The cops might not have bothered me at all last night, and—despite intensive preparation tonight to make sure that I was as calm as was humanly possible for tonight's certain encounter—didn't bother me at all tonight, but that didn't stop them from being twats to the owner of the hotel I stayed at last night.

I registered myself on the computer. I registered myself on the computer because I damn near always register myself on the computer. As a general rule, I either register myself on the computer or (despite what the hotel staff says) I end up not being registered at all. So, other than the fact that everything that needs to be filled in is marked with a red star, and other than the fact that you can't skip filling in anything which is marked with a red star and still upload a registration, I know for damn sure that everything in my registration was correctly written down because it's my own name and birth date.

But the cops are sure that required information that needed to be a part of my registration wasn't provided and they are being mean to the hotel owner about it. They didn't quite get to actually fining her (I wonder what they'd fine her for or for how much) but they implied that if she didn't somehow acquire the missing information, she could or should get fined.

Luckily for her, by the time I'd left in the morning (after making coffee in the lobby and engaging in a mutual "I bet I can scream in your ear louder than you can scream in my ear" contest with her 5 year old) she was aware that the foreigner who had stayed in her hotel is in the process of acquiring Internet Fame and could be easily found by someone who knew to look for me. Similarly lucky, this was a day when I only got a hundred or so new followers (I'll have 10,000 subscribers before the end of the month), so the PM from her wasn't lost in the noise and I was able to respond with photos of everything.

All of today's ride was on the National Road so it was dusty, trucky, and unpleasant. Also, once I crested the only climb of the day and got to downhills and straight flat bits, I counted at least five patches of broken windshield glass on the shoulder - one of which was the cause of my second flat tire of the trip.

When I could take the mental energy away from the traffic to enjoy it, the scenery was really nice. Even before I started getting the karst scenery, it was really nice. However, in addition to the traffic, I've discovered (as I rotate through the clean laundry) that the chafed skin I'm periodically getting down there is almost certainly caused by a specific pair of bike shorts (now, to figure out which one that is) and, even with bandaids over what can best be described as "bum blisters", today is not the best of days.

This is why, when it seems that I'll be stopping in an actual city for the night, I make a deliberate point of pampering myself so that when I have to deal with the inevitable hotels and police confrontation that is sure to take place, any Rage Monster on my part will be an act rather than an actuality. 

Obviously, there is never any waste in stopping for a foot massage while you are on tour, and there is never anything wrong with getting fried chicken delivered to your foot massage, but I got to my chosen hotel and absolutely nothing went wrong at all. They recognized that I was the person on my prepaid reservation, snapped a picture of my passport so they could leisurely register me without my needing to stand around and wait, and directed me towards an elevator. All for 70 yuan.