August 17th

15C cloudy. Bowled in Juan de Fuca (won) then hurried home for start of our Novice tournament which ran until after 4 pm, a good event with a number of spectators to encourage the players on. A few hung around after so we were able to have the usual Friday social bowl and pizza. Hot tub, movie and bed.

CHAPTER 5

T

hey loaded the boat the next morning, then as part of cost of passage, Hoy Chang proudly pulled the rickshaw to his house and parked it. Then he and Lui said good by to Mrs., Chang who showed no sign of being disturbed by their probable lengthy absence.

  By mid morning everything and everybody was on board and they poled the boat out into the river, turned and headed downstream. As a precaution their meager belongings were covered with a net which in turn was covered with straw and a few baskets of vegetables. From the air they would look no different than the many other sampans that went up and down the river.

  Hoy Chang’s best estimate of when they would arrive at the river’s mouth was somewhere between forty and fifty days providing they traveled for twelve hours each day. He had added that with favorable winds it could be a little less.

  At one point Doctor Pearce was going to suggest that they set sixteen hours a day as their goal but after a few hours he recognized that in spite of Hoy’s skill as well as his grandson, that it wasn’t an easy task reading the river to find the best current and avoid shoals. The long tiller oar was heavy and required constant manipulation. He did get his wife to reluctantly agree that rather than stop for a full day on Sundays they would only pause for an extra hour in the morning and stop an hour early in the evening.

The days rolled up behind them, sticking to her theme on the day they had abandoned their home, Mrs. Pearce constantly reminded the children to look ahead, to anticipate what may be around the next bend.

  Several times in the first week, airplanes could be seen in the sky above them and twice they were buzzed by planes just above the river. As they had all taken to wearing the coolie style hats as protection from both sun and showers they surmised they looked just like any ordinary Chinese family going between villages.

  The tedium was hard on the children; the two older ones asked for and were given chores to do and to help with the steering of the boat. John when he was working with Lui gave simple English lessons and soon the two were talking easily together in a mix of English and Lui’s dialect.