I didn't even realize that I'd left Shaanxi for Hubei until I was at the police station waiting for them to register my having spent the previous night in town. I ought to be very annoyed that the already filled out Form which includes all the information they either need or want is not being accepted in its entirety and that the police also want to see my actual passport with their own two eyes ..... but .... given that the Form was totally something "I found on the internet" (and absolutely not something I made myself), I'm just glad that everyone is accepting it as a starting point.

I thought I was going to the town of Ma'an today. It's a bit in the wrong direction (south and east) for heading north by northwest after Liulang, but—unless I want to take a Y road that doesn't show up on Open Topo Maps—its what the geography does.

In reality, because of "what the geography does", as well as how very poorly maintained the concrete is on most of today's ride, I'll only be making it as far as Liulang.

The first bit of the day is an uphill that's so gentle it may as well be flat. Then, however, I get to the bottom of a hydroelectric dam that's easily got to be 100m tall and it's time for me to go up and over mountains that are never very tall but which are always very steep.

There's a lot of walking.

There's so much walking in fact that I end up changing into my walking shorts because I'm starting to get that chafed patch on my butt cheeks from a sweat damp chamois rubbing with each stride.

The day is also a super hot one and the territory more of that once isolated homesteads living together in incongruously located apartment buildings (usually three to five buildings of four stories each) so stores where I can refill on water or ice pops are at a premium and really the only reason my bidons went dry when they did is because I didn't feel comfortable asking some random household if I could get water from them.

I could have camped but by the time it became apparent I would be out after dark, I wasn't that far away from Liulang and a/c and a bed are always better than sleeping rough.

Evening check in went very very very smooth as the hotel wasn't so much one I picked as it was one that picked me. The owner was coming home on a motorcycle and decided to light my way into town in a move that was so generously nice I didn't have it in me to say that his headlight made for a great big Marian shaped shadow that was much much darker than my headlight could sufficiently illuminate for my now light spoiled eyes.