D6: 密云 → 怀柔

June 4, 2022

Roadside lunch on account of indoor dining not having yet reopened

There were many reasons for today to be a shorter than normal day. First and foremost among these was lodging. I had rather wanted to make it to the town of Jiuduhe 九渡河 which had been the location of my last night on the road with Snowflake¹ on our 2016 Tour. However, an acquaintance of mine who—between 2005 and 2014—used to spend most of the year cycling between Sanya and Harbin² on a custom built recumbent trike³, knew someone with a guesthouse in the general vicinity and put us in contact with each other.

Not, as I originally thought, commemorating the time Beijing hosted the Asian Games

One can understand why I might have thought there was a relationship to sports, though

Turns out this is a holiday weekend, however, and on account of rolling lockdowns and stuff having just been lifted, the friend with a guesthouse informed me that most of the reasonably priced rooms are long since sold out to people from the city and I would be paying a lot less for a lot more if I only went from urban Miyun to urban Huairou.

I started the morning off with a very long dawdle and then a free Covid test at the nearest hospital. Without checking my GPS tracks, I guess that ate up another hour of the day.

I hate taking my bike in overly small elevators. It was, however, that or outside....

Turns out there was no problem having my test show up on my phone but I wanted Proof just in case

In search of a lunch before I hit the road, I got myself a kilo of ugly cherries and a kilo of bananas. Finding out that the restaurants have not reopened to indoor dining as last week's announcement said they were supposed to have done, I end up just making that my lunch.

Nothing interesting to the ride, I get to Huairou early enough that I'm going to need to waste time for awhile before trying a hotel. This I do with a two hour massage which, as I'm finishing up, turns in to going to meet a vague work connection that targets the wrong part of the market to be hiring me for a carryout dinner in the park.

The same Jake who requested construction equipment also requested statuary

After we get caught in a sudden rainstorm that turns hailstorm, and eat the first half of our meal standing inside a random someone's unlocked but not actually open first floor office space, he keeps trying to get me to have "only one beer" but I insist on absolutely no alcohol before getting into the hotel room as I want all my potential yelling to be performative rather than actual bitchiness.

The leftover beer made a great lunch break the next day

A sudden downpour moments after we picked up our food to take to the park

Despite lauding my "educating his country's police in following laws", and insisting that I really ought to put online some of the videos I've taken of the police dramatically losing⁴ to me, he declines to actually come with me the last kilometer to the hotel I booked, where the police do—in fact—need to show up, can't—in fact—provide any documentation of rules other than being "very certain foreigner hotels exist", and eventually take photocopies of my passport to register me on their computer rather than allow me behind the front desk to prove to them that the computer system provided by Public Security natively has an existing foreigner registration option.

Given the choice when touring, I would exclusively stay in windowless rooms like this. They are incredible for getting a full night's sleep.

---

¹ So named because she was a very special snowflake and because I don't like using the real names of people whom I have nothing nice to say about.

The top highlight of traveling with her was not, as one might expect, her treating me like a tour guide instead of a tour companion, but was actually her telling me five minutes before a first night dinner of Peking Duck that she was giving up vegetarianism for the duration of her time in China as the decade she had spent not digesting meat proteins was only because of a moral issue with factory farming. The only country in the world where it's easier to be vegetarian is India but no, she was going to get all that yummy yummy meat that she had avoided (out of the ethics that she was happy to abandon for the idea that the way the Chinese raise or slaughter animals is kinder), and then just ignore the havoc it played on her digestion.

On a separate statue photographing side quest for Jake, I came across this Ye Olde Ceremonial Gate

With a 恒山石敢当 anti "evil eye" charm carved into the cobblestone

² The far southernmost and far northernmost points of China

³ A congenitally handicapped dwarf, he claims to have made bank during his years as a train station beggar. His family refused to take any of that money from him and he got into hard drugs. Initially on a motor-trike, travel became his way to avoid knowing where to score. I am to understand that he now runs a corporate leadership and team building training camp.

⁴ A video which would never pass to be published on any Chinese social media platform

Today's ride: 34 km (21 miles)
Total: 417 km (259 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	3
Comment on this entry	Comment	0