October 5, 2024
D15: 马镇 → 万镇
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As it was a slow enough leak that pumping it up hard and riding sufficed to get us into Mazhen the night before, the thirty or forty minutes of riding in the dark was more the inevitable consequence of the amount of time spent at Qianfodong than it was because of Dr. M's flat tire.
Of course, since she then had the temerity to go and taunt fate by saying "I've gone 10 years without a flat tire," no amount of mocking her during the process of patching her tube was going to sufficiently appease the Tire Demons as to guarantee—with no spares of any kind in her gear—that another flat could be avoided.
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Even the special and specific ritual purchase of a small plastic bowl² to be used solely to put water in during the process of seeking and finding of the hole in her inner tube was an insufficient sacrifice³ to the Tire Demons, and, after roughly 30km of riding, the action of rim brakes heating up the air and changing the pressure inside the tube was sufficient for one of those fizzlebang blowouts that results in a new tube and a new tire.
On the plus side, we very quickly managed to flag down an SUV with two ladies who were willing to let her hitchhike, and my dumping my bags on her allowed me to fly up the hills at a pace I would sorely regret the next day.
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This increased speed on account of not having luggage also let me visit lots of temples free of the guilt that comes with the knowledge that I'm the reason my friend is caught riding after dark.
I have no guilt about myself being caught riding after dark. That's entirely my fault. But, even with the knowledge that she's more cold weather acclimated, better clothed than me, and choosing to go my speed, I still feel really guilty over causing someone else to be out after dark.
While I'm checking out shrines to the Lord of the Plague and the Master of Safe Anchorage, Dr. M is contacting the bike shops in nearby cities to see if someone can express courier a tube and tire to her.
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Which—maybe because he still feels the need to pay forward the kindnesses received when riding his bike to Tibet, or maybe just because they're bored—ends up being a two and a half hour (each way) road trip by the mechanics in Shenmu.
I never get to see the grotty local hotel in Wanzhen that probably would have been only a little bit nicer than where we stayed in Mazhen as, long prior to my arrival (and my ability to be a cheap arse), Dr. M has discovered that the yaodong cave houses which used to be the offices of the local government have been turned into a boutique hotel where the beds are soft and the plumbing⁶ mostly works⁷ .
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Furthermore, she somehow feels that—as the universe has decreed that she not spend five hours going to and from Shenmu or the money it should have cost⁸ for the mechanics from Shenmu to come to her—she ought to pay for these rooms.
If there had been available rooms somewhere in cost between the place I don't see and the place we stayed, I might have insisted on paying my fair share. However, as I'm naturally a cheap arse who is Very Bothered by things that aren't worth what they cost, I resist my kneejerk need not to take advantage of friends whose cultural upbringing makes them offer to grab the bill, and let her get away with it.
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¹ 'Balls' as in the carved round things in the lions' mouths, not their 'nads!
² There were some other things we were going to buy at the same time but, having accidentally allowed the entire town know we were made of money by thinking the price for two beds was the price per room, and then paying for two whole rooms, they pissed us off with their "dumb foreigners didn't hear the price right" game
³ As I engage in ritual appeasement of the Tire Demons, I would like to state that I'm an atheist-leaning agnostic Modern Orthodox Jew who both totally laughs off such a ridiculous concept and mocks anyone silly enough to actually believe that such dumb behavior works.
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⁴ Construction equipment rental, for those of you who don't read Chinese. Being on a boulder on the way up to the second cluster of shrines we pass (but not in the areas frequented by non-laborers), it's targeted advertising the way the circumcision ad on the way to the pagoda was targeted advertising.
⁵ I never did edit that video. I should try to do that before my translator catches up with bilingualifying this journal.
⁶ Considering that we were specifically instructed not to use "the room with drains†" in last night's guesthouse for anything other than washing our faces, and had been given a thermos to take upstairs cause the taps didn't work, anything was a great improvement over ground floor public squats
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† Can't really call it a bathroom now could we?
⁷ An electric short in my shower means I have to go over to her cave and use her's.
⁸ Not only did they insist that driving to help a cyclist in need wasn't something worth charging money for, they also sniped the dinner bill.
⁹ Like "Nose Guy" and "Mouth Guy," "Hot Wheels" and "Bird Man" are among the many horrible sacrilegious nicknames which I shouldn't use for relatively common supporting characters in Taoist mythos, but their real names refuse to stay stuck in my brain.
¹⁰ Given that this temple only has four shrines, it's interesting that Lord of the Plagues is the only one who got just wall murals and a wooden plaque, and didn't get a statue.
¹¹ Shu General and blood-brother of Liu Bei in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Guan Yu (-219) was fearsome fighter famous for virtue and loyalty who was posthumously worshipped and identified with the guardian Bodhisattva Sangharama.
¹² Height of the roofs, rooftop decorations, streamers running from one building to the next...
Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 946 km (587 miles)
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