D7: 灵丘 → 王庄堡

September 25, 2024

After a morning where, every time I got ready to leave someone else would send me work, I wasn't real confident in my chances of getting any decent amount of distance in. In fact, I was decidedly worried about my destination and a little bit annoyed that my assistant hadn't yet made a specific phone call I'd asked of her to the police station in Pingxingbao to ask "do either of the two hotels which Maps show in your town exist?"

It's a phone call I could have made myself except, in a manner that really didn't bode well for the answer I wanted, I couldn't find the police station's phone number.

All of this² for 30y, it's understandable why I eat as much Wallace Chicken as I do

"Agriculture should learn from Dazhai" is much more common than "Industry should learn from Daqing" but that may just be the places I go.

By the time she had appreciated the urgency of this request, it didn't matter anymore as I had gotten a flat tire and spent a good hour crying and raging as I couldn't find the good pump hose extender, I hadn't yet tried the glueless patches from Yi on the tube that had gone flat the day I picked up my bike, and my only other spare tube was the one that refuses to play nicely with most¹ pumps.

I was just outside a car wash place with a big air compressor though. So, after the guy that is probably still a jerk even when I'm not in a bad mood shooed me off because "we can't do anything for bicycles," I found other employees who were at least willing to listen and willing to let me use their compressor.... and I went all of a kilometer before the tube burst through a now much larger tear in the tread that I had hoped wasn't the problem and hoped would survive until Dr. M showed up with a spare tire when she joined me to go biking over the Golden Week.

My second flat was caused by the tube getting pinched on the weak spot I attempted to boot with the glueless patches from Yi

What's this? Great Wall Scenic Highway ahead? JACKPOT.

Big, wide road.... Generally not too many cars

Walked the 2km back to the bike shop where I'd gotten chain lube on the way out of town and, while I was using their patch kit to fix my nominally good tubes, we discovered that his 26" tire was wider than my frame clearance³.

Another hour spent while he went off to elsewhere to get a tire from them because that was better than removing a tire from one of the few bikes he had that had non crazy wide 26" tires, and I didn't even start out until past 2pm.

Now going to a completely different location because that location was within range, had half a dozen hotels show up on Maps, and was sufficiently on the truck route that it seemed very likely that still more hotels existed.

I especially like that the women's side got a privacy curtain

Ming⁴ Dynasty Beacon Tower and tire repair

As truck routes go, the volume of death machines was sufficiently low and the width of the lanes sufficiently broad that I was okay with the traffic. Also, the road was really pretty, the sky was a stunning combination of fluffy white clouds and clear blue, and the weather was comfortable.

Using numbers found on their signs, the first hotel that I called said they weren't open, second didn't answer the phone, and the third gave me a price that was substantially different than what the guy in the lobby said.

Because the guy in the lobby was trying to helpfully put me in their cheap room and the boss was like "anyone who calls on the phone wants a private toilet and shower to herself."

A faded sign with a hotel phone number next to the "welcome to town" sign

And you know what?

He was right.

¹ Even with a Presta to Schrader adapter, it still leaks nearly as fast as I can make air go in.

² If I recall correctly it was a chicken burger, a chicken wrap, chicken nuggets, two sodas, a veggie burger that I didn't eat, and maybe fries

³ The whole point in going 26" was to have more options. So, of course, the current style in 26" is crazy wide.

⁴ Initially a wild assed guess on my part using what I could see of the towers' construction materials and erosion at a distance, the big fort at the pass the next day was explicitly signposted as Ming Great Wall, so I was probably right.

Very nicely done mural of what they sell

Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 448 km (278 miles)

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