D21: 高碑店 → 固城

October 15, 2024

You ever have one of those days where you reach into your jersey pocket and go "where did this piece of garlic come from?"

This was an unusually uneventful day. Because I'm trying to delay my travel southwards sufficiently that I can meet up with an old friend whose employer is having some kind of event that doesn't sound too horrible in the abstract, and because the G107 is an utterly horrible road that no one in their right mind would ever ride a bicycle on, I've got to wander¹ but I also can't wander too much or getting to the hotel where the event is taking place also won't work.

There's some interesting looking points a bit to the north and west of me, but, by the time I've coffee'd up over breakfast at the same place where I had dinner the night before, it's late enough that this is looking like it would both put me out way after dark and would result in uncertain lodging.

This year's Happy Cow Award goes to whomever painted this mural

I see zero relationship between the images and the words

If you're ever feeling inadequate or suffering from Imposter Syndrome, remember, someone was paid for this

Back in the day—before online maps on your phone were a thing—I knew that any place called 镇 (town) would have somewhere to stay but that places called 乡 (township) probably wouldn't. Nowadays, and I'm not sure if it's changes in the rural economy, the emptying of the countryside as China increasingly urbanizes, or improvements in the transportation network, it is entirely possible for 镇 to also be without lodging.

So long as a boolean search for 住宿 (lodging) turns up four or five pimple dots on Maps, it's okay to head to a town where none of the shown "hotels" are either bookable online or provide a phone number, but anything less than that and it's entirely possible that everything that's listed as a hotel is something that's wrongly marked², something that no longer offers rooms for rent, or something that's either temporarily or permanently closed.

Serious problem today with missing bridges

And mostly didn't involve too much additional distance

This worry could be alleviated if I were to pick Dingxing County that I stayed in early on in this tour as my destination, but—even if their police were the sort who told the not-a-Marriott 'don't make us show up, just check her in'—Dingxing gets a black mark for having ever been the kind of place where I needed to call the police, so, even if Baoding Shi³ is one of those places where the towns are historically just as bad as the counties, I would rather aim for a town.

This, plus it having a huge range of prices (from 18 to 130), is how I came to pick Gucheng about 15km south of Dingxing.

First "cures for premature ejaculation" advertisement of the Tour

The outside of this Martyr's Memorial is for a woman

I would get in a bit after dark, unhappy with having spent any time at all on the G107 but glad for the size of the shoulders, the reasonableness of the streetlights, and the quality of the paving after the beautiful torture I had been putting myself through all day on the rural roads.

It's already cracked 100,000 views, so I kind of hope the whingy "but we don't have the qualifications," "okay so we have the qualifications but registering you is haaaaard" owner of the hotel I stayed at ending up seeing the "I think I stayed here in 2008" video I posted the next morning of me getting all excited by a road sign declaring me 183 kilometers away from Shijiazhuang.

You can tell how international an area wants to appear by the English/Pinyin (or lack thereof⁴) on street signs

As I had been on this for at least 5km prior to the truck route

And some of this earlier in the day when dealing with a flooded bridge

Because the hotel (a word I use very loosely) in question³ that I stayed at in Gucheng in 2008 was 2y.

Technically, since I insisted on paying for all four beds in the room it was 8y rather than two; but, as the owner tried to convince me that I really didn't need to give her that much, it's just the merest of technicalities.

That hotel in 2008—with its thatched roof, pit latrine, and a courtyard full of free-range chickens and scrap metal recycling—is unique not in that it is the cheapest place I've ever stayed or ever will stay, but in that it was the first time I ever stayed anywhere that had the Public Security Bureau's Online Hotel Guest Registration System, and it has the honor of being the reason why (even before I began studying the relevant regulations) I never believed in "we don't meet the qualifications to take foreigners".

They quite like their seal script around here

As is this, though less old, and also lacking in seal script

¹ Oh poor me!

² 酒店 can mean both restaurant and hotel

³ Has this year's journal included my traditional rant on how much I hate the word 市 and why I refuse to translate it as "city"?

⁴ One of the many reasons we don't believe Wuzhai County to actually be Closed is the pinyin on most of their urban signs.

⁵ Enough people in the comments section were able to provide information that was not in my video that I'm now certain it was in Gucheng

Lobby of the previous night's hotel, where they also bitched and moaned about needing to register me; and also wouldn't let me do it for them

I'm spitballing this mural at early 2000s

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,378 km (856 miles)

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