Phoenix (10 page)

“No. Feels like forty-five pounds of air pressure in each, give or take a pound. That’s good for riding city streets. Once we hit the trail, I’ll drop it down to about thirty-five for better traction. Care to stick a gauge on them now and make a wager to see whether or not I’m right?”

“Nope.”

She smiled. “Didn’t think so. You’re a fast learner. I’m assuming that if you didn’t bring riding pants, you don’t have riding shoes, either?”

I pointed to my hiking boots across the room. “Just those.”

“I’ll take care of it. Go put them on.”

She headed behind the counter again while I went and put on my boots. I walked back to the bike, pulling its rear tire out of the stand that had been holding it upright. Mountain bikers
never
use kickstands. I checked the bike over closer than I had yesterday and liked what I saw, particularly the front and rear disc brakes. Low-end bikes have old-fashioned brake pads that compress against the wheel rims to slow the bike down. High-end bikes like the one I was looking at have a metal disc attached to each wheel down by the hub. Small metal calipers squeeze the disc with tremendous hydraulic-assisted force, like you’d find on a motorcycle. The stopping power of disc brakes is amazing and is sometimes necessary to prevent a rider from doing something tragic like coasting over a rocky bluff instead of pulling up short of it.

I climbed onto the bike and couldn’t believe how well
it fit me. Hú Dié was very good. I bounced up and down a few times with my butt planted on the seat to test the rear suspension. It seemed as if it had about five inches’ travel, which felt completely alien. Every time I pressed down and felt the bike give way beneath me, I swore the frame was snapping in half. I didn’t like the sensation at all.

I stood, keeping my hands on the handle grips, and leaned out over the handlebars, pressing down. The shock-absorbing front fork gave way much like my bike at home, which made me feel better.

Hú Dié returned with a large pedal wrench and a pair of flats—traditional pedals like you would find on a regular kid’s bike. You didn’t need special shoes for these, and they were perfect for situations where you needed to put your foot down in a hurry. However, they were very inefficient, which was why Hú Dié was also carrying a pair of “cages” that could be attached to the tops of the pedals. I would be able to slip my feet into the cages to take advantage of the full range of pedaling motion, pulling up and around on the pedals just as much as pushing down. The drawback was that cages could be dangerous. Shoes sometimes got stuck in them while you were trying to pull your foot out to prevent yourself from tipping over.

Hú Dié looked down at the cages. “You want them?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a brave man.”

“Sometimes.”

I climbed off the bike and held it for Hú Dié as she
threaded the pedals onto the bike’s drive sprocket crank arms and tightened them down. Then she attached the cages.

“I’ll let you adjust the cage straps yourself,” she said. “I don’t want to be responsible for you snapping your ankle because you couldn’t get your foot out in time.”

“No problem,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Adjust your cages. I have to grab a few more things.”

I straddled the bike again and began to make the adjustments while Hú Dié headed back upstairs. When she came down, I hardly recognized her. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A battered riding helmet and a pair of killer sunglasses hid most of her face, while a short-sleeved pink riding jersey showed off her normally hidden buff arms. She also wore a short, floppy green plaid skirt over tight black riding shorts that went all the way down to her knees. It was a combo that I’d seen girls wearing in cycling magazines; however, neither the skirt nor the riding shorts could hide the fact that she was a total
quaddess
. Those thighs would give any guy back home a run for his money.

I looked down at her shoes and smiled. Her pink mountain bike cleats were scuffed and torn. Hú Dié was hard-core.

She held out a fresh-from-the-box helmet and an old hydration backpack. “The backpack should hold enough water, snacks, and clothes for an overnight trip for both of us,” she said. “I’ve already filled the water bladder. As for the brain bucket, I believe it should fit your fat head.”

“Very funny. Thanks for loaning me the gear.” I noticed that she wasn’t wearing a hydration pack. “What are you going to drink?”

“I have water bottle cages on my bike, plus a couple more bottles and some energy bars in my jersey pockets. My extra clothes are in the pack, though, along with two space blankets and other supplies. Wearing the pack is what you get for not bringing your own gear.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, climbing off the bike. I placed its rear wheel back into the bike stand and took the pack and helmet from Hú Dié. The pack was surprisingly heavy. She turned for a moment, and I saw that the huge pockets sewn into the lower back region of her riding jersey bulged with two full water bottles and whatever else she had in them. I put on the helmet and found that it fit perfectly. Even the chinstrap had been adjusted to the ideal length.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thank me again, and I’ll knock you out,” Hú Dié said. “The more you say it, the less it means.”

My brow furrowed. She sounded just like Grandfather. “Whatever you say, boss.”

“Follow me,” she ordered, “and bring the bike.” She went to the front door, opening it for me.

“Just a minute,” I said, and hurried over to my own backpack. I grabbed the GPS unit, dropping it into one of the cargo pockets on my riding shorts. Then I snatched a change of clothes to sleep in and shoved them into Hú Dié’s pack along with my passport and wallet. I slipped the pack onto my shoulders, adjusted the straps, slung
the hydration hose and mouthpiece forward over my shoulder, and grabbed the bike.

“Heads up!” Hú Dié said.

I got a hand up in time to catch an energy bar just before it hit my face.
What was it with Chinese women throwing food at me?

“Good reflexes,” she said. “Eat that now. I already had one.”

I ripped the wrapper open with my teeth and headed for the door.

Outside, Hú Dié locked the front door behind us. The early morning air was crisp. I followed her to a small loading dock, and she unlocked a large metal door, rolling it up like a gigantic shade. The loading bay behind the door was empty except for a mud-streaked neon-pink mountain bike unlike any I had ever seen. It was leaning against a wall, its frame all odd angles and strange bends. Its component configuration looked like something from a parallel universe. Where you would normally find the front and rear shocks of a full-suspension bike, I saw rigid welds. Where you would expect to find rigid welds, I saw shocks. The only things I recognized as typical were two water bottle cages, but even they were bolted on in odd locations. I supposed there was a rationale behind all of this, but I couldn’t see it. The engineering was beyond me.

“That’s Trixie,” Hú Dié said, her face beaming with pride. “She’s my baby. I rode her yesterday and haven’t had a chance to give her a bath.”

I was horrified. “You
named
your bike?”

“Of course.”

“That’s too weird.”

“No, it’s not. Do you like her?”

I scratched my chin. “I don’t know. I think she may be a little too tricked-out for my taste.”

“See, I told you I knew more about bike design than you ever would.” She walked over to her bike. “Trixie is revolutionary.”

“She looks complicated.”

“She is.” Hú Dié climbed onto her bike and clipped into the pedals. “Trixie is complicated and beautiful and temperamental. Just like me.” She flashed a radiant smile and shot off like a pink cannonball, calling out, “Catch me if you can, Phoenix!”

I half expected her to turn around, to show she was joking with me, but she didn’t.

I needed no further prompting. I jammed my feet into the pedal cages and took off after the complicated girl on the tricked-out pink bicycle.

I wove in and out
of city traffic for at least five miles before I finally caught up with Hú Dié. She was never more than a few hundred yards ahead, but she was fast enough on the streets that I wasn’t able to get to her sooner. I had to admit, she had some serious skills. I couldn’t wait to get into more open country to put the hurt on her. I hated riding in the city, especially here.

There were few traffic lights and even fewer stop signs. Aggressive drivers zoomed in and out of lanes at will. Several times, I had to blast up a curb to avoid being run down. I would rather have taken the sidewalk, but that was impossible because many storekeepers used the entire width of the walk in front of their shops to sell their goods.

Once I had caught Hú Dié, she slowed her pace. She was breathing hard, and trickles of sweat shimmered
down the backs of her calves and the nape of her neck. She was pushing herself, but unlike me, she was enjoying it.

The traffic began to thin, and I started having a better time. We rode for miles in silence, side by side. The storefronts grew farther and farther apart, until the city gave way to small, dusty fields. From there, the landscape changed to larger, more open spaces like I’d seen from the bus. The air freshened and became noticeably cleaner, and the sun rose higher. It was pleasant, but it was going to get hot soon.

I watched Hú Dié slowly drain her water bottles while I sipped from the hydration pack’s long tube. After an hour, I pulled the GPS unit from my cargo riding shorts’ pocket and saw that we had traveled more than fourteen miles—pretty good time for a mountain bike.

I also saw that Hú Dié had set us on a shorter path, just like she’d said she would. The GPS’s auto-routing software had adjusted to our current location and was showing that we were still headed in the right direction, yet we had shaved a good distance off the original route. I noticed a large dot on the map and realized that we were coming up to a village. I asked Hú Dié about it.

“It is very small,” she said. “Hardly worth mentioning. We will be through it in five minutes.”

She was right. The village was little more than a cluster of old two-story buildings made from yellow mud bricks. Every hundred yards or so along one whole side of the road, I saw huge white circles on the ground, each
more than twenty feet in diameter. We swerved around several before I realized what they were—low piles of rice being dried in the sun.

The asphalt on which the rice was lying was likely very good for drying because it was black and absorbed heat, but it was also coated with dirt and stained with oil and gas and who knew what else from the rusted, leaking vehicles that passed over this road. I now understood why Grandfather made me triple-wash every batch of rice we cooked. Even though this rice was probably only going to be eaten by locals and would never make it to Indiana, I wasn’t sure I could ever bring myself to touch another bowlful again.

Not only did the rice make me uneasy, the people here did, too. They were none too friendly. Nearly every person we passed seemed to be simply standing around, and all of them stared at us. None offered so much as a wave, even after I waved first. I was glad when we were out of there.

We rode on for three more hours in comfortable silence, passing through two more villages nearly identical to the first, all the way down to the circles of rice in the road. Our tires hummed monotonously over hot, pot-holed pavement, and I began to itch for some challenging terrain.

Finally, the topography began to change, and I grew excited. We had reached the foothills. I wiped sweat from my eyes and checked the GPS unit again. So far, so good. We’d traveled forty miles, and if Hú Dié’s estimate was correct, we were just a few miles from the trailhead. I
was beginning to feel a little fatigued, but the shift in scenery and terrain was helping to energize me.

With the foothills came another village, and as we approached, I saw with relief that this one was noticeably different from the others. It contained buildings constructed of stone instead of mud bricks, and the inhabitants seemed much friendlier. They bustled about with activity, smiling and waving vigorously as we rode past. I saw several old men leading oxen, and a few young men driving trucks loaded with baskets of tea leaves.

The mountains beyond the foothills looked much bigger in person than in the pictures I’d seen on the Internet. While the hills I rode back in Indiana rose more than one thousand feet, these were much higher. The range was called Song Shan, and it was famous for being the location of the legendary Shaolin Temple. Hú Dié must have noticed my apprehension, because she giggled and punched me in the arm, nearly knocking me off my bike.

“Hey!” I said.

“Afraid to fly high?” she asked. “Perhaps you are more like a chicken than a phoenix?”

I frowned and tried to think of a sarcastic comeback in her native language, but nothing came to mind. Someday, I would have to learn to trash-talk in Chinese.

As we reached the far end of the village, Hú Dié turned into a small park and stopped beside an ancient-looking well. I stopped beside her, and we both climbed off our bikes. She began pulling an old bucket up by a tattered rope while I grabbed her empty water bottles and popped off the siphon tops. I held the plastic bottles
on the edge of the well’s thigh-high brick rim, and she filled them. We made a good team, neither one saying a word, yet both knowing full well what the other was going to do next.