D17: 白云山 → 螅镇

October 7, 2024

Using Taobao image recognition to get her own copy of my Seriously Awesome Jesus Socks

Since the marrow channel on my right tibia has a stabilizing steel/titanium rod that—owing to the level of injury and the medical technology at the time—can't be removed, cracking or bruising that leg's mostly useless calcium growths (what other people generally refer to as "bones") doesn't affect me quite the way it would most people.

At various times in my life (especially when I was learning how to walk), I've had pretty bad balance. There was at least one time in university where I fell hard enough to get x-rays and the nurse told me that, despite cracking my supplemental calcium growths, my bone (the one made out of a steel/titanium alloy) was fine. I feel like there was also something with falling about a year after I got my special shoes where my doctor told me not to bother with x-rays unless a non-bionic body part was hurting.

Intriguingly, the two who are repeated in the exterior wall paintings are in supplemental attendant position rather than being primary objects of devotion

So, I already know that—unless I start getting scary colors or swelling—the only thing to do for it is anti-inflammatories like Naproxen or Ibuprofen¹.

I'd been trying to show the "helpful" 52kg woman from the Front Desk at last night's hotel, that if she didn't get out of my way right this very now, anything bad that happened would result in both of us getting hurt. Except, dumbfuck that I am, I didn't just wobble my bicycle like I was about to lose control, I actually lost control.

And I fell.

And now things are hurting in that "is this actually a Real Injury?" sort of way.

Now blocked off "stairs" that once went up the rock face, presumably to additional shrines and grottoes

Photographing some movable relics on the other side of the road from the grotto in the last set of photos

Dr. M asked the Universe for a hat; it provided a hat; therefore, she must wear the hat

Which—because of the base level of pain that I'm already ignoring and the dramatic histrionics my leg is prone to throw over perfectly normal things like flying²—is a question I honestly don't know the answer to.

Being as we're staying someplace nice enough to include breakfast in our room rate, the first task of the day (and one which gives a good idea of how much yesterday's fall hurt) is for Dr. M and I reconnaissance to the breakfast room downstairs, determine that even on a cyclist's "seafood" diet³, none of it appeals as much as what we ordinarily eat (or don't eat) of a morning, grab a couple of hard boiled eggs apiece, and go back to my room for a few pots of coffee (both of us) and a bowl of oatmeal (me).

Someone in the comments section on a video recently asked me how many hours per day I can go without stopping.

Obviously, this depends on the terrain, the weather, and how interesting the environment around me is. Yesterday, we stopped maybe as much as once per hour. Today, however, was more like every 20 minutes. Not because of the aforementioned ouchie or because we were tired, but because Something Interesting came along and stopping simply needed to happen.

By which I mean—other than my periodically considering getting my high-test painkillers out of the place I've hidden them⁴, and uphills being harder than normal—today was a good day.

Rather a bit high above the waterline for this to be marked as a ferry crossing

Today's stopping because Something Interesting includes a place where Chairman Mao once spent the night, a fake horse, crimes against public maps⁵, more historic yaodong that are in the process of becoming bougie retreats, a ye olde-ified historic town⁶, an antique store, bad coffee, worse lemon tea, a Monkey King shrine with a fascinating iron bell, an effectively inaccessible pavilion that is probably a couple hundred years old, a very dangerous bridge that I shouldn't have climbed across⁷, a walk through a corn field, and a group of women in their 60s who charm us into letting them take a hundred photos and cheesy video with us.

Rule No. 1 of "is my friend doing something potentially stupid" is to stand out of the way and take photos

Photos of the bridge I really shouldn't have climbed across⁸

We were trying to see if there was some way to get a better look at this pavilion

The effect that pain has on my speed plus all this stopping means it's on the verge of dark as we get to the edge of Xiezhen. Another one of those places with 镇 (meaning "town") as part of the naming element of the town, it—like Mazhen and Wanzhen—looks like it ought to be a township rather than a town. Our current working theory is that all three places were named prior to current naming conventions, that they kept the second character because current naming conventions usually don't allow for towns to have single character names⁹, and that they've only recently gone from township status to town status¹⁰.

Outside the Journey to the West Temple with the fascinating bell

The majority of the contents of the inside of the temple weren't actually all that interesting

During the Great Leap Forward, this bell was not old enough to have been important enough to escape being melted in a backyard furnace as part of the idiocy of trying to "catch up to the West in steel production", and yet, it survived...

We have four or five kilometers to go to the 'listed as existing but we aren't going to provide a phone number or picture' lodging just down the road in Chashang. Although the first group of locals¹¹ we ask directions of are useless, the second group of grannies is just enough better at Mandarin than that we get sent to the unlisted but locally-famous Farmhouse Hotel.

With the exception of a lack of plumbing, it's everything all the Instagrammable wanghong places are trying to be. Which is why, when laoban tells us the price is 100y, we "mistakenly" think that's per room and give him 200y shortly before one of the neighbors insists on driving us to the only open restaurant¹² in town.

Never let it be said that I have a problem with people wanting to take photos with me

Walking back because he's got friends at another table and a prodigious amount of Baijiu by him was consumed during our bowls of noodles, he will show up again in the morning, cooking some godsawful smelling herbal medicine concoction for the owner of our hotel. Other than "not father and son," we never do figure out though what their relationship is.

¹ Technically, Tramadol is also on this list. However, despite it barely giving me a buzz, I've shown a disturbing tendency towards dangerous behavior† while on Tramadol and have requested that it no longer be prescribed.

† The tipping point came in 2019 on an occasion where one pill wasn't enough painkiller fast enough for me, and I redosed four more times before mixing it with all the Codeine in my handlebar bag, and then decided while blitzed to still go riding on a major road.

² I used to think my leg's problem with airports was the forced standing in line at security checkpoints and luggage pick-up. However, on account of how much I don't love the airport staff's insistence that they push the wheelchair I'm borrowing from them, I will often walk through my departure airport without issue.

³ Seafood = see food, as in "we see food, we eat it"

⁴ Where, because the primary role of my narcotics is as the sense of safety which having them available gives me, I would have held it in my hand, looked at it, and come to the conclusion that I still wasn't bad enough to need to take them†.

† Level One Pain - I must have my pills hidden in my luggage. Level Two Pain - I must know where my pills are. Level Three Pain - I have retrieved the bottle from it's hiding place. Level Four Pain - I have decided to take my pills.

Repainted historic slogans inside the town gate

Even knowing that what it was replacing was probably in really poor condition, I actively dislike pressure-stamped "carvings" like this woodwork

⁵ Compared to Dr. M, my Very Strong Opinions on how badly Chinese maps are frequently labeled or designed are barely first year bodybuilders.

⁶ Usually done on the basis of an actual historic building or buildings, ye-olde-ification cleans things up, removes actual historic content and context, and attempts to commercialize sites along the lines of what modern sensibilities feel the history ought to have been rather than what it actually was†.

† Although this is no longer commonly done in the US or Europe, the late-18th/early-19th century mill town I grew up in was ye-olde-ified as a historic district in the 1950s. This makes it a great neighborhood to live in, but it completely divorces it from it's original nature.

Grain tickets! Not worth very much but So Fucking Cool.

⁷ Dr. M incorrectly thought I did not need to be reminded of the basic Fieldwork Guideline for Archeology Students premise that "half collapsed structures should be thoroughly investigated before you do something where the collapse of the structure could injure you."

⁸ Note that Dr. M was sensible† enough to climb down the embankment, walk through a cornfield, and look at the bottom of the arch before deciding not to walk across the bridge that I was in the process of attempting to cross.

† Considering that she likes to go winter swimming, on ponds that have ice, it is not a good thing when I'm describing her behavior as being "more sensible" than mine.

Things from my childhood DO NOT BELONG in a Antique Shop

An old olde-timey faux antique phone and a mobile phone from the 90s

Not going to lie, I like this poster enough that a non bicycling me would have bought it

⁹ Although single-character counties (like 易县 in Hebei or 成县 in Gansu), and single-character villages (新村 is a popular one) exist, something like 75% of placenames are two-character (北京、上海、广州), followed by 20% three-character (石家庄、张家界), and 3% four-character (呼和浩特、乌鲁木齐).

¹⁰ in the hierarchy of Chinese sociopolitical divisions, just as provinces (省) and municipalities under the direct administration of the central government (直辖市) or banners (旗) and prefectural-level cities (地级市) hold the same position, so too do townships (乡) and towns (镇). Townships, however, are smaller and more scattered, posses a less well-defined core services area, and are usually more economically depressed.

Some of the stuff in the shop was just incomprehensible

Such as this entire book on how to guarantee the gender of your child

¹¹ Separate from comprehension issues related to dialect, we also had a problem with them not using markers such as "left/right" or "north/south" in favor of Yellow River related terms that we couldn't conceptually map.

¹² Not because the other places have closed but because the other places never existed in the first place.

The worst coffee I've had in a very long time

Thoroughly modern bathrooms in the ye-olde-ified town

There's some pretty good Chinglish on this sign

Today's ride: 51 km (32 miles)
Total: 1,039 km (645 miles)

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