D23: 大名 → 南乐

June 25, 2022

I am absurdly impressed by this spare.... um... tire?

Today is once again hot and miserable weather. After failing to make coffee in the room on account of nowhere to put the burner¹, I'm unimpressed by the number of flies in the lobby² and decide instead that today's caffeine will be Coke.

Finding myself unable to make myself interested in the Walls around old Daming City or even to go for a wander inside the walls to see what sort of crowded wonderfulness is there, I head towards the bike shop visiting first a Merida whose mechanic isn't there and then a Giant who diagnose my problem as the shop in Quzhou failing to replace a spacer when they took my crankset apart³.

Of all the places to put up a Covid checkpoint, the gates in the city walls have to be one of the most logical I've seen yet.

Anything that uniform must have been rebuilt in the past 20 years

They do not have a spacer of the right size or shape but are pretty sure the next real city down the road ought to have a shop that will and that this issue, while annoying, won't get any worse. On account of their Wrench explicitly contradicting his boss who says "oh, any of the Giant shops in that city should be fine" with "Trek is probably your best choice", I decide that he knows what he's on about and don't backtrack to the Merida for a second opinion.

Between having my wobble looked at, grocery shopping, and lunch, it's now the hottest part of the day so I also get a foot massage at the place next door and have the mud washed off my bike before I finally leave.

Then, it's "hit the road" for the discovery that the Judge Dee Stone is behind a locked fence and the stele museum probably isn't open⁴ for reasons that could be Covid or could just be the wrong day of the week.

No playing in the fountain or taking water from the fountain for other uses

From the vantage point of being one of the crowd watching the crowd watching the tire change, I cannot say anything about people who find mundane things interesting

Diy sandals on a fellow cyclist at the Giant

From that point on, it's basically main road for the rest of the day. There's a short bit where I cross a village going from one main road to another but I don't know what the Hebei/Henan border crossing is going to be like in terms of Epidemic Prevention and Control and while there are probably plenty of rural routes which will allow me the option of avoiding them, however if they're Covid testing at the border, it's possible that this could be the difference that makes or breaks the evening Check-In Experience.

There's a general requirement to have had a recent test (though I'm not sure how recent) and I'm all prepared for my photos of the last test to get me pulled off to an office area while people make phone calls except that I scan the code, enter my info, and get a 48 Hour Validity mark for the test I took two mornings ago in Jize.

I could have fucking sworn this kind of stone meant something. Everyone, however, tells me I'm wrong

I am gobsmacked.

The Hebei database is so fucking broken for foreigners that there is no way while in Hebei—inclusive of the crippled clusterfuck that is Hebei's link to the National Code no one uses—to electronically access any records that I've been tested. However, crossing into Henan, their query on my test status returns the test I had in Hebei!

Just as I couldn't do Real Name Verification in Tangshan because the limited-to-a-20-character input database had sufficient access to realize that "Marian Deborah Rose" is not my full name, the data which Hebei was producing on me which Hebei could not read is also accessible to those places whose systems were not programmed by retarded monkeys.

Can I interest you in purchasing poisonous snails?

Despite this surprising turn of events, I'll still take a look at the hotel distribution pattern of the first small town after Nanle and decide to start the Henan part of my trip by risking a stay in a county seat. However, unlike the previous night, I make sure that I'm appropriately fed, watered, and rested before heading in.

And they were just "umm...yeah, going to need your passport for a photocopy and I'll ask the police the rest of the procedure cause I don't remember. We haven't had a foreigner since before the pandemic started⁵."

"This price is only available to mainland Chinese guests." Not seen that one before.

They're so pleasantly accommodating and nice and easy to deal with that the largest delay in my check in was them helpfully upgrading me to a room with a window and needing to be downgraded back to the windowless room I specifically wanted. Then, instead of the usual "our washing machine is a pain to deal with so we don't like customers to touch it" that either results in me being given a washbasin or results in someone hovering over me as I do my laundry, they tell me to get all my grubbies together and they'll bring them back to me after the wash is finished.

And with the exception of the handful of times where I paid to have my laundry done, I don't ever remember that happening.

¹ The leaky air conditioner leading to the floor being a small lake

² I don't think there's a particular hygiene issue. The past two days, everywhere without window screens has been full of flies or fly swatters.

³ No judgment will be made on if taking the crankset apart was necessary to successfully stop the noise that they made stop, but I will also note that the pedal they messed with is now missing it's dust cap.

⁴ Loads of people in my comments section swear it is open and I should have gone. I swear I saw information that it was closed, possibly at the entrance.

⁵ Kicking myself that I forgot to ask about them every having had foreigners.

Today's ride: 33 km (20 miles)
Total: 1,331 km (827 miles)

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