Today, the bike trip ends.

Frustratingly, I've still got 13 days to go before my flight and far less than 13 days worth of things to fill my time. The weather in Chengdu is already gray and nasty and I know, faced with nothing 'interesting' or 'challenging' to do like going from one place to another, I'm pretty much going to do nothing.

But, at the same time, I've been on the road for quite a long time and I'm starting to experience some burnout. Like sure, ever since the idea suddenly came to me back in Gansu that I would like to bike from Amsterdam to Beijing for my 40th birthday, I've started thinking about what it would mean to spend four months or more on the road, and I'm thinking about it in a positive way, but I'm also noticing that I've started to lose my sense of wonder.

Totally mundane things that would have made me all kinds of happy just a few weeks ago have not only resumed being mundane but have even become barely worth noticing. I'm also really jonesing on my lack of social communication.

I take a long while in leaving Huanglongxi mostly by making too much coffee as I sit and people watch the tourists being silly. Then, there's some nice little roads that aren't main roads and a bit of wandering half in search of old stuff and half because I'm really not ready for cityland. At some point, maybe two hours into the morning ride, I stumble across a group of old retired men out on a day ride from Chengdu and sit and drink tea with them for a bit.

They know the good roads into Chengdu and, by riding with them, I'm not faced with any suburban yuck at all. Instead it's greenway and back road and side road and marked bike trail and WHAM, I'm in the city and they are scattering all sorts of directions and I've got to go meet my couchsurfing host.

Now it's time to turn the GPS on and to be annoyed at the GPS for the ridiculously stupid paths it keeps trying to send me on. Eventually, I turn it off again and just go with the type of straight down this road until that road sort of traditional navigation that might add an extra five or six hundred meters but which doesn't involve seventy three million little turns.

GPS becomes helpful again when I start getting close to Chris's. It's not actually necessary though since the location she gave me is a pinpoint on a map. In fact, because I used the GPS rather than paying attention to my surroundings or working things out, during the days I stay with Chris, I will repeatedly get lost.