During late October and through November I had the opportunity to mentor a guest faculty member from UNO's sister university in China,
Hangzhou Normal University. For about six weeks, Professor Jinli Liu shadowed me through many of my classes and we had many good academic discussions as well as general talks about cultural practices in the US and China. What a wonderful opportunity that was!
In addition to our professional relationship, Jinli and I developed a close personal friendship and both of us were sad when he had to return home early in December. Probably the most fun we had together was on bicycles checking out the roads and trails around Omaha. Jinli runs occasional marathons and weighs 150 pounds, so he took to the bicycling very well indeed! I'm sure he would soon be dropping me if he rode a bike regularly.
In November we sure rode in a lot of wind! There were days when I might not have ridden if I had not had a riding partner to share the ride with.
Our last ride together on December 3rd was truly a memorable one. Riding at
Chalco Hills Recreation Area, we started out in just a light mist but finished our ride about an hour later with snow on the ground and ice causing our chains to slip over their gears. What good fun that was!
One thing I learned in our discussions was that Jinli's hometown Hangzhou has one of the world's largest bikeshare programs (over 200,000 public bikes). But bicycling for recreation and fitness seems to be somewhat uncommon there. It was pleasure to spend time with Jinli and I learned a lot from him.
I hope to visit Jinli in China someday to continue our cycling adventures and he
is welcome to return to Omaha to visit me anytime.
Ride carefully my friend... I hope to see you soon!
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