It’s not often that one gets to listen to Christma…
It’s not often that one gets to listen to Christmas music on the radio during a typhoon, I thought as I sat in the back of Mark’s car, stuck in rush-hour traffic on Civic Blvd as he, Harry and I made a quick Costco run earlier tonight.
The rain’s been pounding down all day, and it only looks like it’s going to get worse tomorrow. Some of the local newspapers say this is the first December Typhoon in over four decades. Others say it’s the first ever. In reality, the storm has been demoted to a severe tropical storm, but it’s still darn peculiar at this time of year. Just on the other side of the storm is a cold front that supposed to make things quite a bit more Christmas-y around here.
In light of the weather, it’s a good thing I got to explore the riverside bike path last Monday. Woken by a nightmare just after 6 a.m. and unable to get back to sleep, I started listening to music on my iPod, pacing up and down in my room lest I wake Shirzi, who was asleep in the living room. Then I thought: fuck it; I’ll just go for a bike ride. After all, the weather’s fine.
I rode up the river to the Xiulang Bridge, where a wall of construction usually prevented me from going any further. Now, however, a bridge led across the river and up a path across the wide plain on the opposite bank. Farmers were tending their plots, packs of wild dogs lazed on the grass, and signs of recent construction were everywhere. The path was mostly empty, and those people I did pass all gave me a smile.
I sped along nearly effortlessly at a brisk clip, going under bridge after bridge. In retrospect, I should have realized exactly what the strange absence of wind, the backwards-flying birds, the whitecaps on the river, and the occasional dust storms meant. Alas, only when I had passed an unusually placed goat farm near Xinzhuang, prompting me to turn around, did I realize that the only way back home was pushing against a strong wind the whole way. No wonder those people were smiling at me. Bastards.
My speed reduced to not much faster than a walk, the dust storms became much worse, sand gritting around my teeth. I was afraid of being late to work that afternoon, though, so I kept at it, and ended up getting a good little workout by the time I got back to Xindian at around 1 p.m.
Now the river plain’s probably flooding, and they’ll have to rebuild much of the path, making my next ride up there all the more interesting.
