New Years and Bicycles

Just a quick wish of L'shanah Tovah to everyone out there. Tonight will be the beginning of year 5772 here in China. I think I will be the only person in Yizhou to be doing anything remotely related to Rosh Hashanah, but then again, I wasn't expecting a huge Jewish community when I came to this particular city. I think the closest Chabad or equivalent is either in Hong Kong or Guangzhou, but I wouldn't be willing to put any money on that. To the best of my knowledge, I may the only practitioner of Judaism that some of these people have met. That's a little intimidating to think about. For those of you who observe, I wish you a blessed and happy New Year, and may we all be inscribed for blessing in the book of life.

Now, moving away from Rosh Hashanah, I finally got a bicycle. Issue is, the bicycle seems to be following a bit of a trend that members of my immediate family have had with any form of transportation in the past, in that it doesn't seem to like me much. This may seem a bit anthropomorphic, but considering all the various issues members of my family have had with their chosen form of transportation this is another area where I wouldn't put any money. A better way to put it is members of my immediate family tend to have bad luck when it comes to transportation from time to time. I don't know how else to put it, rather than to say we've gotten more than our fair share of either lemons, missed flights, and issues on trains. I'll spare you all those horror stories for another day.

What in particular is wrong with my bicycle you may ask? Glad you did! The first issue was that the handlebars easily got out of alignment. They easily shifted, mostly to my right, making steering very difficult and even leading to a few minor spills. Don't worry though, nothing more than a scraped palm, and I've had much worse than that. The current issue is yesterday I was riding between East and West campus and one of the peddles went and just fell off. Fortunately, one of the other foreign teachers told me where there is a guy who does good repair work. Hopefully he can fix it. If he can't, I wonder if it's too late for a refund. Probably is...

Until later everyone! May you all have a happy, blessed, and productive 5772, and may your fast be an easy one.