Rapeseed, that is. In the most confusing and frightening translation snafu yet, a local student today showed me an essay he’d written in English about his hometown, the town in which we finished today, which contained the quote in the title of this post. Appalled, I asked him what he though that word meant. He pointed to the yellow flowers on the hill and said, ‘rapeseed.’ Otherwise, his essay was very good.

Beyond that, the big news of the day is that Tyler won the stage and took over the GC lead. That follows his second place finish two days ago. He’s been having a good run. It’s been tough racing, though. On the day he got second, he also flatted before the main climb of the day, then broke a spoke. Kayle and I gave up wheels, while Fred and Sergio came back to help him catch the field. Tyler obviously made it, but the other four of us didn’t. Fred and Kayle ultimately dropped out of the race, while Sergio and I chased uphill for the better part of two hours before finally catching the back of the race. It was a long day.

Yesterday too was long. 214km and basically flat. The Iranian team, Tabriz Petrochemical they’re called, held the lead but they refused to defend it. That meant we had to help keep things in check. It was hot, flat, and fast.

Today’s stage had a nasty climb late in the day, and I found myself in the early break along with one of the dangerous Iranian guys. I sat on and refused to work, which made everyone mad. Meanwhile, Mike and Sergio chased in the field to try to bring it back before the climb. They caught us just before the climb started, which meant that Tyler and Oscar were back in contention just as the race got difficult. As I mentioned above, things worked out well. Now we have two days left to defend Tyler’s lead. There’s one more hard mountain day tomorrow, then a flat circuit race back in Xining on Sunday. With only four of us to defend, it won’t be easy, but we’ll give it our best shot. I’m pretty confident we can pull it off.

The highlight of today’s stage for me came at the top of the KOM. Mike had started the climb a little in front of me, but the group I was in was slowly catching up to him as we went up. Just inside of 1k to the top, we lost sight of him as he turned a bend to the right. After I came around the bend, he was nowhere in sight, but there was a crowd of people on the left. After looking closer, I saw Mike’s bike laying in the road and Mike seated on a stool in the middle of the crowd playing one of the local’s drums. Classic Mike Creed.

But back to Menyuan. This is a relatively small town in a high mountain valley north of Xining. The streets are packed with people, and we’ve gotten by far our best reception yet. We can’t walk down the street without swarms of children asking us to autograph their notebooks, their hats, and their arms. One kid even had an autograph on her forehead. I think one of the Danish guys was responsible for that, but I’m not certain. Many of the kids speak English too, which explains the story at the beginning of this post. Mike Creed, Mike Lange from Jelly Belly, and myself were mobbed by the eager group containing the essay author (to my right here) while wandering around and looking in some of the shops. All of the kids were very excited to speak English with us, and one of them made me promise he could visit me if he ever comes to the US. I'm not sure how he thinks he’ll find me, but it made him very happy when I agreed.

That’s about enough for now. More pictures are up on Flickr.