Arrival in Hong Kong

All my life, I’ve heard my mother and father’s memories of Hong Kong. The names “Deep Water Bay,” “Kowloon,” and “Lantau” evoke a kind of nostalgic yearning for me, though I’d never known the places themselves. My mother was born and raised on the island(s), and my father was living and working there when he met my mother in the late 60s. Neither of them has been back since 1972, which has perhaps imbued the locale with even more mystique for me. In my family, it is an island trapped in memory’s amber; we know realistically that it has changed beyond their memories’ recognition, and yet we insist on imagining it as it was.

At age 28, 35 years after my parents left for the last time, I finally have the opportunity to visit Hong Kong; to explore the island as it is now, and to try and fit the bits of memory into a 21st century reality. Pollo’s cycling team, GS Mengoni, was invited to participate in the race by one of the team's sponsors (Champion System), which is based in Hong Kong. With a lot of frequent flyer assistance from my parents, and the promise to help the team out as a “staff” person, I was able to get a ticket to tag along.

The dreaded 15-hour flight to Hong Kong wasn't bad at all, really...at least for the first 7 hours. When the movie screen, between showings, showed us 4,000-odd miles still to go and 8 more hours, time did start to drag a bit. I couldn't sleep much at all, but for all that was feeling pretty wide-awake (if physically exhausted) when we finally alighted in Hong Kong around 8 p.m. Louis, the team sponsor from Champion Systems, met us along with some of the riders with the Hong Kong team. They had the Champion System team truck, so we loaded all the 6 bikes and luggage with ease.

I couldn't see much on the dark drive from the airport, and so I didn't feel much of that thrilling “I'm in a foreign country” realization. It started to build, however, when Louis informed us that we were headed to a country park near Sai Kung in the New Territories. (We’d be spending the night in the dormitories of a summer camp facility.) “Sai Kung!” I realized with a thrill of recognition…that’s where my mom had showed me (on her 1960’s map of Hong Kong) that her family had kept their sailboat when she was a child.

We arrived at the Po Leung Kuk Day Camp, and dragged our luggage to our “suite” in the dorms. Despite the late hour (after 11 p.m.), young girls were running around the building, screaming with laughter and high spirits. Some of the guys started putting their bikes together (an interesting proposition in a small common room about 12’ x 12’, and the rest of us just sat around in a jet-lagged stupor.

There were 6 teeny beds, and 7 of us, so I volunteered (as the only gal) to occupy the smallish vinyl-covered couch in the common room. I guess the less said the better about my night’s "sleep!" I woke (for the 20th time or so) at about 4:30, when Eugene was padding back and forth around the room. “What’s going on??” I croaked. He muttered in response, “I can’t sleep. I’m going for a ride.” It was pitch black outside, but arguing with a sleep-deprived zombie in spandex seemed unwise and, frankly, would take more energy than I had. Eugene left, and I tried vainly to position myself more comfortably on the couch and ignore my increasingly aching legs. Suffice to say by the time light came creeping through the window, I was not feeling exactly refreshed. But jet lag wasn’t allowing any of us to sleep, so we crawled out of bed. Eugene had returned, and recounted his night-riding adventures, including an encounter with a wild boar up in the country park!