One of my other activity goals for the summer was to ride to the top of the local Mountain, Jigonshan. The first 40 or so kilometers were rather easy. The only troubles were the stupid speed-bumps in the highway.
At that point it turned quite steep. The next ten kilometers were brutal and contained a lot of short rest stops.
When I arrived at the upper gate the attendants were very surprised that I had a resident pass to get into the park for free. From the point the roads were still steep; but, it could be ridden with no further rest stops other than photo stops.
It turned out that this was a local “Brass” day from one of the local bases. There was a lot of astonishment among them, both that someone had ridden to the top and that the person was an American.
The ride down also involved a lot of stops in order to allow my brakes to cool. I got back to Xinyang quite exhausted.