This is probably going to come as a surprise to most people, as I know everyone back home assumes I’m all about a certain type of girl. The truth is, my current interest is as white as a trillium. She’s a true beauty though, I’d say one in a million. Over here, maybe even one in a billion, which is all the more surprising that she’s here in Qingdao. The best thing about her, other the fact she listens to everything I say, is her curves. No junk or trunk, just two big beautiful curves that I haven’t been able to stop playing with. Damn I love those things.

I would like to introduce you to her right now.

Behold, the apple of mine eye, and let me tell you, the rides she’s given me are amazing. At first when I brought her to Qingdao she was giving me trouble. You know, the usual, communication problems. As if I wasn’t giving her enough attention. Well the problem was actually hers and I’ve had better rides I can tell you that. Instead of making things worse, I decided to put our quarrels behind us, and figured out the real problem. Turns out all she needed was some lube. That solved everything. Now she’s the trophy bike, everyone stares at her as we go by. We can be as rough as we want, and she loves it when we do in the woods.

Sorry, I’ll stop. I couldn’t help it though. I guess I’ve been out in the sun too much. My bike is rolling hard and fast these days and with the exception of a slightly over zealous rear derailleur, she’s mint. I really only expected there to be street biking in China, as there’s more people on bikes here than anywhere else (well maybe not Qingdao but that’s another story). Luckily there’s tons of green space and lots of terrain that hasn’t been crushed by the bland and repetitive housing developments that are spreading like prairie fires anywhere that’s flat.

There’s two specific types of riding here in Qingdao. Firstly, there’s the street riding, consisting of 40KM of ocean front trails that make for great sprints as you weave in and out of the unwashed tourist hordes. There’s also several neat districts that have limited traffic and interesting architecture. The car traffic in China is actually very accommodating to cyclists, they tend to give you room, and will for the most part treat you like a car providing you aren’t right in front of them crawling along. The worst hazard is the air pollution, which comes mostly from the derelict diesel engines in the city busses. For that reason alone I try to avoid the main roads, and when I’m on them I stick to the sidewalks, where I might add, people yield to you.

The second type of riding is of the off-road variety, which I prefer. There are two places near me that have decent trails. The first and more popular is the hills behind Zhongshan Gongyuan, or Sun Yat Sen Park as I like to say. The trails here are alright but nothing spectacular. The second place I’ve found is at Fushan Mountain, which is only about 1.5KM from my house. Access to it is sketchy because it’s surrounded by either development or shanty villages that usually contain unfriendly dogs. My first trip there, I found a safe and relatively easy ascension route consisting of heavily eroded trail that was unridable, but great once you got past the tree-line. The second time I went with some pals and we tried entering from the north side, which was a far more difficult climb. We spent more time mountain climbing than biking, although once we got up to the top, there was some neat features, great views, and a few really tight technical downhill sections. By the end I was totally beat by my beater burn. There’s still lots of trails on Fushan that we’ve missed judging from the satellite imagery on Google Earth, so I hope to go back soon. From what I’ve heard, there’s also lots more good trails to be had even farther out of the city, and there’s the (in)famous Laoshan Mountain to explore as well.

Speaking of that giant tourist spike in the ground, my landlord came by today randomly and offered to take me there in the afternoon. Me of course being somewhat tired on a Sunday morning and having lots other interesting things to do, like pick my nose and fling the boogers off my balcony2, told him that I was busy, but I’d love to go biking with him if he had a bike. I don’t know if what followed was a face saving exercise or what, but he then apologized that he didn’t have a bike, but he would go out and buy one right away so we could go biking together. Ha. Well, if he does follow through with that, he’ll definitely be in for more than he bargained for. I wonder if his girl will be as sweet as mine?

Filed under: qingdao