Sha Tin with a Brief Foray to Hong Kong Central

Sha Tin – Day 3

We woke around 7:30 and I checked out the morning view from our 8th floor window; over to a park with a temple-looking building with an enormous green hill behind. To the side of the hill are some high-rises, which frame the view in an odd and somewhat jarring way.

After breakfast, we went down to the “bike room” in the garage of the hotel to take the bikes out for a spin. Unfortunately, I had neglected to check if the bike the Champion System guys had loaned to me had been unloaded into the bike room. Since it had not been, I was out of luck and out of a bike to ride. (I had brought along my fixed-gear track bike, but after the generous offer from Louis to loan me a road bike, I had not put the track bike together and it was still in bits in its suitcase.) Deciding that by the time I’d put my bike together, the guys would probably have returned, I elected to just spend the morning organizing photos and working on the blog.

For those that know me well, this blogging thing may come as somewhat of a surprise. I have not generally been known as a technophile, and so the digital camera, laptop, and constant internet access which are all required for this effort to share my experience are things that are, in combination, quite new to me. Writing the blog is a good opportunity to reflect on each day, and distill the sights and other senses into a meaningful and accessible format. It will also be a wonderful gift to my future self; I have an appallingly poor long-term memory, so the photos and text of the blog will help me remember what I experienced.

Anyway, the morning was spent indoors, which depressed me a bit when I thought of all that’s to explore outside! However, I’ve decided that Pollo and I will spend a few days here when the race is over, at which point I can check out all the guide book highlights, as well as a few places interesting only to me because of my parents’ history here.

In the early afternoon, we assembled down in the hotel lobby to go to the press conference and team presentation at the HSBC headquarters in the center of Hong Kong. We clambered aboard a double-decker bus and proceeded on a very slow, traffic-delayed journey to the city center. Wow – what a difference from the other side of the island at Sai Kung. This place looks like New York’s skyscrapers were transplanted to San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods. The high-rises shoot up from every hillside, and are so towering as to make even this city girl feel provincial!

We arrived with quite a bit of time to spare before the team presentation, and soon everyone needed the bathroom. As the fearless communicator of the group, I found myself trailed by six spandex-clad Mengoni riders as I searched out a toilet. We went downstairs from the bank’s main entrance to a room that had what looked like a giant safe opening in the far wall. Assuming we were in the wrong spot, I turned to go, but saw a guard so thought I’d ask her. She nodded in comprehension as I requested a toilet, and beckoned us to come with her over to a locked door. She used her key card to open the door, and waved us through. Eugene, the idiot, made some crack about robbing the bank, which made me want to crawl under the carpet with embarrassment, or perhaps instead shoot him. Anyway, we wandered around in the back halls (I think they were employee areas) for a while before we found the restrooms. When we came back out, the guard looked very relieved to see us; I’m sure she had been wondering what mischief we were getting up to back there.

The team presentation was fun as these things go; besides introducing all the HSBC honchos (sponsoring the race) and the cycling federation honchos (organizing the race), they had BMX riders doing tricks to liven things up. Afterwards, we were hustled back to the bus stop by a young Chinese woman with a perfect British accent, who apparently is working for the race organization. I find it interesting that there are many Chinese in Hong Kong who speak no English at all; many who speak it well but with a (Chinese accent; and some who speak it as if it were their first language (which perhaps it is). It is truly a bilingual city, in that most of the major commerce seems to be conducted in both English and Chinese.

Although we got into the city center today, I don’t feel that I got to know Hong Kong much better at all as a result. Like other big, important cities I’ve been to, it seems, on the surface, to be remarkably similar to other big cities. In other words, there’s less of a “foreign thrill” to the downtown; also it seems a bit impersonal. I hope to get a better feel for the place when we return at the end of the race.

I had my most interesting moments of exploration in the late afternoon, when I went out to buy laundry soap to do a load for the team. (The hotel offers a self-serve laundry service, but inexplicably does not have soap for sale.) After trying several places, and using charades to communicate my quest to Cantonese-speakers, I was directed by an English-speaking woman to a supermarket at the end of a pedestrian-only street. I wouldn’t have found the store on my own, as its entrance was completely unprepossessing; nothing like a grocery store in the U.S. Inside, the aisles were narrow and crowded, and the cashier line was long. I eventually made it out with my purchases and, while I was rearranging the bags in my hands, a sweet and obviously very healthy kitten ran up to me miaowing. I petted him for a while, then he ran back from whence he’d come; he seemed to live in a hardware store next to the grocery. This hardware store was amazing: tiny, and absolutely crammed to bursting with merchandise. There must have been some order to it all, but it was not evident to my untrained eye!

We had an early night, due to a 6 a.m. wake-up call in the morning before the race. Pollo and Amaurys were snoring by 8 p.m., and I am yawning over the computer here at 9. Tomorrow we race, and in the afternoon we’ll make the 2-hour bus transfer to Shenzhen. Mainland China, here we come!