June 29, 2021
D79: 略阳 → 茶店
The Publisher contacted me again yesterday about more work on their UNESCO project. Their rate of pay is even worse than the Large Media Client but—even if they weren't giving me work like UNESCO (!)—they're actually appreciative of my work and don't engage in big man posturing or microaggressions.
I might have put their work off until evening but my hotel room was quite comfortable and the need to figure out how to get four panniers and a handlebar bag out the room, into the elevator, and across the lobby was enough of a pain in the ass that I was determined to make the most of this room while I had it.
Checking out around noon, the hotel dinged me 60y out of my deposit for having stained a bath towel, so, on the basis of bath towels being washable and my only having two days before my upcoming flight to Haikou and week long city living¹ interlude, I went back up to the room and took the stained towel.
If my home washing machine can get food stains out, I'm sure their commercial machine would have no problem. I'm equally sure they were looking for things to be nitpicky about because I forced them to honor my already paid for reservation.
Lueyang is a very small city that hasn't experienced much recent expansion. There's a few Very Tall buildings hovering above merely Tall buildings from a decade earlier (which, in turn, tower above the majority of the streetside architecture) but most of what I see of the urban areas is either within the 2-3 storey range or the 8-10.
Lunch is some kind of wheat noodle with soft tofu and a variety of pickled things purchased from a small restaurant that ticked all my mental boxes for looking like the sort of place likely to have excellent food even before I saw the row of gold colored plaques on the wall².
I feel like I might extract their video of my visit and post it on YouTube as an object lesson in why (other than my being a foreigner) my videos get attention. I'm a far far cry from being a professional but I've still got editing, context, and relevant background music. I mean, it's not that anything is wrong with Ra-Ra-Rasputin for a blurb video that a cycletourist of moderate fame came to your restaurant and apparently enjoyed the food, it's just that there's also nothing right about it.
Leaving Lueyang ought to be miserable as this area has both coal and iron but the majority of the wildcat mines have been shut down and the bigger sites seem to be using worldwide manufacturing slowdowns from Covid as an excuse to upgrade smokestack scrubbers and other equipment.
I take a dangerous video of some cliff inscriptions by the side of the road, surprised to see that the datable ones are 300+ years old and there's no signs but I'm told via the comments section that the spot that looks like "Inscription Was Here" was not defaced but was instead carefully chipped out and removed to the County Museum because this is an extremely dangerous place to have people standing and the road cannot be widened in such a way as to provide a footpath, let alone a parking area.
First climb of the day is something that ought to be rideable but which, being as it's now solar noon, I decide the juxtaposition of occasional traffic with a deep drainage ditch makes this not a riding hill.
I presume the bathrooms at the top of the hill where I soak my head, headscarf, and jersey in cold water are where I lost my spare bidon but I already knew I was doing a trip to Decathlon during the interlude so it's no big deal.
Icees, water refills, and old signs are basically how the rest of the day goes. The cut on my index knuckle I acquired during hammock take down³ becomes swollen enough that I need to use my left hand to change gears and I worry that I might have an infection but I already knew I was doing a trip to the doctors during the interlude so it's no big deal.
Without even stopping to ask the price (or if they had running water), I pick the nicer looking of the lodging options in Chadian. Pricey for the countryside but it's got all sorts of useless to me amenities (like a parking lot) and, more importantly, a boss who is completely unfazed by the discovery that the ethnic minority he thought he was talking⁴ to is a foreigner before registering me easy peasy on a mobile phone app⁵.
¹ About a week ago, the TV station messaged me and asked if I had any interest participating in a livestream event. When told that I couldn't do it remotely, I asked if they would pay my round trip airfare. They categorically refused to do that but they offered an appearance fee sufficiently in excess of my airfare that I said yes.
² Every single time I post a video from a restaurant with a bunch of these kinds of awards on the wall the comments are a combination of locals going "I love that place, it's one of the best in town" and random non-locals telling me how easy it is to just buy fake awards.
³ One pair of lines for tent stakes is elastic. One of the lines went sproing. I got an ouchy.
⁴ On the basis of his thinking me ethnic but still treating me nicely, I immediately like him
⁵ By which I mean handing me his phone and letting me do it
Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 2,846 km (1,767 miles)
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