Yesterday, there were headwinds. Today, we got tailwinds.

On the first two days of riding with the Argentinians, I valiantly tried to stay behind them so that they could set the pace. Being as I'm a lot less athletic appearing than they are and being as they were struggling to adapt to the paradigm of constant physical exertion, the automatic, unconscious assumption on their part was that I was going slow because I needed to go slow so they slowed down more.

Since then, I've basically been in front. As the navigator and only Chinese speaker, it's an easy position to gravitate to. I'm not a native speaker of their native language; I'm not a friend (or partner) of years; and chatting with me just isn't going to be as interesting to them as chatting with each other. I'm okay with that. From my side of the equation, I kind of sort of want to vomit words at them in English until I've used up all the pent-up energy of two months of barely anything face to face beyond the shallowest of shallow conversations, but, yeah, I can accept that not exactly being a top priority for them.

Particularly with today's tailwind, it is incredibly hard to keep myself slowed down to their pace. The reflexive guilt of them potentially getting in some sort of trouble behind me where I can't see them helps but, even so, they are so damn slow. Which is saying a lot because I am not fast.

I will find out when I get home and get on the scales tonight that I dropped 13kg over the course of this tour. This means that my body + bike + luggage combo is now beginning to approach the upper end of what some of those overladen round the world expedition tourers are slogging around with them. Add in the fact that I'm inherently a stop and smell the roses kind of person whose only motivation to go fast--back when I went fast--was because it was the only way to stay in the paceline with the hot racer boys, and, yeah, my average moving speed is somewhere between abysmal and pathetic.

Qujie to where the exurban limits of Xuwen [徐闻] starts is mostly pineapple fields. There are other crops as well, as evidenced by the heavenly smelling sugar cane processing plant we passed yesterday in Shouhuo [收获] but pineapple fields and pineapple related hints of desperately trying to convince tourists that they actually want to visit pineapple fields are the main themes.

We do stop at a single small temple but it turns out that today is the birthday of the Buddha and the temple is full up with worshippers. Being as we are drawing attention to ourselves and away from the prayer related reasons that these people are here, it's awkward enough that I simply decide not to point out any more temples or to set them as potential detours.

After a brief bit where the GPS insists we ought to go straight and the road sign insists we ought to turn taking us to a cobblestone road that the GPS is very very certain we don't want to be on, we follow the GPS all the way down to the old ferry port. Last year, not realizing that there are now two ferry ports or that the new port mostly only goes to Haikou's new port, I had an interminable wait for my boat followed by an extra 15 kilometers within the city before I could get home. This year, I've set my assistant to researching sailing times for us in advance and I know exactly where to go.

I try to get her to buy our tickets for us in advance but the online sales platforms are being somewhat uncooperative regarding our lack of Chinese names or ID cards.

We go through the driver check with police who are supremely unconcerned about our wanting to catch a specific ferry that is leaving very soon. Then, upon following their directions as to where we buy tickets, we end up going round in circles before we end up at the foot traffic checkpoint going through registration all over again.

The first set of officers seemed to realize that 90% of the blather on the form could be ignored in favor of just putting down name, passport number, contact phone. This officer, however, is determined to get everything and it drags on so long that we're really getting worried we are going to miss the boat. As it is, the trucks have already started loading when we get there and, even though they are currently moving about quite slowly in other lanes than where we've been directed to leave our bikes, it's a bit unnerving.

Perhaps this is why, we discover after we've gone up to the first class lounge that the coffee supplies (me), phone charger (me), and the yerba mate (them) have been left with the bikes in the now locked hold. It could, however, be worse. We could be unaware that the first class lounge exists for a small fee on top of the ticket cost and could be stuck in one of the regular lounges. At 3am in the morning. On rough seas.

I forget to change my GPS's settings from "don't log if I'm not moving" so we don't get an accurate track of our path from Hai'an [海安] to Xiuying [秀英]. Our average speed from the closing of the ferry ramp at one port to the opening at the next is a whopping 3 kph, however. Little wonder the accelerometer on my phone didn't think we were moving.

We part ways at the port and I make a beeline for the Fullsing Town Incubator which is holding a stuffy government event that's the sort of thing I'd probably make a point of attending on a normal day in Haikou but which is even better because I get to show up on my bike, straight from a tour. The security guards aren't happy with the bike wanting to be indoors (where bicycles definitely do not belong) but the upper level management types (who all either know me or know of me) let me stash it in a currently unused conference room.

To be brutally honest, if the event weren't halfway between my apartment and the port and it didn't have a free buffet, I wouldn't have gone. But it was and it did and the chocolate creme donuts were so incredibly good.

After Fullsing Town, I make my way to a friend's restaurant where, because of not even that much beer, I end up having to make the last little bit of my journey home by taxi.