By Andy
As we rapidly approach two measly months left on this trip (are we the only ones who think that’s a short time?), I find myself thinking more and more about all the things I want to do when I’m not spending eight hours a day on a bike saddle.
This trip has had a profound effect on me, in ways of which I’m already aware, and I’m sure in many ways that I won’t realize until it’s over. Before I left, I promised my parents and my friends, “I won’t let this trip or a year with Evan turn me into a hippy.” I don’t know that I’ve reached that level, but my time on the road has altered my attitude about a great many things in ways that I think are for the better.
Traveling through the Chinese countryside and meeting the farmers living there, I’m always struck by their self-sufficiency. These LBXes grow their own food, harvest it, cook it and often process it into other products. Families not engaged in the tea business keep a few tea trees on their property because tea is important to them and they don’t want to rely on someone else for it. Country LBXes make their own booze, often from whatever they happen to be growing — rice, corn, sweet potatoes, lychee, red bayberries, coffee beans, you name it — if it’s got sugar in it, LBXes are turning it into intoxicants.
Granted, most of the rotgut these LBXes are cooking up is akin to kerosene and leaves you with a debilitating hangover (ask Evan, who gets them the worst), but I admire the spirit. So many of their urban counterparts, a mere generation removed from their roots in the fields, can barely wash their own clothes. (more…)
