May 16, 2021
D31: 靖边 → 龙州
I could have done more today. Doing more today would either mean going a direction I don't want to go and staying at the hotel/restaurant in Yangqiaopan where, just a month ago, 100y didn't get me heat or an electric mattress pad; going a direction I want to go and camping; or, going a direction I want to go and attempting to see if someone would let me pay them to stay in their house.
The two cyclists that I met just outside the Longzhou Fort were absolutely certain that there would be no problem at all convincing someone local in an area without hotels to take in a guest. I neither have their strength of conviction nor a willingness to hammock camp when the nighttime temperatures are still single digits (even if those digits are ℃).
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Besides which, not only haven't I really biked at all in the past month (let alone with luggage), my breathing isn't happy about my returning to 1,300m above sea-level via airplane. It therefore seemed prudent not to risk it.
I don't have my fingertip pulse oximeter with me right now. The one I was previously using decided to stop working the day before I left and the new one needs to arrive in Haikou before it can be sent to me in a package along with oatmeal raisin cookies. Lacking a scientific method of measuring what's going on, I have to go with the less rigorous methods but something is definitely "not right".
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Once I was fed and rested but before I'd showered or taken any medications, I sent my primary care physician a voice message of my breathing at him; he's now upped my dosage of asthma medicine.
Knowing today would be short in distance the morning began with a leisurely cup of coffee, and a trip to the Post Office to mail excess stuff back to Haikou. I'd actually started with one of the courier companies but "no foreigners allowed" as whoever programmed their shiny new app to make sure every package that gets entered into the system is properly logged and tracked simply didn't consider the edge case of a person without an ID number wanting to send a package. In the past when I've encountered this one of staff will just register my package under their ID, this time however she sent me to the nearby Post Office.
This was followed by a quick stop at the bank to check my balance as, owing to a bank account not working glitch on the part of a friend, I was supposed to get that friend's salary deposited in my account. In theory, she'll have a working account again in the next few days and I'll then transfer it over. Up til then, however, I'm making petty cash transfers to her WeChat wallet.
Brunch at a Wallace fried chicken because it's a really good price for that quantity of protein and, just like McDonald's, it's a known level of food safety standards. Could have done with them not having a marketing activity poorly disguised as a party for five year olds while I was eating but it is what it is.
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Nothing really interesting on the ride out of Jingbian. In fact the sky didn't actually start to turn all blue and glorious until I got to the Great Wall.
This is one of those parts of China where the Wall was made of packed earth and any bricks that might have once been used ended up being a part of someone's house 300 years ago so, if you didn't know you were looking at the Wall, you might not know you were looking at the Wall.
I'd come this way before three years ago and I'm traveling at a speed conducive to reading the knee high signs marking the edge of the area where you can't dig so I knew it as something other than a low hill that ran parallel to the road.
The descent down to Longzhou is steeper than I remember coming up though I do seen to recall having walked a portion of it. On the descent, a lucky stop for photos caught one of my front pannier hooks coming loose before it fell off and caused me trouble.
At the Fort, I thought to check the back of the sign for information this time so I found out lots more than I did last time around. Apparently, although the current structure is a thrice repaired thing that was built in the early 1400s, records have a defensive post there dating back roughly 2,500 years.
All but one of the halls of the temple next to the fort are currently locked and I was just at the point of trying to decide if I wanted to find a way to climb up the fort walls when I met the two cyclists from Jingbian who took me to a late lunch, showed me the way to a redrock park with a ridiculously cheap (2元) entry fee, and tried to convince me that random local villagers would totally let me come sleep in their house if I asked.
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They left me at the entrance to the park and, after quick editing a few of my videos, I went in and—indeed—the scenery is magnificent. However, given how pretty everything I'm biking through is, I can't say as another Natural Scenery Park with a more expensive ticket would be capable of enticing me at some point in the future.
After the park and a photo session with another group of local cyclists, I headed back to Longzhou Town for dinner and a hotel on the assumption that anything in the built up cluster of buildings was likely to be more reasonable than anything on the distant edges near one of the parks.
Funnily enough, after the place where I had dinner found out I didn't have a room yet, they called a friend with a hotel on the distant edges near one of the parks.
Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 1,005 km (624 miles)
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