to my room. To call these people "angels" would diminish the fact that they are actually incredibly kind, decent, and generous humans.
By the next morning, I had a plan....
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