Today, everything hurts.

I'm not particularly surprised by this. Two of the preceding three days may have been very very short but yesterday was both quite long and featured a giant mountain.

I start my morning out making coffee in the office of the hotel owner and chatting. I want to apologize to him for the fright I gave him the night before when I showed up with the pibbies¹.

After my persistent failure to accept that the hundred and some odd hotels shown on Maps or the dozen plus whose signs I'd seen on my way to the police station were not in fact hotels or that Zhuanglang only had a total of four hotels, we'd gone across the street to the one I'd noticed closest to the police station. Once there, the two women officers flashed their ID badges and identified themselves.

However, before they could continue with the sentence about my having already been registered via the police station across the street, the shit-your-pants terrified hotel owner blurted out "all my papers are in order, I've never seen her before in my life."

So, completely separate from this being one of the most perfect night's sleep I'd had in a very long time², I felt I owed the man an apology for scaring him.

Another one of those scattered data points that I'm starting to see a pattern in is that places where the relationship between the populace and the police is, as the Chinese proverb goes, "like water and a fish" are places where I don't have trouble; where people call in "hey, what I am supposed to do" and get a "we don't know either" instead of a flat "no". However, whether I start the night at a hotel or I start the night at a police station, the ones where small business owners are afraid of law enforcement are the ones where the enforcers also aren't very pleasant for me to deal with.

On the way to the bike shop, I see a favorite fast food chain³ which I haven't eaten at in weeks and weeks and I get myself an absurdly excessive meal with two burgers, a wrap, and chicken nuggets. While eating, my mind is temporarily blown by a worker who asks if the bike parked in front of the store is mine "yes" and if I'd mind him taking a picture of the good luck talisman⁴ I've had sewn to one of my rear panniers.

It was not that long ago at all that everyone took photos of me all the time not only just without my permission but also after explicitly being asked to stop and here I am in a hick backwater town where you expect things to be fifteen years in the past and I'm not only being asked permission for a photo, I'm being asked permission for the photo of an inanimate object which I own.

At the bike shop, upon hearing that I skipped the county's big big site, I'm asked if I know anything about the Chenjia Grottoes. These are in completely the wrong direction⁵ but I've got more time between me and Tianshui and the person who is supposed to be meeting me there to go to the Maijishan Grottoes than I've got distance between me and Tianshui so I'm easily persuaded towards the detour.

I'm not going to say this was a bad idea. 

However, I really should have checked the topo map more carefully and resumed taking the altitude medicine I'd stopped on account of the next few days being in the downhill direction; after I was far enough away from my bike that going back to get more supplies and medications wasn't easy I was reading a solid 92 on the pulse oximeter.

From Zhuanglang to Chenjia it's solidly and consistently uphill the whole way. From not big roads to not small roads to small roads to smaller ones, I go up and up and up and up.

By the time I make it to the parking lot and the ticket booth, while I still have plenty of sunlight left to me, it's safe to say that any actual visiting of the temple will either involve me camping tonight or a decent chunk of time riding farm roads in the dark or possibly both. So, when the scenic area attendant asks me if I'm planning on spending the night in the temple guesthouse the answer is a resounding "yes"!

I am told, when I get up to the grottoes, to check in with the old person in the building just across the gully. It's pretty obvious though since her building has signs that proclaim home cooked meals, tea drinking, a convenience store, and rooms for rent.

However, and despite the signs, she has none of these things. Doesn't know why the parking lot would tell me that before moving my bike and gear into their gated courtyard or having me grab overnight supplies to take with me. I even point out the kang in one of the rooms signposted "overnight accommodation" but she gestures at the stuff piled (rather neatly) on top of it and goes "you can't possibly expect me to clear this off?" 

Umm..well, yeah, given that you've got signs and stuff and the parking lot staff told me, and I've got money, I...uh...kind of do have that sort of expectation.

"Even if you were welcome, and you aren't, I don't have any spare bedding anyways. Go away."

I think to ask about packaged food or a bottle of water from the convenience store before I leave but she makes shooing motions at me "there is no convenience store" and I figure I'll do the cliff temple then head back to the parking lot and hope that it won't be too late to get at my bike and sleeping bag.

From the first flight of I suppose you must call them stairs up to the temple, the uncertainty starts to mount. My legs are tired and I'm pretty sure I've seen rock climbing walls that weren't this steep. However, I have signal on both phones, and while I'm sure it would be both expensive and embarrassing, if I honestly can't get myself back down, I'm willing to call emergency services for help.

Three flights of 'stairs' up from the path and two shrines' away from the central temple, I find a cave with a large kang, neatly folded bedding, a wood burning tea stove with a kettle and piles of kindling. It's actually one of two empty bedrooms, the other of which is in a standalone building along with a kitchen. That one has a broken window though so, after I've determined that there's no one here to tell me I can't, I harvest votive candles and nectarines from the shrines and set myself up for the night in there.

¹ This is what I've decided the term is for PSB officers. It's perfect because—of those I know personally both who speak English and who do not—they will either be incredibly amused or absolutely enraged. Last night's pibbies would definitely have fallen into the enraged category.

² My room, which was actual a suite, had a pillow soft mattress in the smaller and completely windowless of the two rooms. Quiet, comfortable, and pitch black.

³ Wallace Fried Chicken started out as one of many KFC clones. It's now sufficiently it's own thing that there are cheap knockoff versions of it. The food isn't bad. They're open at times of the day when real restaurants aren't. And, in terms of the cost to protein ratio, they're often one of my best food options. 

⁴ Picked up in Anpu Town, Zhanjiang in Guangdong in 2019, I just checked and it is not—as I thought—the one with the ocean goddess Matsu or her companions the All-Seeing One 千里眼 and the All-Hearing One 顺风耳

⁵ Both vertically and horizontally