I’ve gotten into a pattern of riding to smaller cities in the out-and-back-in-a-day range. This week it was Dancheng on Thursday and Shenqiu on Sunday, both to the south-east. I have students from both of those cities. It’s interesting for me to see if I can sense a regional difference to a locale, and the route used to get there. I have a couple of indicators. What do they make their pita sandwiches with, and […]

I’ve been watching the Hellobike bike shares filter throughout Zhoukou this past week. I wish I had access to a web page that would track their gps chips because it would be interesting to see how they’ve spread out. From a few masses totaling maybe a thousand bikes in the area surrounding campus, I’ve seen them spread to the edges of the city. They’ve reached almost into the countryside east, and on the industrial ring […]

Recent changes in my daily commute have me hitting 40th and Normal every day at peak traffic time, and in my experience, this is one of the most dangerous road crossings along a trail. This is all I want to do: Simple, right? It’s pretty unremarkable. If you saw this intersection, you’d think it was decent. It has a marked crosswalk. It has a pedestrian signal that gives a ‘walk’ signal without having to be […]

I went on some rides this week that I’d been wanting to re-visit. Thursday I finally got all the way to Yuan Shikai’s historic manor, after running out of time last week. I found not only that the three km road leading to it is being resurfaced but that the manor is closed for restoration as well.                           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Shikai It’s a good thing we saw it last February. I did notice the displays then were in […]

Imagine our surprise walking out of the west gate of campus (yes, it’s a gated campus) Sunday morning to be greeted by several hundred gleaming new blue and white dock-less bike share bikes! I took a few photos and thought I’d count them after our trip to the gym. I didn’t think that an hour later three-fourths of them would be gone, already in use. Throughout the day, everywhere I turned around campus I saw […]

After last week’s long and exciting ride to Luyi I was ready to explore more new territory. On the longer rides, you can notice a real shift in local character and cuisine. There is a snack, or variations of it, I often buy to refuel that can be found most anywhere I’ve been. It consists of a pita stuffed with any of the following: marinated tofu skin, boiled egg, kelp noodles, seitan, hot dog or […]

I finally did the ride to Luyi I’d been pining for since last spring. It’s like riding to Omaha and back, so I had to reserve a decent chunk of time. The pre-ride scouting I did last Thursday proved the route I’d planned was a little sketchy, as I ended up on different roads than I’d intended. County road signs are “low key” here, the number often not marked at all or, of course, in […]

It’s always interesting for me to ride my old routes from last year and see the changes. Certain aspects of Chinese culture and landscape might seem immune to change. The rustic villages with mud for streets, the farmers doing stooped labor in their fields, and then I ride by after some months, and it’s completely transformed. Even small villages have building booms, with prosperous farmers or merchants putting up new (sometimes ostentatious) buildings. Small towns […]

First off, congratulations National Bike Challenge and Black Shirt winners! Except for the crashes near the end, it was a great challenge. Lincoln continues to lead the way nationally with the back-to-back wins. Also like you in Lincoln, we’ve been getting a lot of rain here in Zhoukou, and more is on the way. Our holiday week saw little riding outside of the city. We’d been warned about trying to travel at the same time […]

From the constant destruction is coming reconstruction. The new mayor has set his sights on modernizing Zhoukou. The new river park was a done deal when he took office, but since we’ve been back, it seems like urban renewal (removal) has been kicked up a notch. Since I ride the river road through the city often it didn’t take long to notice entire neighborhoods have been leveled and a set-back from the river is being […]