As it usually happens I don't work on the abysmal days. But that didn't stop me from taking long bike ride today. I made a self-promise to ride nearly everyday for the next month to train for March and April when I go south to Yunnan. On these grey bitter days the sun is like a bare incandescent bulb at noon and by 5pm turns into a pronounced orange egg yolk on the horizon. I started down a blocked road near the freeway and came across a huge mined-out pit. Running along side was an empty, but manicured street which led to an active gravel mine. Met a nice pair of kite flying friends, one who's a watchman in a prickley forest atop the pit, where the new trees stand like hairs on a cold arm. Stood with some locals and watched the miners working sluggishly, seeming to just pick boulders with cranes only to drop them again. Maybe this is how gravel is made? I turned and biked 20 miles in the opposite direction to a place no one I know has seemed to have been before. A dammed river-lake between the mountains called, Mentougou. It's kind of my favorite place to go, so I rode and rode with frozen feet, very worrisomely frozen. Going down a long hill I passed 5 teenage boys who had the worst facial deformities I have ever seen or could imagine. One shouldn't describe them even its worse than staring. They were laughing with each other. They all had on nice track suits. I think they lived in an asylum atop the hill. Later, on the same rode I saw a dirty cat still alive impaled on the rusty theft bars of a store front. I rode and rode with numb frozen feet to the lake and was somehow compensated with the sight of the fishermen I knew would be there. Despite the grimness of the day it was odd and beautiful.
