Can a lazy bicycle ride really become a memory of a lifetime? Only time will tell. But to hear Jeanette Comstock tell it, that two-wheeled jaunt through the countryside near Yangshou in the steamy southern mountains of China wasn't just a highlight of her trip to China.
“I think it was the best day of my life,” she says.
The Lijiang River winds slowly through a heavily forested area of limestone mountains that jut into the sky like jade camel-humps. Along the way, fishermen and merchants on rafts constructed of nothing but a few bamboo logs lashed together navigated the river, while water buffalo cooled in the murky water.
Comstock and her fellow dancers played cards, snapped photos, and even learned a traditional Chinese folk dance from Ming Yan Davis, a one-time dancer with the National Ballet of China who now teaches ballet in Chicago, and who is traveling with the Montana delegation.
That was the planned part of the day. But it was the impromptu activity of the afternoon that made true memories for several of the dancers on the trip.
After disembarking from the boat and snaking their way through the maze of merchant stalls in the tourist haven of Yangshou, several of the dancers decided to rent bicycles and take a tour of the countryside, led by Forster, the jovial local guide who accompanied the troupe during this leg of the two-week tour of China.
“I wasn't even going to go on the bike ride because it was so hot and humid when we got off the boat,” said Comstock. “But some of my friends convinced me to go."
Off they pedaled along winding roads through rice paddies and foothills. Chains on the rickety bicycles came loose. At one point, a torrent of rain unleashed suddenly from the heavens. There were close encounters with speeding buses and cars.
“I just about had a coronary watching some of those girls riding so close to the traffic on those two-seater bikes,” said Erica Jeffrey, a professional dancer from San Francisco who is traveling and performing with the group.
Caitlin Warr almost wrecked her bike when her poncho got caught in the spokes. Shonto Pete, a Native American traditional dancer traveling with the group, flipped over his handlebars and kissed pavement when he braked too hard.
It was the ride of a lifetime.
“It was so cool to see the Chinese people in their daily lives, working in the rice paddies in such beautiful scenery, ” said Comstock afterward. “The rain just made the trip. It started pouring and so we stopped and stood under a shelter with these Chinese ladies, and they were so nice and we bought some flowers from them.“
The girls eventually turned around to head back to town for some shopping; but the four guys on the ride - Pete, Louie Plant, Hayden Murray, and Patrick Palkens - decided to press on a bit farther.
“We got to this fork in the road, and the girls wanted to go back so Forster told us to take the unpaved road at the fork,” recounted Pete. “He said the dirt road was safer, and he gave us these directions to go over the bridge and by the river and then take a left on the paved road and we'd come back around.
“So we started riding, but we never got to a bridge or a river, and eventually the road just ended - it came to a spot where it just disappeared into the jungle. So we turned around and started coming back, and we saw across this big rice paddy these buildings that we'd seen before. We decided, instead of riding around the rice paddy, we'd just go through it on the little paths.
“So we started pushing our bikes across, because those paths, they're only a couple of feet wide. These rice farmers were looking at us and I don't know if they thought we were crazy or what.”
Along the way, Hayden Murray slipped and fell into one of the flooded, muddy paddies. Eventually, the foursome got back to town, where they spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, checking out the overpriced bamboo flutes and knock-off western fashions, marveling at an experience they never saw coming, but will never forget.
“I've never had a bicycle ride like that,” said Pete. That's for sure.”
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