D6: 来源 → 灵丘

September 23, 2024

For 298y you would think that my room would include the hotel's breakfast buffet but, when I go down to the second floor, I'm told that it's an extra 38y. Being as I know I like the oatmeal, raisins, and purple yam protein powder I've got in the room (as well as knowing that I usually don't like most of what's offered at hotel buffets like this), I decline and go back upstairs.

For a Vienna Hotel¹ it's nicer than average. Still with the schlocky faux 18th century furniture (that's been gilded with paint that looks nothing at all like gold) that's part of the brand's signature style, but they've gone out of their way to include big pictures in the halls of local natural and historic attractions.

I have to admit to being impressed by the little robot that delivered my passport back to my room

Once again my plans to take a day off, do my laundry, and recover from six months of not biking are foiled by the whole hotel situation. With central air that doesn't include a heating option this early in the year and a shower that also doesn't meet my standards in terms of being properly hot or having enough pressure to bother shampooing my hair, I'm surely not going to take my rest day someplace that's around 4× my usual cost for a room, and the way in which last night went down doesn't give me confidence that going anywhere else in town will result in anything other than my ending up back here.

I'm supposed to be taking a county road across a high mountain where the pass has an obelisk what looks like it's probably a War Against Japanese Aggression memorial but—even though I never want to be on the national road if I can avoid it—the way my legs are feeling, plus the topo profile, plus the knowledge that I'll end up descending the pass as it's turning colder have me on the next route south.

Someone was quite perturbed by how much sunbeam my bike was occupying

I've never had 红烧肉 (braised pork belly) in a flat bread wrap before.

If you've ever been to a Wanda Plaza in China, you'll understand why this being called Wanda Shop is so funny

Which turns out to be amazing.

Now I don't know what was going on with the G108 portion of the day cause the road looked like it had been resurfaced within the past two or three years, maybe widened in the last five, and there was practically no traffic to the point that the majority of dead restaurants were looking closer to 20 years old than 10.

The G112, at least, I had the Traffic Cops² to explain that this had been re-designated a Tourism Route from which all large through vehicles were banned. But the G108 was a mystery.

1000y reward for reporting illegal outdoor fires

Speaking of mysteries, I spent roughly 25km paralleling the most perfect greenway without ever figuring out how to get onto it. Not that I necessarily minded the generally quite gentle ups and downs of the road I was on, but it was so incredibly frustrating to see an obviously maintained purpose built bike path that had substantially gentler grades and ZERO TRAFFIC and never³ be able to figure out how to get to it.

Stunning scenery all day long, reasonable temperatures, a friend confirming that she would be joining me for the upcoming Golden Week Holiday⁴, just enough work trickling in from the Media Center that my frequent stops were for legitimate⁵ non-fatigue reasons.

If it had been two hours earlier in the day or if Dr. M⁶ had recognized it, I might have been willing to go up there

About the only thing that could have made it more perfect was a problem-free hotel check-in.

My hotel was chosen completely at random, so how exactly I ended up at a place that some guy biking from Tianjin was also at, I'll never know. I spent maybe 5 minutes outside the hotel prepping my helmet cam, forgetting that I had additional GoPro batteries, doing a bit of Bob Ross-style "calm happy thoughts meditation" ... and was in my room 12 minutes later.

And the only reason it took that long was because of the number of people in the lobby who wanted to take photos with me...and the aforementioned guy from Tianjin who wanted to know all the details of my exact route.

Judging by the color of the statues compared to the rock, they are either modern or have recently been "restored"

Photographing my passport as a method of "registration"⁷

¹ Which I'm only just now learning is one of the many brands owned by Jinjiang

² Who topped my bottles and insisted on giving me bottled water as well

³ Not entirely never. I found an entrance to it where it ended. But, a bike path that's at least 25km long must have intermediate access points.

⁴ And she's bringing a resupply of the Beans of Life

⁵ Fatigue is also a legitimate reason. I just like to pretend that I'm not as tired as I actually am.

It's pretty obvious why this has been turned into a Scenic Route

It's not quite narrow enough to be what the Chinese call an 一线天 (one line of sky) canyon

⁶ Or any of the Buddhist scholars at the conference she's currently at

⁷ Many of the places where the police have been proactive about actually following the new "thou shalt not make local policies that contradict national policy" guidelines regarding foreigners and hotels have taken one look at the clusterfuck of painful that is the existing registration system and decided that photographing the relevant pages of our passports is registration.

Level crossing ahead, please show caution

Another former restaurant, maybe only abandoned for 8 or 10 years

Getting chicken sandwiches delivered to my room for dinner

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 407 km (253 miles)

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