May 4th, 2008 | categorizilation: all categories,China
Today’s distance / ???????: 47 miles / 76km
Average speed / ????: 11mph / 17.6km/h
Time on skateboard / ????: 4h 20m
Total skateboarding distance to date / ????????????: 4368mi plus 280mi (?) / 7030km plus 450km (?)
Ascent / ??: 300m
Descent / ??: 165m
End-of-day GPS coordinates: N44° 22′ 17.60″, E084° 14′ 30.00″
How I love a good self-inflating matress. Slept like a log on the thing. Much better than the closed-cell foam pad that I endured across the US.
The night in the culvert was without incident. No flash flood, no wild animals licking my nose…just wonderful sleep.
Today was a good day. There was no wind in the morning, and towards late morning, a very nice tailwind had picked up. There was more nothingness in between small towns…so much nothingness that I was not moved to take any photos.
I am managing to get witness signatures for the Guinness attempt most days. There always seems to be one English speaking person to help out.
It got to the end of the day, and I was still in relative civilisation. Got a room at a US$1.20 guest house and crashed.
By the way, I am getting questions about why I traveled to the north west of China by train and why I decided to skate west-east, rather than the other way round.
I figure:
It has nothing to do with the visa situation, which by the way, is still not all sorted. I am still playing it by ear.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the nice simple response about your choice of directions. I never would have considered the wind. I guess that is why you are the one on the skateboard breaking records and I am the one sitting in front of his computer simply marveling at the stories and pictures you send out.
Thanks for the explanation re going west-east. It all makes very good sense.
