Today did not need to be a relatively short day. I had lots of options available to me but, no matter which option I took, it was pretty certain that I was going to end up in Qin'an as the known lodging opportunities past Qin'an and before Tianshui ranged from suboptimal to nonexistent.

The desktop version of GoogleMaps, when not logged in to MyMaps, will show you an approximate topo profile of any given Point A to B to C route that is set to "walking" or (in places where it works) "cycling".

Because of this, I realized that both the side route I was thinking of taking to go visit the Dadi Prehistoric Site and the old S304 that I had confusedly missed taking in 2012 went up and over a big mountain, while the new S304 that actually been some pretty alright cycling 6 years ago ran a slight downhill the whole way along the bottom of some pretty impressive gorges.

With my legs still feeling the memory of going up and over the big mountain the day before yesterday, I decided that this was the way to go.

It meant, even with a great deal of dawdling along the way, that I got into Qin'an quite early but Qin'an had a number of sites of interests both marked and unmarked. The county museum is an absolute delight. The old "Ming and Qing" street appears to actually be the remnants of the oldest part of town and, although fixed up pretty, has so far completely escaped touristification. 

I was going to head for the last hotel at the far south end of town but it seemed that this hotel was some kind of boutique hotel with prices, depending on the website, ranging from USD 50 to USD 100 a night. I won't say that I don't spend that kind of money on hotels in China because I most certainly have. But I'm certainly not going to do it at some random unknown non-branded hotel in a county seat in Gansu!

Instead, I turned back towards the city proper, went looking, and found massage. Not counting three days ago in Huating, the last time I had a massage was over three weeks ago with most of that time being spent at various altitudes that make my lungs less than super happy. There were all sorts of unusual knots to be worked out along my ribcage with almost no time left for my legs.

I got dinner after my massage and then went looking for more reasonably priced lodging. When the first hotel did the obvious lying thing about telling me they were sold out, I went up two steps in price and tried again. This time they at least had the guts to tell me 'no foreigners allowed' but, by now, it had gotten very cold outside and I didn't feel like trying a third (fourth, fifth, sixth...).

Later on, after the police had come and left, I apologized to the hotel owner for being such a bitch to her at first. I had calculated my behavior specifically to force her to call the police. Not because I was angry at her but because I wanted to yell at them from the comfort of not having to go back outside into the cold to wherever the police station was.

She didn't mind. Not just said she didn't mind. Really didn't mind. Was in awe of me. I had yelled at the police, interrupted the police, ignored the police, made demands at the police, told the police I wasn't doing what they wanted, did the same to the police official who showed up half an hour into the whole mess and, when all was said and done, despite my clearly breaking every social contract of how the police want good citizens to act, they'd ended up doing what I wanted them to.