Winter has caught up with us

(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).

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I’m just about to roll our bikes down the steep stairs when my eyes fall on the flat rear tire. “Oh no, not again,” I say and immediately set about removing the tire and fitting a new inner tube. This is the first flat tire since the Mongolian-Chinese border. Although Riese und Müller and Schwalbe advised me to fill the tubes with DOC BLUE (puncture protection fluid that immediately closes the hole in small holes and thus prevents a flat tire), I didn’t do it, because according to the instructions you should inflate the tire quickly and at high pressure after filling the fluid. So far, however, we have not been able to discover any compressed air at the filling stations. Anyway, the border is 1632 km behind us and one of the eight tires can run out of air.

We reach the town of Yan’an, where Mao Zedong, who later became President of the People’s Republic of China, once retired after his long march in the surrounding rock caves, at 15:00 today without any further incidents.

When we wake up the next morning, the beautiful weather of the last few days is over. A veritable blizzard chases through the streets, driving snowflakes before it. Temperatures have dropped to minus 3 degrees. Large patches of ice have formed on the roads and because nobody drives here with winter tires, the first accidents have occurred. We can’t even dream of driving on. Although the air conditioning in our room is broken and therefore the room is quite chilly and it smells awful because the blocked sewer system in front of the house is being torn open, we decide to stay until the ice has melted away from the streets. “I hope we don’t have to spend the winter here,” I say thoughtfully and check the weather forecast for the coming days on the internet. “And what does it look like?” asks Tanja. “If we are to believe the weather forecast, it will be fine again in five days at the latest. We should wait in this place until then. I’m lagging far behind with my writing anyway. Somehow I can’t keep up with the notes because of all our experiences. It’s almost a little frustrating.” “Why is that? If you have a lot to write about, it means that we experience a lot and the trip remains varied. That’s one of the things that matters when traveling.” “Yes, yes, without a doubt. So far, this e-bike tour has been much more interesting, informative and exciting than I ever expected. But somehow the cat keeps biting its own tail in this case. The more experiences, the more records, the more records, the slower we make progress, which in turn means that winter has an easy time catching up with us. And when it catches up with us, we can’t go any further without special tires. If that should happen, I have enough time to write everything down in a town like this. In this case, however, we wouldn’t have enough time to cross China and reach Vietnam. Our visa isn’t long enough for that,” I ponder aloud to myself. “Then we’ll just extend our visa,” Tanja interjects. “It’s certainly worth considering. But our journalist visa cannot be extended. In our case, we would have to apply for a new visa. And the question is whether that would work from here. We’d need another divine ray for that.” “We’ll have that.” “Oh Tanja, you’re really fantastic. What would I do without your confidence? It’s really reassuring when you talk like that. Above all, what you wish for usually comes true.” “You just have to be convinced and believe in it. There’s no secret.”…

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