D16: 新乐 → 石家庄

June 16, 2022

A wall of Public Service Announcements in my hotel lobby

I so don't want to be riding in to Shijiazhuang on the national road. In fairness, I generally just don't want to be riding in to Shijiazhuang at all, but doing so on one of the oldest and most important truck routes in the country is just the added bits of undigested corn in that particular shit sandwich.

The idea had been to completely avoid the big city until—as in 2018—I got to a smaller nearby city, left my bike, and took the train in to first visit the friends from when I lived here and then visit Beijing. Other than Beijing being in a gray space of many things (including the offices of everyone I want to visit) choosing to be closed, one of the neighborhoods with cases related to the Heaven's Supermarket Bar outbreak has been declared medium-risk and this would mean at least another two weeks of having that damn asterisk on my Travel Code.

Possibly no longer a hotel, but the owners of this building were very certain it would always be a hotel and restaurant when they built it in the mid 90s

This doesn't look like approved safety measures

My friends Joy and Ridge are okay with me coming to visit and unworried about the asterisk¹ and, as I've ended up on the 107 a day away from them, their place is where I'm headed.

In anticipation of an available washing machine once I got to their place, I hadn't washed my day's clothes before going to sleep and you'd think, with everything I'm carrying, that this isn't a problem ... but of the four jerseys I'm carrying one is dirty, one is for cold weather, and the clean one must have been damp when it went into it's plastic bag because now I'm smelling my clothing trying to pick the least worst item if not for the people around me then for myself.

Noodle making machine (that I've photographed in wooden handpress style ten years ago)

I'll manage all the meat and about a third of the veg

One of the reasons I lose weight on Tour is because I'm paradoxically less hungry than when I'm not exercising

After taking me to lunch, Mr. Audi from the night before will do his best to subtly ask whether or not the cheap hotel I had ended up at had a shower.

Of the many unusual people I've met on the road, he's among the more unusual. Extremely generous in terms of both time and goods² to a complete stranger who he seems to want nothing from, I then watch him get into quite the grumblefest with a customer who is being "too nitpicky" over "minor issues".

Making tea for me as the woman in the back complains about potentially not imagined flaws in her $2,000 bench

After stopping by the North Gate of the city walls, I take a road that I'm pretty sure wasn't there the last time I rode between Zhengding and Shijiazhuang, turn my GPS off because it's a simple grid based city and I know where I'm going, and promptly manage to repeatedly make wrong turns or overshoot the roads I'm heading for.

Considering that my first attempt (back in 2003!) to ride from Shijiazhuang to Beijing involved my somehow heading south³, I really should know better than to trust my inherent sense of direction while somewhere where that sense is known to not work but it is as it is as it always has been.

If I recall correctly, this is the North Gate enceinte. It might, however, be the barbican.

If you squint just right, you can see where painted slogans (or possibly advertising) was removed

¹ Whether or not their Neighborhood Committee, if told, would have the same degree of lack of worry is another question but retired military who are currently working in their employer's foreign affairs department are somewhat more educated than the general population.

² Looking at the roughly USD 1 million in exotic hardwood furniture in his display room, there's obviously no issue in affording to treat me to a few meals or to insist on giving me some bric-a-brac that will almost immediately be passed on to others, but you don't expect people like that to have the time to suddenly go "I want to take this random person out".

There are tp holders in the bathroom. They do not have tp.

The English signs are actually pretty well translated

Though I'm not sure everything really needed to be labeled

³ I went south the first time and east the second time, before giving up and visiting Zhengding. I had access to tolerably not shit maps and the road signs all have cardinal directions on them. I literally have no excuse for the number of times I've gotten lost in this city and yet, I keep doing it every time I come back.

There's not only a turn lane for bikes, it's kept free from traffic

Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 960 km (596 miles)

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