There are two roads that go south from Lianhua to the Qin'an County Seat. One of them runs flat along the bottom of a valley (really more of a gorge) and, so far as I can tell, opened to traffic in 2006. The other one snakes along the top of the ridgeline hitting all sorts of small towns and villages along the way.

I've wanted, since my first pass through this region in 2012—when my maps didn't tell me there were now two roads and I didn't understand where all the towns and villages had disappeared to—to take the high road. However, today will be yet another trip on the low road.

First though, since I've got all this time on my hands before Alex is due to arrive in Tianshui, I take a 13km detour (26km round-trip) to the town of Wuying and the Dadiwan Prehistoric Site. The outdoor exhibits are dull but the museum itself (which opened in the 80s) has a lot of potential.

Unfortunately, I'm so distracted by the translation (which ranges from almost right to completely wrong) on both the academic quality exhibits and the stuff that's aimed low, that I don't really enjoy myself. 

It's a professional disease that combines my childhood dream of working in a museum and my current career as a translator, and I can't help myself; if it exists, I have to critique the translation.

The ride to and from Dadiwan was the best part of today's riding. The ride on the valley road paralleling the expressway that is scheduled to open by the end of the month, that was mostly nerve wracking.

I actually don't mind the big trucks as much as I mind the medium ones or the little ones. The men (and it's always men) who drive the massive death machines give me plenty of warning that they're coming. They honk hundreds of meters before they come close to approaching me. And, if the other side of the road is empty, they often pull out completely to where there isn't the slightest chance that anyone's getting hurt.

The lighterweight drivers, the ones who would permanently cripple me rather than kill me out right, they aren't anywhere near as cautious; and, more than once, I find myself clenching the handlebars in fear as I'm buzzed at a foot or less with nowhere to go on my right but the drainage ditch.

I should have taken the high road.

But the towns on the high road don't show available lodging and the weather up high is chillier than I want to hammock camp.

By the time I reach Yebao, my nerves are frazzled and the lack of a meal since my feast of market goodies this morning (a scrawny rotisserie duck and some flatbread) means that I am definitely going for dinner before the police station. As dinner is a place that also has lodging, I ask them if they'd like for me to go to annoy the police after my meal or if they want to call the police and have them come here.

As a result, when the police show up, everyone in the restaurant who is not in uniform has been prepped for the smackdown that's about to happen.

"You can't stay in town,"

"Yes, I can"

"You have to go to the county seat."

"No, I don't."

"There's nowhere here that can take foreigners."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Our supervisor already checked with the leadership and you need to go to a foreigner hotel."

"The leader is wrong."

You get the picture? Only add in that half of the time I'm not even looking at them but have decided that my eggplant with pork is far more attention worthy.

My favorite part comes after I quote national law and the quicker witted of the two responds "but localities can make their own laws. Isn't that right?"

"Oh, absolutely. However, you don't have that law."

"How do you know that?"

"Because the last twenty or thirty police officers who tried that tactic on me also couldn't show me anything in writing about a local law."

It only gets better once a plain clothes supervisor shows up to agree that I can stay in town but not here because here is not a hotel¹. "What about the hotel rooms for rent sign outside?"

"They used to offer that service, but not anymore."

"So, why did they already quote me a room price?"

He tries. He tries so hard. And I'm not even doing him the honor of being disagreeable or angry the way someone who is being this much of a pain in the ass is supposed to be. I'm just not budging one inch.

¹ I think it's more a case of here doesn't have indoor plumbing.