What a lovely lovely lovely day I had today. From Jianyang to Jianou ought to be a tad over 50 kilometers which is entirely much too short a day for a day that is to be almost entirely on a major road and which will be going ever so slightly downhill the whole way.
The next place after Jianou that shows available lodging is nearly 20 kilometers more and while there probably might be something in between, there's really no guarantee, and combined with the lack of a guarantee that this one place will be open or will meet my (admittedly low) standards, I'm not happy with that kind of gap. Instead, I will take a long looping detour on my way to Jianou, achieving more than the distance I would have gotten if I'd gone the main road the whole way, but definitively ending up in a small city where I have lots of choices for food and lodging.
As it is, even with my detour, I still spend the greater part of the day on main roads.
The trees tell me this road has been here for a while
I'm think the Stern Cop holding a cringing Bad Person in this image is the same Stern Cop holding a Certificate in the above image with the certificate changed for a person
I start my day with breakfast at the same place as I dined last night. Because brains are weird, even though I was tetchy and uncertain about being more than a certain distance away from my bike and not being able to keep an eye on it while eating dinner, I'm totally fine with leaning it against a tree while I go inside for breakfast. Best guess I can come up with is that since no one stole my bike or messed with my stuff last night, I now know that this is a safe place. In any case, the volume of customers served by them spoke as much of the cost of the food as it did the quality of the cooking and it was a pretty decent breakfast.
The stealth (and not so stealth) upgrading of roads is continuing to go on with the County Road the maps all think I'm on being a Provincial Road instead. Other than a bit of mess at the edge of the city, it doesn't seem to have undergone any recent changes beyond the designation.
I was warned in advance by the place where I ate breakfast that the countryside road which was to be the bulk of today's detour was undergoing roadworks so I wasn't surprised by the road closed sign when I got there. It was specifically closed to "anything with three or more wheels" though; besides which merely being closed to traffic has never stopped me before.
Note the clean spot on the sidewalk where there used to a concrete ramp impinging on the sidewalk that has now been chiseled away. All the nearby ebike and motorcycle dealers now have temporary rubber ramps in place.
Throughout the day, I stopped here and there at various little shrines as the fancy struck me. The one and only big temple I stopped at was a nice historic thing just off of the countryside road. The lack of knowledge on the part of locals regarding the age of the building (beyond an inscription that it was renovated in the 24th year of the Republic of China so was therefore old enough in the 1930s to have already been in want of renovation) and the shiny commercially bought statuary from a recent renovation sort of put me off going in to any of the other larger temples I passed.
The scenery on the countryside road made up for the road quality which alternated between packed dirt and deliberately broken up concrete. When they plan to remove a concrete road in China, they first bang holes in it and then leave it with the holes for a month or so so that the people driving over it will contribute to the act of breaking it up and screw them for not wanting to have their teeth rattled out of their skulls.
I planned to have lunch in the town where my countryside road intersected with a National Road but I was following the GPS and it took me around the edge of town on farm roads through dry rice paddies currently being harvested and while I could have turned around and found my way in from the other side I had a decent buzz on from making coffee during my temple stop and decided to just ride.
For reasons unknown, this National Road was almost completely devoid of traffic. We're talking being passed by a single vehicle roughly once a kilometer level of "devoid of traffic". There weren't even motorcycles or random farm trucks most of the time. It was kind of weird actually. Gave me more time to admire the lovely scenery but still kind of weird.
At some point a bridge over a dam presented the opportunity to cross to the other side and ride on farm roads and me being me, even though this meant more climbing, I went and did that.
I was surprised at the top of a short climb on the countryside road to find a tunnel
I don't really like tunnels and the wraith like bits of fabric hanging from the ceiling where the concrete was patched didn't help my monkey brain's comfort level
Empty National Road with interesting anti-passing barriers that don't actual prevent a determined person from passing or cause problems if someone is forced over
At Xudun Town [徐墩] I had to cross back over the water and back on to the main road. Even though it was already past 3pm, I took this as an opportunity as well to have lunch. Once that was done, however, it was just a long long long straight straight straight ride to the city. Pretty enough with the water on one side of me and the hills on the other and more hills and mountains off in the distance but nothing really super interesting.
My hotel for the evening initially told me that they were sold out of Single Rooms which led to me asking the price of Doubles which led to him admitting that he was afraid he wouldn't be able to take a foreigner. "I know how to register myself on the computer if that's what you're worried about" and, like that, I was behind the front desk registering myself hassle free
First glimpse of a 19th century (or earlier) temple
This hotel wasn't quite as comfortable as the one I stayed at in Jianyang but it was still pretty comfortable (especially for the price).
I had hoped to get some work done tonight but I ended up spending my time writing emails to Lenovo and talking to AmEx instead. The Lenovo Escalation people's response has been, shall we say, underwhelming (particularly given the combination of their Terms and Conditions or the really nice people I got on the phone during my long long long phone call with Customer Care) and, on the grounds that the warranty I paid for isn't being honored, I've opened a dispute with AmEx to refund me the cost of the warranty.
The white slogan painted directly on brick says "Prevent Tuberculosis, Everyone is Responsible" while the red on white slogan reads "strictly knock down black, disgusting, corrupt, and illegal things, prevent illegal disruption of medical services or the harassing of medical staff for compensation"
