day 137: 亭口 (tingkou) - 长武 (changwu) = 22km

See the curve right at the start of the red line on the map?

Now, that’s one long bad-ass bridge:

Today’s weather was a perfect 10:

Not too cold, not to hot. A blue sky with just the occasional pretty white puff lounging around.

A beautiful day even for one-handed traffic cops:

It was in a tiny place by the highway that I got to know this friendly bunch:

They had seen foreigners riding bikes around here before, but walking? Never!

Well, there are first times for everything, and I just pity the next dude who comes walking through here, when they look at him and say: “What? Another walking foreigner? And where’s your beard? And why don’t you smell as bad as 雷克 (lei ke) from Germany?”

Ha!

So anyways I was shifting my weight through beautiful landscapes, taking pictures in the process:

Then this bunch of little friends appeared, and one of them had an interesting question for me:

“Uncle, are you American or Japanese?”

…

Well, and I shot another one of my boring movies on the way:

I got worried there for a second that this might have been the last one, but luckily, we’re in the countryside.

Right, I almost forgot to tell you about the geographical situation: ever since 乾陵 (qianling), the altitude has risen to about 1200m.

And there are no mines up on this plateau, so the air is fresh and clear:

A good place to be if you’re walking.

Although a bad place to crawl:

But I guess most places aren’t so good if you’re on your hands and knees.

There was no way to talk to this lady, as apparently she suffered not only from physical, but also from mental problems.

I asked some folks on the road about the situation with this poor soul, and they said there was nothing we (!) could do:

“Let the government handle it.”

Walking offers long stretches of time to fill out with thoughts. Like knot after knot on a rope, one thought begets the other, and then suddenly you get to thinking: Look at yourself afloat, drifting through these spaces, every now and then throwing a HALLO at someone passing by - and by nightfall a soul on her hands and knees has become yet another something that’s been taken notice of.

And I’m supposed to go back to the road and say something like:

“It was already nightfall before I made it to my destination:”

or: “长武 (changwu) welcomed me with an arch and red neon letters:”

And I was going to tell you about the cigarette as well, I was going to say that there was this dude who insisted on offering me a cigarette, and he just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and how the only way out of this situation was to stick the damn thing in the corner of my mouth and tell him I’d light it later:

“And that’s how it stayed all the way to the hotel:”

I was going to end today’s post with a short tricky line, something like:

“So there I was, at the end of this fine day, with three new blisters on my feet, a smoking Chris.”

But not today I won’t.

Instead I’ll just shut up and think about people on their hands and knees.

Soundtrack: Roots - “In The Music”

—total: 1768km

Posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 10:46 pm ;Filed under video, walk.