Biking Bozo's

I will have to add the pictures to this post as well, so bear with me on it. This happened about a month ago, but I haven't made the time to put it up yet on our blog.

At that time, one of the students here that Lisa and I have met knew that I wanted a bike and agreed to show me where to get one. He assured me that they would not be too much. (This is not the first time that a price said is not at all true when we actually get there) The same thing happened when I went camping with my friend to Moon Island from the previous post. A tent that we thought would only cost around 200RMB was like 500 or 600 at least. Ugh!
But anyways, so I got a decent/cheaper bike and we agreed to go on a bike ride that week with some friends. We were having a great time on our ride out and made our way to a nice pond surrounded by trees. There were literally about 7 -8 people all dressed up wedding gowns having their pictures taken at this place. That was cool.
Being guys, we of course began our series of many stunts to come with the climbing of a tree there. Then we were quickly running across some stones that were placed across one part of the lake. When you run really quickly, it kind of reminds you of the whole Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon type thing of running across the water.
Then, from there we headed off again. However, I soon began to have problems as the pedal on my bike no lie, just fell off! We didn't have any tools with us, so we could only screw it back on pretty lightly. I would go another 300 yards, and then have it fall off again! It was crazy!
But the craziest part was when we rode alongside this large hill that I stopped at and told them that we should climb up. They had never done anything like this and agreed to it. When we got up to the hill, we realized that it was much, much steeper than we thought. Also, it was very loose little pebbles of rock.

At that point, one would think to not go up it, but we were so excited that we had already made it about 20 feet up before we realized that it was slippery and very steep. We then climbed up another 30 feet before I No lie, actually began to get scared. I was clutching onto the side of the hill and hoping beyond hope that I would not fall and die. One of the students who is really good at martial arts just kind of cat like sprang past me all the way up the hill. I think his momentum up was helping him. We were ever so slowly trying to make our way up the hill, almost just like sliding our way up with rocks crumbling down as we tried.
But at this point, my legs were shaking from trying to push our way up and I was seriously thinking that if I didn't stop and try to make our way down, that I was gonna fall and be in bad shape. I slowly made my way back down, very relieved to be back on solid ground and thinking to myself how stupid a thing that was, even if cool at the beginning.
But this did not erase the fact that our friend Eric was still at the top with nowhere to go. For some reason he thought that because it was so slippery he would go back down barefoot instead of shoes. (Oh yeah, I was trying to go up in my walking shoes which have the flat bottoms with absolutely no trackion on them at all)
So he began making his way down, but instead of going down sideways like I did, he was going down just as if you were to walk down. He of course began to slip and as he did, he now tried to run down the hill. This was the most frightening sight ever, as this guy was frantically trying to run down the hill. I thought that at any moment he was going to slip and really hurt himself. Rember, it was about 40-50 feet up and a really steep incline.
By the time he reached the bottom, he was running so fast that he couldn't stop and crashed heavily onto the ground. Luckily he didn't break a wrist or anything, though his hand was a little cut up. However, his feet were in bad shape. Trying to run/slide down a hill barefoot that is full of little pebbles did quite a number on his feet. His toes were all cut up and his toenails... I'll just stop there. It was kind of bad. But nothing that needed medical attention or that can't heal.
I just felt terrible knowing that it was my fault and so incredibly thankful that he was not seriously hurt. We were nervously laughing at how incredible it was to see this Jackie Chan guy running down a hill that steep barefoot. Anybody else would have definitely sprawled over head first and broke their wrist, neck, or something. I'll put up the pics soon. Am on a friends computer as they are sick and we were seeing how they were doing. (They are still asleep. Haha. I'm not abandoning them by being on the computer. :)