Bike Riding On The City Wall

Abby and Emma are on spring break, so today went to ride bikes on the Xi'an city wall.

The city wall is eight miles around and pretty much flat, in terms of elevation, but really bumpy. There are many other city walls in China, but the Xi'an City Wall is the most complete and one of the strongest fortifications in all of China. (For more information, see this).

It took us an hour and forty minutes to go all the way around, though it did take Cheryl and Emma a little longer. Jenna, Abby, and I (Rick) went ahead so that we would be finished before our time (100 minutes) was up. As such, we did not want to have to pay extra.

Funny story, we left Cheryl and Emma behind because Emma was getting tired. We figured it was better to separate and only pay for two late bikes instead of five. When they finally finished Cheryl was laughing pretty hard. "What's up?" we asked.

She said they got lost/turned around. There is no way to get "lost" as the wall goes in a complete square. Emma turned to Cheryl and says "How can someone get lost on a four-sided wall?"

Only my wife can; she needed a map.
(Cheryl: In my defense, there are smaller squares at each corner of the wall and I thought we started heading back in the direction we had just come. I got turned around, so I thought, not lost.)

The weather today was really windy and and sandy. When we looked up the weather, the forecast read current conditions "sandy", not partly cloudy, but sandy - you can see how bad it was from some of our pictures. That's Cheryl wearing a mask.

We had a very fun family day on the city wall!

Jenna & Abby looking good.

Emma taking a break! Good thing we looked back , she didn't tell us.

Cheryl braving the sand.

This is a daytime picture of the sun.