D10: 代 → 朔州

September 30, 2024

Beyond the occasional bit of spit in the air that's less of a nuisance than someone who talks with their mouth full, the rain has left. It has, however, been replaced by a very intense cold front that has me reevaluating my decision to purchase thermal bibs on Taobao and get them sent to Beijing for the post-National Day holiday excursion.

On my way in to the supermarket where I stocked up on oatmeal and mini chocolate bars, I'd considered a pair of tights the day from a store across the street but they'd closed by the time I came out. It's so cold, however, this morning that I know I'll be waiting until whenever that shop (or some other shop with tights) is open before I proceed.

Coffee and breakfast at Mrs. Zhang's while dawdling my morning away until the sun heats things up

Even with the numerous rounds of coffee I make while chatting with my guesthouse owner Mrs. Zhang, none of the clothing shops on this street are open, so I begin my day with a leisurely visit to the Ashoka Stupa on the grounds of the Dai County government offices. The county government also has a "Mao Was Here Site" but—even with my thoroughly unsuitable "spring weight" Decathlon tights on over my shorts—I'm getting chilled with the being outside, Mao related sites are either completely worthless or a massive time sink of interesting (with nothing in between), and I was sure I'd touristed enough that they must be open by now.

Given that I'd probably spent close to 10 minutes trying to convince myself that an overly expensive¹ pair of cotton sweatpants from a closer by store might work and they were still just starting to open by the time I got there, I probably could have fit in a visit, but, oh well, I already know I like Dai enough that I'll be coming back someday.

Covid test booth repurposed as a ticket and info booth

Ashoka Stupa. I particularly like the sign reminding people which direction to go in when circling the stupa.

I think I paid 15y for the the thermal tights and 30y for the fleece lined thermal tights and, other than both pairs being aggressively ugly, they were probably one of the best purchases of the year.

After a lot of getting turned around trying to find my way out to the main road on a maze of mud pits that's apparently been the general state of Dai's roads for the past three or four years of completely redoing everything to modern standards, I found myself once again on the Great Wall Tourist Highway² heading north to the petrichor-smell of the corn harvest.

My original route called for me to be taking the slightly lower pass to the west but going north over the mountains would put me in a city with a train station that a riding companion who was coming up specifically to spend her Golden Week Holiday with me could (with effort) reach from Xi'an.

The openstreetmaps data on my topo map gave me three options to the north: a modern pass created by the G208 National Road; a historic pass protected by Yanmenguan Fort; and a high road that went around the outside of the Declared Tourist Area.

I'm good with the "no non tourism vehicles" sign; I'm not good with the "no through pedestrians, bicycles, or motorcycles" sign; also ugly-ass concrete paifang replacing one that was supposedly³ blown up by the Japanese during WWII

With both AMap and BaiduMaps labeling the G208 "unpassable" on account of roadworks and the cobblestoned Fort Road officially being "walking only," my only real choice was the high road.

Which, of course, when I got up there (after 500m elevation gain over a shade under 20km), was gated-off with a prominent sign indicating that "motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians" are prohibited from using this road at any time other than Officially Sanctioned Events.

I'm not going to say that my behavior at the Fort was good or right or nice. I was tired and cold and frustrated and kind of a bitch. I'm also pretty sure that quiet, rational, calm discussion of every goddamned route that wasn't the expressway being closed would have gotten the same result in the end.

I think that was originally part of a stone bridge

Ugly modern skin, but the brickwork inside the gates looked pretty old

When the pick-up truck I was put in to take the high road was temporarily blocked by a very stubborn herd of goats, that was the necessary bit of laughter to make me change from sullenly accepting people going out of their way to help me to calling the guy I blew up at and apologizing to him. And, more importantly, he accepted my apology⁴

Sat in the sunlight at the other side of the pass, eating chocolate bars and lazily putting my bags back on my bike, a local cyclist who had just come over the "all the maps mark this as closed" road came by and asked me where I was going. Cause whoever takes the data that a road is currently in the process of having one side freshly tarmac'd (and therefore is experiencing a slowdown) is better at updating their databases than whoever put a private Park Staff Only access road⁵ onto the Maps.

Bad roads on the way down and Great Wall

The amount of Wall in this area really looks like the Qing Dynasty decided that building a whole new structure a kilometer away would be easier than repairing what the Ming had built⁶

The condition of the road on the descent gave me some idea why Dai County has recently decided to completely redo all their roads from the roadbed on up, and the volume of truck traffic on the road was sufficient that—in combination with a bitter headwind that persisted no matter which direction I turned—had me grateful to go "off road" onto farm tracks for a substantial percentage of the next 30km.

It might have screwed with my speed and pushed me into another night ride, and it might have mostly been uninteresting⁷ brown countryside, but anything is better than sharing the road with the Death Machines.

Greenway to Nowhere and a good example of "measure once, cut twice"

I actually made it to the Shuozhuo Train Station exit ahead of Dr. M, albeit barely, and only because of her train being late and the massive unexplained outflow of people getting off the train in this podunk county.

We adjourned to the first place with food on our side of the road for the slowest noodles in the known universe (and that both of us agreed were nigh on inedible⁸), followed by the closest hotel for a check-in process that would have been a million times smoother if both of us had used our English names⁹ on our respective bookings, or if the Front Desk lady hadn't gotten her very drunk boss and his even drunker friend involved.

Great Wall both on the ridge and in the valley

¹ I'm not sure if the ultimate decision not to buy these was the ridiculous price tag or the headache-inducing volume their music was still playing at after the second time they turned it down for me.

² Similar to Hainan's recently signposted Coastal Tourism Highway, this seems to be a recent initiative that is 95% preexisting roads and a signpost.

³ As the actual semi-defensive structures at the pass were not blown up by the Japanese, I'm more than a little dubious of this particular claim.

⁴ I will also do a follow-up written apology after the Tour is over.

Freshly repainted 70s slogan on a irrigation lock that looks like it was redone in the 90s

1990s Irrigation Lock with a corn cob decoration

⁵ As all of my previous attempts at telling AMap that a marked as "existing" road doesn't actually exist have failed completely, this won't receive any real follow-up efforts on my part.

⁶ When you consider that a lot of Ming and Qing Wall construction was a way of using up corvee labor, and that—through much of its history—the Wall was less a defensive structure than a way of making sure merchants travelled the correct tax paying routes, this probably isn't that far off.

⁷ There were interesting things like forts and bits of Ming Wall and greenways that went nowhere. There just wasn't any time to properly experience them.

Much of my sojourn off the Truck Road was like this

⁸ Bearing in mind that I was hungry enough that pineapple-flavor Dayao† tasted good.

† One of the local Chinese sodas that escaped obscurity to recently become a nationwide brand, it's generally quite vile in the way that only the cheapest of store brand fizz pops can be vile. I am however to understand that the brown flavor is the closest thing in China to Irn Bru.

⁹ My using my English name and her using her Chinese name led to them initially not realizing that we had two bookings, which then led to the one drunk guy telling the other drunk guy not to bother hitting on a pair of lesbians†.

An empty bottle of Dayao with a full plate of noodles

Presumed 18th century fortified village that I would have liked to have spent more time exploring

But, as you can see by the light in my photo of the info sign, there wasn't enough time before sunset

† This did not actually stop them from fawning over us in that particularly touchy feely way that drunk men do, but it changed the dynamic‡.

‡ Luckily, as Dr. M was the one who took the short straw in most of the dealing with them, she thought they'd called us 女车友 "nü cheyou" (women cyclists) not 女基友 "nü jiyou" (lesbians) and didn't know about it until after we were playing Scrabble in my room.

Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 661 km (410 miles)

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