Other than my hotel once again being someplace with both central air and a different idea than me about the right sleeping temperature in a room without fans, the day is off to a very good start. I've got a fan meeting me for breakfast which means getting something unusual and local (and yummy¹) and having someone around to tell me what I'm eating and why I should like it.

We go there on his ebike so I also get a brief tour of the city in reference to all the places he would like to show me around to but needs to see with his own eyes are closed because Delta variant has scared the people in charge and they're all afraid of losing their jobs².

When I get back to the hotel after breakfast, the woman decides now is the time to ask me (or at least to ask the local I'm with) all the Covid related travel questions I'd been expecting to get the previous night but, after he gets rather stroppy with her, she ends up deciding that her previous glance at my Covid test from Luoyang along with the photo she took of my self created Registration Form is plenty enough data. Then she gets my username and adds me.

There's a bit of confusion where my fan goes on ahead determined to buy water and some jars of local mushroom sauce for me and then doesn't meet back up with me at the Obvious Spot because apparently something way far down the big road is more obvious to him than the first big intersection when I've got plans to be getting off the main road as soon as possible. Eventually though, he finds me standing on the street corner editing a video about breakfast with him and good byes are said.

My initial foray onto anything but the main road is a pretty beaten up half constructed mess but I'm soon under the railway, over the other railway, and across the truck route to my first checkpoint and as lovely a bit of rural riding as one could hope for.

At least up until the point where the GPS insisted I needed to turn right onto a rutted muddy track and I spent an hour wandering the cornfields trying to find my way out on something paved that went the direction I wanted to go.

Emerging onto something a bit wider than what I'd been on for the last while (in that two vehicles could have passed each other without one of them stopping), I'm stopped by a couple on a three wheeled farm vehicle of some sort asking something I don't quite understand about road closures and if they can get through to some place I've never heard of. Even after they've accepted that I'm also lost and leave, I don't think they ever realize that I'm not Chinese.

It's not too much longer until I get to the border between counties and my first roadblock. It's just a large pile of dirt spread out across the road and plenty of footprints across the top along with the tracks of motorcycles and ebikes at the edge show that it's mostly only stopped larger vehicles from getting through. Be that as it may, today's on and off mizzle means that I nearly slide into the roadside ditch when crossing it and, had not a motorcycle come up behind me and helped me out, might still have ended up on my bum.

I help them in turn only to have them decide to recross the barrier (without my help) and take some other road when they hear I'm American.

The next roadblock is also a pile of dirt. I follow in the footsteps and tire tracks of those before me and cross it without any problem.

The one after that is a piece of metal fencing that's been wired to the railings of a bridge. As a person alone, I might have made it through. With a vehicle and luggage, it's impossible.

Turning around to look for a way out, I'm passed by a grandad and young child on a motorcycle to whom I yell to "the road's blocked" but they don't listen to me and I'll see them again at two more roadblocks, coming back to the turnoff for an apparently blocked single track I didn't explore, and the checkpoint. 

One of the roadblocks is relatively near a bunch of houses and has gathered a small crowd of people, none of whom seem to know where the checkpoint is, but who are happy to give advice to people trying to cross and to cheer the ones who make a fairly difficult crossing such as the group of three young mountain bikers that picked up their bikes and carried them over their heads.

The checkpoint makes me a bit uneasy as the unmasked guy collecting data decides to stand shoulder to shoulder with me while going over my various codes and I never like having people I don't know stand that close.

There will be another checkpoint when I cross off the main road again but this one is unmanned except for a bullhorn with a recording on repeat and some red armbanded people who've decided to sit at the shop twenty feet away and play cards with friends.

The town of Shifou is an incredible chaotic combination of wholesale market for Large Things Made of Stone and the goods for shaping stone, transporting things made of stone, and better selling your stone products. I don't think I've seen as many people in one place at one time in weeks and, in a way that reminds me of Vietnam or Thailand, it seems as though half of them are currently on motorbikes.

Silly me hasn't hit 50 for the day yet so I decide to continue on to the nearby county seat even knowing that counties are historically the most likely to give me trouble. On my way there, I'll pass through three checkpoints only being monitored for incoming traffic and see a number of villages with signs up that no non residents are allowed to enter or pass through but the lack of effort seemingly being made at these points along with the previous night's easy check-in has me thinking this is the calm down from last week and everything will be fine.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

¹ There have been no few times that a friend, acquaintance, or fan has taken me out for unusual and local and it wasn't yummy but mostly it ends up being something I like.

² I'm not going to go into whether or not China's one party (plus many competing internal factions) structure leads to more or less corruption or bad behavior. I think, wherever you are in the world, power attracts assholes. The interesting thing though with the CCP is that, as their core slogan is "to serve the people", Party members—even the nastiest, pettiest, most venal ones—feel a need to be seen as at least attempting to serve the common man. However, "to serve the people" comes second to other more important concerns such as "to not get caught" and "to avoid being blamed". In the case of the recent outbreaks this means kneejerk reactionary enacting of local policies³ which not only don't have a positive effect on potential stopping spread of disease but which also make life unpleasant for everyone.

³ For example, as I'm writing this, you cannot use the real name verified online booking system for taxis to get a GPS tracked car which is logged to pick you up and take you to the next county. Instead, you have to get a driver's phone number and make a private off-platform agreement.