It was another one of those nights of crashing for nearly 12 hours straight.  When I woke up eventually I had no idea where I was.  Then I remembered the Airbnb rooms were switched two days ago while another guest had used it as a crash pad during the day between flights.  Then today I would be moving back into the original master bedroom.  This was all getting to be very complex.  If it was hard for me to keep track over two days, how could my host manage all this constantly?

But while walking outside to the shopping mall for daily business, I noticed that the weather was drying out.  Instead of the murderous conditions, we were now exactly on par with Shanghai summer weather, about 38 degrees and 50% humidity.  But at this point I could walk outside without even breaking a sweat and it felt cooler.  What seems to have happened is that on my arrival it was a record high heat and humidity that made news headlines.  Now it was starting to cool a bit.

First stop was of course the Orange Theory studio, but this time not for class but to get an assessment of my fitness progress.  As I did the head coach walked out of her class and said, "What's going on, you're late!!"  I said, "Really?"  then realized I was a fucking idiot who had forgotten about the class booking that morning.  I apologized and said you know what I'll do one more class on the day I fly out tomorrow then immediately regretted having said that.

She said, "Don't worry about it, we're going to miss you.  Like really, you're the most fun person we had come in since the studio opened.  We really hope you can stay here long term and join us.  When are you coming back to Dubai next?"

I told her, "I wish I knew.  Honestly I haven't a clue.  Maybe six months later in better weather but there is so much up in the air right now and things I need to figure out in my life."

I said, "Well anyways, since I'm here can I get a body scan done?"  She said sure then directed the job to the front desk girl.

The results were very good, and the head coach later came back out explained all the details.  All progress is moving in the right direction.  Another member also wanted a body scan, basically my workout partner from an earlier class.  The head coach gave the front desk girl shit for making some mistakes in this process.  It was pretty clear who the alpha female in the room was, and even myself and my workout partner were calling the head coach who she was:  the boss.

After that I explored some new parts of the shopping mall and found an excellent spot that served healthy yogurts and pasta salad.  Perfect then.  This trip was really showing how seriously people take their health and fitness around here and how incredibly easy it was to eat right.  This isn't to say it would be hard to also eat shit, but at least it wasn't a challenge to eat healthy.

A key piece of business that needed to be done was online check in for my flight to Armenia and buy some extra sports equipment allowance for the bicycle.  It's a budget airline.  Otherwise if I didn't do this and arrived at the airport with the Montague they would charge double what I pre-booked.  I later found out this is the same stunt that they pulled in Tokyo.  Then I researched how to get to the airport which is in Abu Dhabi some 150km away.  A bus station existed at least 25km out of Dubai city proper and I checked the route.  This all looked doable.

I also found out the airline gave an additional 20kg of checked baggage allowance and one free carry-on.  But if they were like the budget airline in Japan (and I'm sure they would be), they would ask to weigh and tag the carry-on bag item.  They even had seat selection for online check in which of course cost extra but I said fuck that and will let the airline choose a seat randomly.

With all that in mind I came up with an operation to use one pannier bag to check in all the heavy shit including the two large bottles of alcohol that I bought at duty free and never even touched this whole trip.  I would then fold the other smaller pannier bag and any other light stuff and put all that in another bag for carry-on.

Another key piece of business that had to be done was find a print shop and print both the boarding pass and the Armenia visa approval.  My mentor friend back in Shanghai said specifically that you must do this because the border officers don't always have a record in the computer.  He actually crossed at a land border from Georgia and without that printed piece of paper he wouldn't have gotten in.  So it was pretty much a high priority.

I had also been told that at Zvartnots airport in Armenia, they still have Russians doing passport control.  It is apparently a remnant of the days when Armenia had some sort of agreement with Russian peacekeepers to ensure safe passage to and from the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region.  But now that Azerbaijan took back the territority earlier this year which was internationally recognized as theirs, the Armenians saw this much differently.  They saw what Azerbaijan did as ethnic cleansing and from what has happened so far they have reason to be correct.  Based on that, they felt that Russia stabbed them in the back and they couldn't be relied on for anything.  So they wanted to kick the Russians out and were in the process of doing so and turning to the West.  Whether the Russians would still be at the airport was anyone's guess.  At any rate, there were two takeaways.  One, after this trip I'll have no choice but to use a fresh passport if in the future I plan to visit Azerbaijan.  Two, as a westerner it was now a very good time in history to visit Armenia.