Biking in Beijing

As some of you have heard, Cara has been biking to and from work for a few weeks now. This is about a 30 minute ride each way.
At first glance, this may seem like a healthy cardiovascular exercise, but upon a second glance you would undoubtedly notice the thick layer of pollution that continuously covers this city and makes it hard to actually see Cara pedaling. In fact, that wasn’t even her that you saw during your first glance; that was the rider 2 people ahead of Cara who just happened to have long hair but you may now notice is a guy. Cara is the one in the florescent orange t-shirt from her ultimate Frisbee days who is passing all the slow pokes (thought that is a different blog topic 0 probably tomorrow's.)

Well, okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration of the pollution level. We did see a bit of blue-ish sky one day this weekend and visible distance also increased dramatically this afternoon from the measly 500 yards this morning to at least a couple of miles by this afternoon. But you get the picture.
In fact the American embassy actually recommends not exercising during many Beijing days because the benefits of the exercise are outweighed by the respiratory damage.

Interesting dilemma.

Still, biking to work is kind of fun and always interesting and as long as the other bikes and cars are mostly visible through the smog Cara intends to keep on pedaling.