Dog 1 vs. 0 Loon 26/03/2011: Gangzheung to Ersham 101.69km

It was another cold morning and the threat of rain was ever present. During breakfast Loon asked a couple of interested policemen about the road to Yuxi our target for the day, they said it was 150km and there were 4 big climbs we’d have to negotiate. 

The hills were the same as ever, long and never ending but the dogs which in china are normally chained up and if they are not are either very obedient or don’t care, were not today. We got chased by so many dogs and one instance while being chased Loon got too close to my back wheel and went down hard, the dog just walked off but Loon was suffering. I felt really bad because Loon had hit the ground hard and flat on his face and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stop laughing. The situation wasn’t funny for Loon but I was in stitches, I sat Loon down and parked the bikes up, when he was ready to leave that’s when Karma struck. 

I had a flat tyre, I had no spare tubes but luckily I did have patches, I could not find the cause of the puncture but eventually I did, unknown to me the piece of metal wire I pulled out had snapped so when I put the wheel  back together it went down again so had to search for the rest of the  metal wire which I did find but we had lost an hour and half with Loons accident (which still brings a giggle) and my puncture.

We rode on and thought we had made good time until the final hill, it went up for 15kms, we were up into the clouds, by the end we had climbed up 900m to 2000m, it was a painful final climb and the temperature was down to 7C so the decent wasn’t pleasant. It was almost dark by the time we stopped and we’d fallen short but still left Kunming where me and Loon would part ways after a couple of days off in range, we think!