There is perhaps one good thing about riding on the National Roads and that is that you get to run into other cyclists. Although bike touring has started to become something that people other than recent college graduates do to places other than Lhasa, it's still not particularly common for people to go off the beaten path. 

Overall, unless its local cyclists out for a day ride, there is very little wandering. 

Instead—whether its one of the Marcus level randonneuring nutters who think multiple 200km days in a row is a good idea or its one of the folks that simply can't imagine not having 25kg of unnecessary gear that will never be used—there is very purposeful heading towards a set destination with very certain goals in mind.

I will start my day out by meeting a Traveling Wanderer who probably sticks to nothing smaller than Provincial Roads because—after more than a year¹ on the road—he's crossed a bit too far over the line labeled "potentially dangerous homeless bum" for normies to be entirely welcoming towards him or comfortable having him around their parts. I'm equal parts impressed and horrified by the things he's cobbled together rather than having 'proper' equipment and hearing that he pretty much never sleeps indoors, I know better than to mention that I pretty much never sleep outdoors or that I roughed it last night with a 50 yuan hotel room².

This will be followed by some National Road that is both pretty and pretty uneventful. The most notable achievement for much of the day is primarily that I manage to balance the caffeine and benadryl intakes required to both stay awake and to keep the itching of my heat rash from driving me crazy.

My first attempt at wandering away from the main road completely fails to find me the detour I was looking for but it does manage to get me a good 15km on the country roads where the scenery is interesting and the traffic is nonexistent. Even if I don't need to do so, there's just something nice about knowing that if I pop a squat by the side of the road (rather than risking wandering into brush that may or may not contain snakes) I won't be caught with my pants down.

The town of Hengkou is supposed to have a very interesting old street with all sorts of great architecture on it. Multiple people have told me so in the comments section of my videos and told me that they are looking forward to seeing what I have to say about the place. I admit that I was peevish and really in need of lunch at the time but I found the old street to be nothing particularly special. It hadn't been sanitized for tourists who hadn't yet arrived the way Shangyuanguan's old street had; it hadn't been made inaccessible for bikes the way Shiquan's old street had; and it hadn't been left to rot the way Jianchi's old street had; but, it also didn't have anything much in the way of significant architecture or interesting structures. Also, unlike many old streets in China (which seem to collect service industries focused on the low end of society such as shoe repair and feng shui masters), it didn't really have any open shops either.

Perhaps if I had turned back to look at it again after eating I would have had a different impression but I had to make it to a specific location in Ankang to pick up my camera and I had to do it before the courier company closed for the day so I continued onwards.

All of the time that I gained by being prideful and refusing to allow the Racer Boy on a Carbon Dream Bike see that I had pushed myself past my edge was then lost as I sat in the bike shop with a glazed look on my face and no energy to actually talk to people. This, in turn, meant that once I had gone the 3 kilometers to the courier company and gotten my camera, I wasn't going the 3 kilometers back to the bike shop for socializing. It also probably contributed to my discovery, once I was hotelled and naked, that the patch of heat rash on my right leg had gotten bigger and I now had a matching patch on my left leg as well.

In fact, the discomfort that I felt whenever I left the air conditioned confines of my room for the next stage of doing my laundry meant that I ended up ordering delivery fried chicken instead of eating in one of the many restaurants near my hotel or even making the effort to bring my food pannier up from downstairs so as to make oatmeal.

¹ Which means that he must have started biking the day travel restrictions were lifted.

² Original price was 30 yuan but I paid the extra 20 for the right to use the air conditioning.