Tempest7: Blogger

Tour De Hong Kong, Biking With Friends

My "Tour De Hong Kong" was suppose to be a fun event for my friends and Evita's friends to meet, socialize, and to get a bit of exercise. I was pretty hyped about it, leading up to the final week. I made up the group on Facebook and had Evita go and help me admin the event. With 15 confirmed going and 5 "may-bes" I thought the only thing I had to worry about was the weather.

This experience quickly reminded me why I hate event planning in Hong Kong. You can't exactly blame anyone, these things just happen, but they tend to be the rule of thumb here as opposed to a chance event. Evita had a group of coworkers who were planning on coming out Sunday for the bike ride. One guy had to drop because of his girl friend, and then 5 others dropped out because they were too shy to go with a group of people they didn't really know. Evita ended up with some last minute shipping work that she had to get done before the 24th and went into work that morning to finish it. Ran had to work as well, so her best friend Yembie wouldn't be coming. The story pretty much goes on in a similar fashion. In the end I ended up with the core group I usually do these hiking/cycling events with, plus Priscilla and Maxwell, plus Maurice's ex-coworker from IBM, and plus my Aussie homeboy Daniel, "Danny the Man", Chan.

We met up and Tai Wai (大圍), but I waited for Priscilla and Maxwell, while the others went along their way. Priscilla and Maxwell were pro, so we didn't have any problems catching up with the rest of them. We had a good bike ride and everything was pretty uneventful, except when Raymond was cut off by some girls and took a spill on the road, snapping the wire to his front break. As we crowded around him, a group of Chinese emos dressed in all black decided that we took up too much space on the road and were complainingly both loudly and bitterly at us. We actually caught up with them a bit later at a turn, and they were still complaining.

We got separated a bit later, but managed to make it back to Tai Wai separately to return our bikes. I had to take over for Connie, but that was ok, I was already impressed she had lasted so long.

Afterwards I went with Daniel back to Mong Kok to find him a present to bring to his company Christmas party. The minimum was $100 HKD, and I just happened to step into a store that was selling table tennis paddles for $100 HKD. I went to Pizza Hut afterwards with my friend Wing after she got off work.

Labels: Friends, Hong Kong, Sports

posted by Tempest7 @ 23:59