D10: Zhangmo to Jiangjunmu 獐獏乡 → 将军墓镇

September 13, 2018

Taking all the bedding from the second bed and piling it on my bed helped enormously. Unfortunately, traffic started at dawn and I'm right next to the road.

All in all, considering how comfortable the bed wasn't, I slept pretty well last night. Of course, going to take a "short nap" at 8pm and mostly sleeping all the way through until 5am probably had something to do with that.

With all the bedding (including what passed for a mattress) from the second bed piled up on my bed, it really wasn't all that bad. I've had harder mattresses that actually were mattresses. It just wasn't that great. The road literally right next to the building and the cold midnight walk to the latrines, however, were enough to convince me that even if I did have work that needed doing, the work that needed doing most certainly needed doing from a hotel room in another town.

A doorway that, at first glance appears to be a smartened up old door but, upon closer inspection, has way too many pandas painted on it to be traditional

Artificial over correction of the colors in the murals because the details are otherwise muddy and hard to make out

In 2012 I took the S202 south from Zhangmo to Songjiazhuang [宋家庄] to Jiangjunmu [将军墓] and Jiangshui [浆水]. If I recall correctly, I had originally intended to cross from Hebei into Shanxi at the town of Songyan [松烟] but was talked into trying the next road south because of the trucks on S322/S318 as well as a nice convenient tunnel. This time, I went over the mountain in the Hanshan Scenic Area [寒山风景区] to Songjiazhuang to Jiangjunmu. Overall, the mountain added perhaps 3km to my daily total and not a whole lot of that much more scenic than the non officially scenic area. Which is my way of saying that the non-officially scenic area was still pretty scenic six years ago...

On the main road outside the scenic area

Not throwing garbage in watercourses and cleaning up rubbish from watercourses has been one of the big environmentalism pushes of the past few years

This rural help wanted poster for a large urban restaurant reminds me how lucky I am in the hand of cards that life has dealt me.

******************************************************BaBadu Hotpot
NEW LOCATION OPENING! / HELP WANTED!
Waitresses (20) / Monthly Salary CNY 1800 - 2500
Various Kitchen Staff (10) / Monthly Salary CNY 1600 - 2000
Sauciers (2) / Monthly Salary CNY 1600 - 2200
JOB PERKS and BONUSES
1. All staff will be given dormitory housing and 3 meals per day.
2. The dormitory will have a hot water heater, washing machine, wireless internet, and air conditioning.
3. Three days off per month.
******************************************************

I love the homemade door quilts used in this part of China

Absolutely prohibited to throw dead pigs here. Violators will be prosecuted.

In fact the most scenic parts of the day were after I was off the mountain and taking a long slow downhill through a giant stretch of apple orchards.

The nicest parts however were after I got on the trucking route. First of all, understand that most of this trucking route is currently closed to big trucks for road repairs. It's been closed to the biggest trucks since just before the Tour of Xingtai and will stay closed to them for the next three months. Second of all, even though it's only the third year of the Tour, the Tour of Xingtai is apparently this area's hottest hot thing. Even the streetlights are decorated with bicycles. Third of all, even though there were still more trucks than I would have liked (which is to say "any") a significant percentage of the route had been repainted with wide shoulders and sharrows and the act of making the road seem half as wide did a huge amount to calm traffic.

New bridge and old ford-type bridge which has either fallen in or had the road deck removed now that there's a new bridge

Another new bridge / old ford. I'm definitely thinking the road deck was removed rather than washed out.

There was nowhere for the few trucks which were left to be coming from other than behind me and nowhere for them to be going other than in front of me, and yet, the whole time I was in the section with the wide painted "bikes here" markers, the traffic was calm. But as soon as I crossed out of that magical zone with giant inflatable swans and floating strings of pinwheels, the traffic came back with a bit of vengeance.

Not as scary as 2012 but still, very definitely, much faster and much less cautious than it had been a mere kilometer or two earlier.

Some kind of machinery (I think perhaps for dredging) that's been festively decorated with streamers

Coming into Jiangjunmu, I passed a truck stopped by the side of the road and noticed three of the little cans of butane which are theoretically available everywhere and are used for the super portable kind of stove or to refill cigarette lighters or to refill my campgas canister. I'd been to some twenty shops already looking for a refill since I'd run out of coffee-making-juice yesterday and no one had them.

The wonderful thing about not being deaf, dumb, and blind like I was in Vietnam meant that I could go find the trucker and offer to buy one of his cans of butane off of him. I was in luck as he deliberately had extras on the basis of—no shit—them not being quite so common outside the cities as I'd thought they be.

The wall paintings along this stretch are much more focused on topics such as cycling and tourism than they were 6 years ago

Wall Painting 2012 Style "Being Lazy is Disgusting; Working Hard Earns Glory"

Street Light decorated with bicycles and apples

Most of what few services and shops there are in Jiangjunmu exist to serve the road and the truckers and since the truckers currently aren't here, they are currently closed. Two of the hotels were still open. The first was only slightly nicer than the place I'd slept in Zhangmo. The second, however, had a sprung bed and hot water and let me use their washing machine. They did not, however, allow me to register on the computer because they hadn't been much bothering to do that with their Chinese guests recently and were worried that my being the only electronically registered guest at all might trigger someone to come take a look at them. I was filled in in the paper log book instead.

Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 717 km (445 miles)

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