September 4, 2018
I1-1: Gaoyi County to Shijiazhuang City 高邑县→石家庄市
When I first realized that I was going to take the train to Beijing mid-trip at least once (and possibly twice), I settled on Gaoyi as my first train station on the basis of how long it took me to get across Hebei in 2012. Considering that there were multiple rest days, work days, and short days because the weather in the northern China in March made me feel absolutely miserable, this was not exactly great planning on my part.
Be that as it may, with the way that high speed railways stretch out along corridors of non ridiculous terrain and in ways which the rail can connect places that are actually capable of being described as a "city", the next train station west would only be after I got to Zuoquan in Shanxi Province. I suppose, if I rushed across the mountains without taking any unnecessary detours (as if) and didn't stop for any work days (while a project is looming over my head) it might possibly maybe be possible for me to make it to Zuoquan in time to catch a train on Sunday and go to Erev Rosh Hashanah services but it wasn't very likely.
Besides which, I had some friends in Shijiazhuang who asked me to come visit.
Shijiazhuang was the first place I lived in China. At the time, based on the perfectly reasonable idea that "Peking→Beijing" and "Canton→Guangzhou", I actually thought "Szechwan→Shijiazhuang" and that I was going to Sichuan—home of pandas and peppers. I'm sure I was corrected at some point before I actually made it to China but I'm equally sure that, being as I really really really wanted it to be someplace I'd ever heard of, I ignored the corrections up until I was actually in a pancake flat city on the North China Plain eating the unspiciest food you ever imagined.
On this trip I specifically made a wide loop around the far outside of Shijiazhuang. I did this not because I didn't want to visit my friends but because, having lived in that city for a year and a half (give or take), and having visited that city in 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2012, I saw absolutely no reason whatsoever to punish my lungs by doing any kind of exercise anywhere nearby.
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I've been seeing various signs in the rural areas that burning of chaff is now punishable by a large fine and two weeks detention in the local lock-up. I also noticed in Yi County that there were signs at some of the intersections on the way into downtown listing the number plate restrictions for which cars would be allowed into the city today. I did not, in my wildest imagination, not even with the knowledge that manufacturing near Beijing was probably being shut down for the Sino-African Conference, think that I would ever see clear blue skies and fluffy white clouds in Shijiazhuang.
But, that's exactly what I got.
What I'm getting.
I repacked my laptop and various things that I figured I would need for a week off the bike into the bigger of the two panniers, cursed myself for sending my little fluorescent green backpack home when I dumped weight in Beijing, reconfirmed with the hotel that they really really really actually were really okay with me leaving my bike in storage with them, and walked across the street to the restaurant where I'd had dinner the night before and had more of the same for breakfast.
As long as I don't look too carefully at what I'm eating (a soup that is literally called "Assorted Sheep Parts" [羊杂汤]) my American sensibilities can't kick in and I can find it as delicious as it actually is.
I used Didi (like Uber only Chinese) to hail a car to the nearby train station and bought a ticket to Shijiazhuang. I had my campgas canister in the bag with the intent of being able to make coffee in Shijiazhuang and the understanding that if they said "no", I'd probably be able to leave the canister somewhere in Gaoyi and pick it up again on my return.
Even though they confiscate cigarette lighters for being flammable explosive goods that aren't allowed on trains, my campgas canister not only failed to register on either of the x-rays as something that shouldn't be taken on the train, it failed to register as unallowed during a visual inspection of my luggage which took place because the metal handle of my coffee grinder potentially looked too much like a weapon.
In the search for my potential 'unallowed weapon', the woman doing the visual inspection even asked me what some of the less immediately identifiable objects were and was told "this is a stove" but I still managed to get on the train with my campgas canister.
(Before finally being confiscated at a train station in Valencia three and a half months later this clearly marked potentially dangerous probably explosive item passed through security checks in 4 countries on 3 continents for 7 airplanes, 4 high speed trains, 2 normal speed trains, 1 long distance bus, and 1 medium distance bus. Knowing this, aren't you glad that the Security Theater is there to protect us all?)
Annoying as it is to have spent nearly an hour waiting at the train station for my barely 15 minute train, I'm pretty sure it would have taken me a lot more than an hour and 15 minutes to travel by any other method between Gaoyi and Shijiazhuang.
The new train station which I arrived at on the south side of Shijiazhuang felt enormous though this may have been because I was walking with an extremely unergonomic pannier and my leg was complaining. I never actually found the way to the proper taxi rank but I found myself a taxi that took me across town to a coffee shop recommended to me by the Chinese wife of a foreigner I know who moved to Shijiazhuang and opened a training center two years ago. (Despite his being a coffee nerd almost on my level, she took "please not Starbucks" as a clue to recommend me to a Korean chain. On the plus side, I had a lovely ham panini for lunch.)
Up until Joy and Ridge (two of my oldest friends in China) got off work, the rest of the afternoon was spent grinding my way through vast quantities of poorly written tourism content that, per client briefing, must include in the English everything that is in the Chinese and cannot get new words or phrases that would help make it sound something other than a copypaste mishmash pablum of stock phrases.
Today's ride: 2 km (1 miles)
Total: 553 km (343 miles)
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