Last night, on the way into town, there was a guy that kept stopping his car and trying to invite me out to dinner. You'd think after I'd stopped, talked to him, thanked him but said "no", and started again that he'd have gotten the message, but no.

I don't even know if this was my TikTok celebrityness or just general wow wow foreigner. It's not like I never had random meal invitations in the past.

Being though as I had no plan to eat anything solid until things were feeling much better, I just wanted to be left alone and the more I kept biking past the same guy by the side of the road trying to wave me down, the more I was glad that I'd initially refused his meal offer as it was obvious that him and his friends weren't going to be the kind of people whose company I enjoy.

Little did I know, the local that had PM'd me about an hour after this to go "omg! You are in my town!! I've been following you since forever. If you have time tomorrow, can I ride with you?" would be cut from same cloth as my wannabe dinner host.

The nicest thing I can say about him is that he took my two rear panniers for me. The next nicest is that he treated me to lunch. Other than that, everything about riding with him or the post ride interactions just made me want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him while simultaneously yelling "what on God's green earth is wrong with you?"

As most things can't be pithily described and as I was really trying very hard not to think my companion stupid merely because of his hick accented Mandarin that kept slipping into heavy dialect, I think my favoritest of every interaction was the one around the time we were parting ways when he confirmed that he was, in fact, that dull.

"You haven't posted any videos today."

I haven't? Really. Astonishing. As in, despite having spent the whole morning and early afternoon with you, I really thought I'd been judging you harshly; I really thought I was being unfair because of lingering stomach grumpies. I guess not.

In the past six hours, I've been out of your direct line of sight for as much as five consecutive minutes at a time. Forgetting the bit where my videos often take a plunge into local history¹, what would possibly make you think that I managed to edit and subtitle a video and download appropriate background music and sync it and upload the final video during the time I've not been next to you?

Sure, I get a bump on account of being a foreigner (at least in the videos that show my face), but there's a reason why people—like you—watch my videos and it's not because I just slap something together² and call it a day.

Before getting rid of him at his required turnaround point and my only potential "not my tent" lodging point for the day, I'd made it abundantly clear that—as I'd ended up here much much earlier than expected—I'd almost definitely be spending the night in my tent.

So, coming from his extensive experience in  having never camped before or done a tour more than a weekend long—after lecturing me on how to pick safe camp sites (urban parks and other well lit places with lots of people around)—he kept sending me messages asking where I was, where I had ended up camping, and if I could send him a location pin!

But the scenery was stunning, the traffic was all on the expressway, and although the technically downhill road (100m elevation loss over 100km) had the occasional uphill, they were all short and gradual.

Also, because I knew from an early hour that I'd be camping and therefore had all afternoon to suss out a good site, I not only ended up with an excellent location, I got there early enough to be setting up before sunset.

¹ Something which requires me to take the time to research what I'm going to say and make sure it's correct (or at least sufficiently unwrong as not to embarrass myself)

²I'm still not using any professional equipment and I still try to keep the entire process under 15 minutes per video.