Suzhou Week 8/26

Ordinary are the days that end with fetching boiling hot water from the first floor of my building to replenish my drinkable water supply. I don't even smell the pollutants in the shower water anymore. Nor do I notice or smell the smog in the air. I'm pretty sure I can no longer hear the honking horns nor the sound of someone hocking up phlegm-filled spit nearby.
Just kidding on the last one, I don't think I will ever get used to that.
Thanks to my roommate who was willing to lend not only her time, but her language skills, I have now acquired a bike card. Like many major cities, Paris included, Suzhou has a bike rental system that allows you to "check out" a bike from a station to use and "check in" to another station.
The great thing about the Suzhou system is that your first 90 minutes are free. Now I can't imagine why I would ever need a bike to take me farther that an hour's ride away (especially with the bus and subway available), so I don't plan on recharging my card, well, ever.
And the whole thing was 200 RMB ($30 USD), plus 10 RMB for the card itself (less that $5 USD).
Not a bad deal.
Maybe when Memphis gets more bike lanes, we can jump in on this.
Anyway, it feels great to have +1 on my independence scale. Lifting just a little dependence on the hotel shuttle, taxis, and public transportation makes me a little happier.
Afterwards, we went to Auchan (basically Wal-Mart) and used the roommate's gift card. We spent the entire 200 RMB on junk food in preparation for a few movie nights ahead, what with it being ridiculously hot outside and a typhoon approaching. Since I had a coupon, we had Papa John's for dinner while we watched "He's Just Not That Into You."
Perfect girls night in the little American box of a home we have amongst the Chinese.
On Monday, we put our cards to use and biked to another Mexican place for lunch, Zapata's. It was pretty good, but still, no cheese dip, so I won't be going back. Afterwards we headed to the Humble Administrator's Garden, where we probably had the most fun taking stupid pictures, people watching, and climbing into a boat that was just floating in the pond. We made a few new friends with that last one.

If you're ever in Suzhou, this is one of the "have to" gardens. It was pretty neat and had some cool trinket stands outside the front run by local craftsmen.
We biked over to my favorite place, the Momi Cafe, for the greatest caramel frappe while I wrote out some postcards. We ran into one of her co-workers who graciously wrote the symbol for "America" at the top of all my postcards to ensure that they made it to the right country.
Whew.
With still another coupon in hand and some adventurous spirit left, we decided to bike all the way from the Momi Cafe to the Papa John's next to the hotel. This was at least 8 miles, probably more. We picked up some bread from the bread shop and went to sit in the restaurant while we waited on our pizza, feeling disgusting yet good about all the dry sweat on our body. We were going to deserve our pizza that night.
I convinced her that we should ride our bikes to the apartment instead of waiting another 30 minutes on the bus, when we could probably get home in 30 minutes AND burn more calories doing it. I swore that I saw a bike station just a block before the apartment.
I could have swore it was there.
Alas, an hour of biking later (mind you, she had spent the previous two days going for a run and was absolutely exhausted), there was no bike station in sight of the complex. After a quick consultation with a local and the station map, we had long passed the last station on the way to the apartments.
Frick.
With only 30 free minutes remaining on the bikes we hauled ass as best as our sore bodies would allow and made it just under the 90 minute mark. At this point, we had back tracked 3 miles at least and were far too burned out to walk the distance at 9:00 PM with a work day that required a 4:00 AM alarm.
Being the guilty room mate that got us into this, I payed for the cab that we called to come fetch us (which was a woman driver, quite the rarity).
We practically fell out of that cab.
I can't believe we even woke up the next morning.
We've spent the rest of this week resting from that day and planning for our trip to Shanghai next weekend.
Well, I have a day off that I plan on starting to enjoy pretty early, much love.