China through Alisha's eyes

July 11, 2006 - The Split (originally titled My Ruby Slippers)

I've landed in Urumqi - the capital of Xinjiang - after visiting the silk-road hub of Hotan. I rode along the southern rim of the Taklamakan desert - complete with legendary sandstorm and incredible sky - and arrived in Hotan in time to see some of the Sunday market. If the Kashgar Sunday market had been dissapointing and less then promised, the Hotan market more than made up for it. It's a massive, sprawling sea of stalls, artisans and hawkers with tons of people and animals filling in all the spaces. I enjoyed imagining all the stalls to have fallen out of a toy-chest and then just stayed where it landed. This may be because I am like a kid in toy store when I walk through a great market; and this one was really interesting and unique. Much more scattered and disorganizd than the black market in Ulanbaatar or Chatachak in Bangkok and as there were maybe ten tourists in total in Hotan, there were virtually no tourist-dollar targeted hawkers - not that a million people didn't approach me to sell anything from giant (like 100 -pound) blocks of jade to kazakh skull caps, but just as frequently they came to look at my hair (although with a pound of sand in it it was NOT looking its best) and to play with my camara. The whole experience was topped off with a fantastic meal of roasted goat on a flat bread with blackberries - for about a buck - reaffirming that almost anywhere you go in asia, the street food is the best.

But onto more serious matters. Just as the legendary Silk Road was actually more a collection of trade routes, the Cycling Silk team has chosen to explore different paths. I have decided to stay in Western China and forgoe Tibet for now. After giving it the old "college try" I realized that I was not ready for Tibet and possibly the hardest-road -in-the-world on my third day of cycling. So as sad as it was, I decided to take my parents strong advice from before my departure, and adhere to my limits... and I also realized I would probably enjoy my vacation much more if I didn't spend all of it in physical pain.

So I have opted to explore the areas I originally came to China to see - Xinjiang, the old silk routes and Kham. Hopefully I will be able to meet the rest of the group again later on, but for now I am getting over the loneliness and enjoying all the fascinating things in the area. I am busy seeing more of Xinjiang and tomorrow I will head to Dunhuang, home of the Magoe grottoes, which were created as offerings from Merchants who had successfully crossed teh desert. From there I will continue through Gansu province, goign down the Hexi corridor - the original doorway to China - and then into northern Sichuan. At that point I will officially be in Kham and am looking forward to visiting all the monasteries and Tibetan villages in teh area. I'm also expect to be wanting of some company by then, so I will join Kham Aid's Ride for Green, part of their education program which is raising money to build greenhouses for schools in Kham. ( http://65.61.204.32/ ). The ride will be 14 days and 900 kilometers from Lijiang to Kangding and this time I think I'll be ready. :)

I am happily becoming more and more comfortable on my spruced up bike. My leg muscles are learning to constantly be in motion and my butt - while still in pain - is no longer at the center of all my thoughts. And I really like it. Moving along at a good pace with everything I own strapped to my little steel bike is pretty incredible. I love repacking the bike and watching the six heavy pieces of luggage all neatly fit onto it. In the week of cycling with the rest of the team they taught me incredible amounts about bikes and cycling - so while I am far from being well -versed I am definitely a million times more knowledgeable than I was two weeks ago. And with all the repairs it underwent my bike is now riding like more of a dream and less of a sickly animal. Well that's all for me for now, until next time...

*****

July 16, 2006 - Of Maps and Monks
The City at the End of the Desert - Dunhuang

Setting off from Urumqi I was wondering if I should stop in Dunhuang. I had read many negative accounts of the Magao Grottoes and was worried it may be a waste of time - but it was amazing. The Magao Grottoes are a series of caves dug out, painted, sculpted and repainted in the rockface outside of Dunhuang. The caves span the 4th to the 14th centuries and the most recent "repairs" were made just 100 years ago. The cave patrons included monks, local lay-people, wealthy families and merchants from over 1000 years of trade and religous activity moving through the area. They are impressively intricate with every inch of the walls covered in images, some were buddhist scriptures, some were scenes of the daily grinde and some depicting fabulous deities. Many of the scenes from scriptures were carefully chosen so as to show important passgaes, thus making them more accessible to a population which was largely illiterate.

Some of the caves were quite small, justa few square meters and some> were huge and rose to the top of the cliff face - such as the third largest standing Buddha in teh world. Measuring 33.5 meters tall, the buddha was built in the Tang dynasty by Emperor Wu - China's only female emperor. This was the heyday of the Magao grottoes with 90> caves being constructed in just 30 years. In addition, the Emperess left her mark by dressing the world's third largest buddha in her fashion.

In addition to ancient religous artwork Dunhuang also provides opportunity for adventures in sanddunes. The Mingsha dunes are just a few kilometers outside of town and sit majestically at the edge of the desert. One of the things I love about sanddunes is that the peaks are actually pointy, narrow peaks and the ridges are literally ridges where you have to walk with one foot on each side of the slope. I thought about this fact for a while sitting on the peak of a dune, eating a metro bar (a mars bar rip off) and then promptly took a nap on the hot sand. It was just so peaceful. After hours of pretending to be Lawrence of Arabia and hiking from peak to peak I decided to take the best route down I could find: paragliding! It took me two tries to get off the dune and then I was soaring - and falling - and then I landed - on my face. It was brief but exhilarating and if there wasn't an angry man yelling at me in a language I didn't understand and if I had another 100 Yuan in my pocket I would have gone right back up to do it again, but as it is I will have to wait for another oppotunity to fly again.

On the Road - Lanzhou to Xiahe

After the cultural experiences of Dunhuang it was back on my bike again. I road for four days straight from Lanzhou to Xiahe in South-western Gansu. The trip was littered with confusion and wrong-turns which began the moment I rode the wrong way to get out of Lanzhou. The entire trip brought me from an average elevation of 1,500 meters to that of 3,000 meters - so needless to say there was a lot of climbing to do. On my first day I went uphill for 50 km, pushed my bike another 5kms up an even steeper gradiant and then thinking I had finally ascended the mountain sat and enjoyed one of my treasured twix bars only to discover it was time to push my bikethrough a scary dark tunnel (I have no light and the tunnel was narrow with a very large number of big fast trucks who thought they were in the indy-500). So a> kilometer and a half of dark, cold, wet tunnel with mysterious half-opened doors to frightening caverns and a cumbling walkway later I finally emerged and swore I would hitch a ride through any subsequent tunnels.

On the second day I stopped at a tollbooth with my trusty atlas and asked where I was and how to get to Linxia (the first major town I had to pass through). I soon had every toll booth clerk surrounding me and my map and heatedly debating where I was and where I should go. All I could think was Come on, you're tollbooth clerks, don't you know how to get to Linxia??? Then a good-natured man with about a dozen words of english came over and made a decisive line through the mountains on my map, pointed to a road in front of us and said, "Linxia. This(map): old. bad". Fair enough.

I've been told that tollbooth clerks have some of the highest rates of suicide and that if you say more than seven words to them it has a huge impact on their mental state - I wonder if that statistic counts if they understand the words you say, or if it counts at all for China. The toll-booth clerks were happy, friendly and hospitable and immediately invited me in, fed me, and gave me a bed to nap in.

Speaking of people who work for the road, I am amazed at the amount of road construction here. This isn't just cause it makes for some painful and difficult riding, but also because literally about 10% of the population of the areas I've been in seem to be involved in road construction or maintenance. But now I have a new theory. While there are defintely teams of road-workers, I think that there may be national mandates put out which literally rotates the local citizenry into road maintenance. For example, "Today Jeff will remove the rocks, Nancy will reinforce the irrigation canal andPeter will transfer the asphalt. Tomorrow Mary, Josh and Sue will do it". And the workers unite.

My path led through some Hui muslim minority areas where it's fascinating to see tons of beautiful mosques and temples side-by-side dotting the smalltowns. I have been assuming that any religous-looking building with a cresent moon on top is a mosque and any without the cresent is a temple - but my ability to verify this fact is about on par with my ability to get an accurate estimate of the distance to the next town...

I have started to classify the many interesting responses I get while riding along. They main ones are:
"hello" and wave. Hi! It's so nice to see you!
"hello" wave, thumbs up, excited smile. Wow, good job, biking through this area is cool!
"hello" snigger to friends. Crazy foreigner on a bike.
"hello hello hello". You are an animal in a zoo and I want to see if you'll look at me if I tap the glass.
glance at me, go back to task. Who cares.
blank stare, no response to any attempt to communicate. You are an alien, maybe if I don't move you can't see me.

The road to Xiahe also included my lowest point so far. Onthe morning of my third day I was again climbing. It was raining and cold and I was feeling incredibly weak, and decided to eat one of my precious Luna bars. I took a bite and almost began crying when I read the touching Message to My Mother printed on theback of the package.That's when I knew something was wrong. If my normally cynical self could almost start balling over something as ridiculous as a letter on the back of an energy bar then something was defintiely not kosher. I now think it was either due to my three day diet of bread or the high altitude. Regardless I scarfed the rest of the bar down and - avoiding looking at the packaging again - resolved to get hot tea, meat and vegetables the first chance I had.

On the other hand, highlights from the ride included a questionable-looking black car pulling up next to me and then shoving wonderful cold water in my direction, camping in a quarry, an old man telling me my bread was going to kill me (still unsure about this one), about a dozen ten-year-old boys racing my bike on foot and generally have the time of their lives (I may have let them win for a while) and a very intimidating rest-stop. About twenty kms from Xiahe it was pouring and I was again cold, tired and hungry. Luckily the first food stop of the day showed up and I happily pulled over, got off my bike and walked into the rest stop - and right into a tiny room filled with about twenty large intimidating Tibetan men who all suddenly went quiet and stared back at me. The owner came out and promptly made the largest guy stand up and give me his seat and move to the kitchen. Sitting there in my bright red raincoat and dripping wet I was feeling about as initimidated and foreign as I possibly could, but I proceeded to drink tea, inhale a plate of noodles and watch a Chinese soap opera set in ancient times with the rest of the rain-delayed group for an hour and a half until the rain let up and I could high-tail out of there.

***Warning, if you're not a fan of bathroom humour, skip this paragraph***
And that's when I had the most humorous moment of the ride... Soon after starting back on my way I had to use the bathroom. I pulled over to a little side path walked in to where I was shielded from view of the road and just as I had begun my business I heard a motorbike coming my way. I started to scramble when I heard "hello!" being yelled from above me. I looked up to see two fully-cloaked Tibetans on motorbike chasing their runaway horse about 20 meters above me - I didn't know what to do. What's appropriate in a situation like this? Ignore them, wave back, say "hello"? I just continued peeing. What would you have done?

Destination: Xiahe
After all these trials I rode into Xiahe with the feeling of my first real cycling accomplishment. After rewarding myself with a chocolate bar (noticing a theme?) I set about exploring the town. Xiahe is small and quiet, nestled in a beautiful valley and with as many monks walking down the roads and in the internet cafes as any other group. It is home to Labrang Monastary, the largest working monastary outside of Tibet and one of the six important monastary and pilgrimage sights in Mahayana buddhism. One of the most interesting things about the town for me were the pilgrims - Loads of Tibetans who looked dirt poor- carrying huge sacks on their backs and sometimes sleeping at points along the prayer wheel pilgrimage circle. The monastery itself is impressive as well. After the cultural revolution only ten of the original 47 temples were left, but seventeen more have been rebuilt in the years since. This means the monastary has grown with thousands of monks coming to study from other areas every year. By proding our guide a bit we convinced him to show us the book makers. We watched them print prayer flags and prayer books and saw all the ink plates for the books. If you get a chance, check out my photos from it.

After a few relaxing days in Xiahe I rode all day in the rain to Hezou to get my visa extended. After spending forever trying to find the office,I was told I had to go back to Lanzhou (where I started biking from) because their printer was broken. I can't get my visa because your printer is broken?!?!?!? So in six hours I watched what had taken me five days to transverse by bike, and then was stranded in Lanzhou at the ugliest "five star" hotel ever because the lanzhou office is also having technical difficulties- but hey- that's what traveling's all about, right?

And Finally, A Short Political Rant

Now, I want to try to keep my political rants few and far between but I've been thiking about this for a little while and feel like sharing. One of the fascinating things about Xinjiang is how un-chinese it is. It is obviously a part of greater China but the people don't speak Chinese, the food is nothing related to chinese food, and the people don't even look Chinese. Xinjiang came under Chinese control under questionable circumstances in the early 1950s after many of the region's political leaders died in a mysterious plane crash on their way to meet with the Chinese and discuss their future cooperation. Today,most of the minority groups, particularly the Uighyur people, want independence from China. Although the land and lifestyle of the peoples of Xinjiang have undergone much of the same harsh treatment of Tibetans their plight is largely unknown to the western world -I have personally never seen a "Free Xinjiang" bumper sticker. I can only assume this is due to the work of the Dalai Lama in publicizing the cause of Tibet. Actor-centered politics all the way- wow, I feel like I'm back in, well, any, intro Political Science class - but now I get it more than I ever did discussing the heroics of Jimmy Carter.

It also brought to light for me thatChina really is an Empire. Are China and Russia the only two major empires currently? I feel a little silly asking, but to my knowledge, yes. I also feel like I should point out that after September 11th China instituted a huge crackdown on political dissidants in Xinjiang, labeling them Muslim extremists, which the US publicly commended China for. To be honest I do not know much about the people arrested - I first heard of it from my tour guide of Muztagata - but I do know that every internet sight concerning it is blocked here, including Amnesty international's. Okay, political rant over.

Questions and topics for you to comment on:
1. Why was I given a needle with a red thread after doing the prayer wheel pilgrimage?
2. Are China and Russia the only current Empires?
3. What would you have done is caught going to the toilet by two Tibetans on motorbike chasing a horse 30 meters above you?
4. While riding a car passed me adn threw out of the window a bunch of small decorated papers - anyone know what these are/are for?

*****

July 28 , 2006

She'll be Coming Round the Moutain...
For now, I want to catch you up on my last solo week. Langmusi was incredible. It's a tiny little Tibetan town set snug in gorgeous mountains right on the border between Gansu and Sichuan provinces.

There are a few monastaries around and after being woken up at the crack of dawn by my loud spitting druken hotel neighbours on my first morning I walked up the hill to the monastary just after sunrise. The monastary was fantastic for a number of reasons but what stood out for me were the two incredible mandalas on display in the temples. Mandalas are sand paintings meticulously made by monks around the clock. They are an aray of bright colors and detailed images, and the two I saw were to be destroyed the next morning, as per custom, to complete the cycle of impermenance. I was also blown away.

The other interesting sight in Langmusi is the sky burial. Rather than bury their dead in the ground it is cutomary to have a sky burial, where the dead is brought to a burial sight, blessed, cut up and then eaten by vultures. Although it may initially sound gruesome there is a good deal of sense in it, the custom is practical as there is little wood and hard, often frozen, land and also follows with religous theory as the bodies become food for other living things. I was lucky - or unlucky - enough to not catch an actual sky burial and instead just walked around the site, which was covered in prayer flags, a couple molars and a few bones and obsereved the giant vultures from a distance.

Other highlights of Langmusi were the many yak burgers I consumed (delicious!), learning about silver and stone quality entirely through hand gestures from a jeweler, and a horse ride along the river and into a gorgeous field filled with colorful wildflowers. If you ever have the chance, I recommend going to Langmusi.

After two days, three buses and a van ride I made it to Chengdu, repaired the many new problems with my bike, visited Pandas and drank loads of tea in peaceful laid back tea houses. I also frequented the people's park which had the best people watching thus far - and listening. With dance classes, aerobics and karaoke all happening side by side in the middle of the park.

I actually spent longer then expected in Chengdu because of the difficulty in getting out of the city. I had a twelve hour scare where I thought I wouldn't make it to Lijiang in time to meet the other group members of the Ride for Green (the last leg of my journey), but luckily I scored teh last available seat on a flight straight to Lijiang.

And now I am in the final stretch, through Kham and the incredible eastern edge of the Tibetan PLateau. I just keep thinking about how lucky I am.

*****

September 8, 2006

The Ride for Green and Afterthoughts
"Descending a 4200 meter pass on a dirt road through pine forest, with a 1000 meter drop next to the road and snow capped peaks as the backdrop. Simply spectacular." (journal 7/2706)

I originally decided to incorporate the Ride For Green into my Cycling Silk adventure in order to be more involved with Kham Aid and to cycle with people again after five weeks on my own. I honestly knew very little about the route or the area, or the project's magnitude. It wasn't until I met the other Riders in Lijiang the day before we started that I understood what the Ride meant. Each of the other Riders had dedicated as much time to the project as I had to Cycling Silk. And the greenhouses are a worthy cause. As a recap, the Ride for Green was a huge fundraiser to collect money to build greenhouses for schools in Kham, enhancing the student's nutrition levels, a big concern in a land with such a harsh climate and a very limited growing season. It was this cause that was forefront in the other Rider's heads and I immediately got into the spirit of it.

We pushed off the morning of the 23rd jsut as the skies broke - christening our soggy expedition, the 7 bikers and our cook, driver and support vehicle. Within five minutes I got my second flat in two months, and the first flat of the Ride for Green when I rode through a puddle and lodged an inch-long nail into my rear tire. The next two days were spent climbing into Kham in the rain, after which we never descended to under 3,000 meters (almost 2 miles or 10,000 feet).

We took an alternative route for a couple days which put us on a dirt road that boasted the most spectcular scenery I saw in China.The road also led us through Pine Mushroom country (Matsutaki mushrooms), where one month of the year brings nomads from throughout the area to pick the high-altitude mushrooms which are then promptly shipped to Japan where they collect a couple hundred dollars a plate. We bought a kilo and a half for $5 and feasted for days. We were also lucky enough to experience a wide range of local accomodation. From full hotels with the luxury of hot water to rooms with cots to (best of all) wide open beautiful fields with a brightly lit canopy of stars.

Physically the Ride for Green was the most challenging leg of my journey. This is due to the number of days of continuous riding (9 at one stretch) and the frequency of passes (9 passes in 14 days of riding - the lowest at 3900 meters/12,900 feet and the highest at 4710 meters/15,450 feet). I feel like the 918 kilometer route can be summed up as always approaching a pass, ascending a pass or descending a pass. With the exception of one, incredible day when we road across a plateau all over 4500 meters/15,000 feet. It was a huge wide expanse and completely raw with huge boulders scattered about amidst mirror-still ponds. It was one of those days when I had to remind myself constantly that I was still in China - or even on Earth.

The first 9 days we rode due north from Lijiang heading for the International Horse Festival at Litang. The festival is an annual event that attracts all the best riders and dancers from the area for seven days of competition, games, partying and reconnecting with friends.

Our rag-tag group of 9 joined the rest of Kham Aid at the festival to promote awareness about our efforts in the area and to enjoy, hoot and holler along with the thousands gathered in the usually sleepy town. To really get into the spirit we pitched our tents amidst the others in the ad-hoc tent town which had grown out of the fair grounds. This meant that the first morning we awoke to riders streaming through the grounds in a boastful extension of the openign parade -with riders and horses dressed to the nines in wild colors and beautiful tinkling bells. This was not the first time or the last time that I had to stop to wonder whose life I had stolen.

The races themselves involved riders racing from one end of the field to the other, often with challenges along the way - such as holding readied bows and arrows or collecting brightly colored scarves off the ground. In addition there were dance competitions in which troupes performed traditional Tibetan dances while fully adorned in traditional gear.

At one point, the festival also provided a clear reminder that we were in Tibet and that Tibet is an occupied territory. (Although we were NOT in the Tibet autonomous region, rather we were in western Sichuan).

A dance competition on the second day was interrupted by troops of police who barreled through the dancers and went straight into the VIP box and started beating people. All at once the throngs of dance-spectators jumped up and started heaving forward - tentatively but also with strength. Mothers grabbed their kids, the dancers scattered and Tibetan cat calls and shrieks rang out from the crowd almost daring the police to keep it up. Eventually the police marched themselves and a few others out of the area and in under 30 minutes the dancing had resumed.

Although we persistently asked everyone and anyone we never learned what had caused the scene - only that a similar one had occured the day before as well.

After two days of watching, socializing, feasting and celebrating in Litang it was back on our bikes again for the final 5-day, 4-pass stretch to Kangding. The climbing literally started teh second we left Litang and seemed to never stop.

Sadly, many of the passes blur together for me now, but one stands out. On the way up to a moderate 4200 meter pass it started to hail. It was August, I was wearing a winter jacket and hail stones the size of my finger nail were pelting me, my bike and the roads relentlessly. I was riding near three other Riders and the four of us were forced to dismount from our bikes and push them with heads down the better part of three kilometers to the top of the pass where it was sunny and dry on the other side. A good example of the blurred line between the beauty and the freak-show of nature.

The Ride for Green ended on August 6th in Kangding from which we bused to Chengdu for the final celebration party and auction. That night we auctioned the five bikes which Mongoose had donated (myself and one other Rider brought our own bikes), as well as wines, art and vouchers from Chengdu establishments. The party and auction raised an additional $5,000 for the Kham Aid greenhouse project bringing the total to a whopping $50,000! Truely an incredible accomplishment. To read more about teh Rider for Green go to www.rideforgreen.org and to view some incredible photos by two of the Riders you can visit Joanna Wong's site at http://web.mac.com/joannacwong/iWeb/Site/Ride%20For%20Green.html and Nick Pope's site at http://homepage.mac.com/nicholaspope/PhotoAlbum2.html

After the Ride finished I found myelf back in Chengdu - a big, polluted - albiet beautiful - city. Within a day I was itching to return to the mountains. As I didn't have to be in Bejing for a couple of days I joined another Rider-for-Green and high-tailed it back to Kangding.

From there we traded in our bikes and paniers for hiking boots and packs and started hiking the final range we had ridden through just a few days earlier. The Qionglai-Minshan mountains are some of teh highest on earth - the highest peak we could see was about 22,000 feet/6700 meters. That's higher than almost anything in the US and there it was, jsut sitting demurely amongst a range of giants and glacier-filled peaks.

My last four days in Western China were spent hiking along the river through the valley and many gorgeous meadows. The river itself was crystal blue and ice cold, we could see it being fed straight from the glaciers. Although I have no desire to be a moutain climber, hiking through the valley allowed me to understand why people fall so desperately in love with moutains. Sometimes they're just incredible.

Afterthoughts
It's hard for me to really grasp that the Cycling Silk expedition is over. While it was nowhere close to what I had imagined in my wildest dreams, it ended up truelly being the trip of a lifetime as well as an incredible life-lesson.

It's been brought to my attention that a few people are confused as to how my time has been diveded up. As a re-cap; I flew into Kashgar where I met Kate, Mel and Ben. We spent a little under a week plannign and preparing before setting off on the long road south to Western Tibet. After a few days of biking with them I realized that my Hanoi training regime was a poor match to their six weeks of hard riding and that I wasn't ready for the high road to Tibet. At this point I decided to follow our plan B, I backtracked through Xinjiang and then went over to the desert hub of Hotan before crossing the desert and going to the provincial capital of Urumqi.

I then cut over to Dunhuang, the traditional silk-road entry point into China. Dunhuang is in Gansu province, just east of Xinjiang. I then went downt he Hexi corridor into Southern Gansu and road through the Aba-Tibet region from Lanzhou to Langmusi. From there I went down to Lijiang in Yunnan Province to join the Ride for Green, a seperate project organized by the Kham Aid Foundation which was also a cycling fundraiser, but specifically for school greenhouses. I was riding wiht a new group of people. We rode from Lijiang to Kangding (in Sichuan Province). I then went hiking outside of Kangding.

The adventure taught me more lessons than I can count on my fingers. For starters, being on my own in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language was incredible. Although this provided the most amazing highs and the lowest of lows (i am embarrased to remind you of the 'Luna bar incident') it was really good to have to rely on myself under such extreme circumstances, and be successful. It also made me appreciate the luxury of having good company that much more. It was incredible to be able to ride with such an amazing group of people at the end of my trip. After spending so much time asking what I was thinking, how I was going to deal with situations, and figuring out thingsfor myself it was incredible to be able to share these thoughts with others and get their input and reactions to shared situations. I am really fortunate to have been able to share part of the ride with such great people.

I was also struck and humbled by the enormity of China itself. For most of my ride I didn't feel like I was really in 'China'. There was such an incredible mix of ethnicities - not to mention all the things that brings, like different architecture, places of worship, food, and dress, and that's jsut the more obvious stuff. The different climates also contributed to the diversity and I really was impressed by how people adapted to the different, but all incredibly harsh, climates. For example, while in the desert my lips were so burnt and raw that wiping my hand onthem hurt because of the salt; but while in the mountains I was wearing a winter jacket in August and battling a hail storm.

And for all this I have my sponsors, friends, supporters and readers to thank. I hope I have been able to convey at least in some small way the greatness of the people, scenery and emotions that I have been so fortunate to have experienced over my 9 weeks of travels through western China. Thank you again.