For a moment there it looked like, by the time I reach Chengdu, I might actually catch up to a 50km a day average even if I include all the days of all the interludes. Today basically quashed that possibility, however.

It was a work day again today.

Now really this work should have gotten done last night and there's no really good reason as to why I didn't get it done last night other than "I didn't feel like it".

Let me expand upon that a bit. My shoulder and elbow and right pinky finger were hurting the way they hurt when I spend way too much damn time working on the computer without taking posture into consideration despite the fact that I've not spent "too much damn time working on the computer without taking posture into consideration" for weeks and weeks. (I think that rest day in Hebei was the last time.)

Furthermore, the town I'm in has a place for massage and the last time I got a massage was my first night in Huating—my first night in Gansu! So I spent an hour mostly face down on the table making little grunting noises somewhere between pain and pleasure and then another thirty minutes getting cupping done on my back.

Cupping has been characterized as a pseudoscience with no provable medicinal benefits. However, with the exception that it tends to make the abused skin preternaturally itchy (sometimes for days at a time), it feels really really good so, I don't really care. 

Over years of rigorous testing on a sample size of 1 (that would be me) I've determined that I get darker bruising in areas that are in fact swollen from abuse (like the already mentioned "too much damn time working on the computer without taking posture into consideration"), that swelling goes down after I've had cupping, and that getting cupping inevitably causes me to sleep really well.

When I finally dragged my ass back to the hotel, I was literally having problems keeping my eyes open long enough to get my laundry out of the machine. I then went to sleep at 8:30(!) and slept, bathroom breaks notwithstanding, until noon. By that point, the drizzle which the weather report has been threatening now for days had finally come and even if I didn't have work to do, I still would have decided to pay for another night.