D37: 黄集 → 太平

July 12, 2022

Again with the very late start. Again, at least in part because of work from the Foreign Affairs Office.

It's been quite some days now since I last made coffee. Knowing that I'm using up a portion of time when the weather will actually be enjoyable for riding, the rituals surrounding my slowly enjoying a cup as I go over my morning social media are less enjoyable than they ought to be. That, or the fact that my beans are already 7 weeks old has become noticeable to my snobby palate in ways that help lead to a chilled bottle of Coke 0 being more appealing.

I love the Greco-Roman revival style of Chinese courthouses

A distant building made of structural brick, the numerous windows indicate it was probably a workshop of some kind rather than a warehouse

Memorial for a specific martyr, it is (of course) locked up because no one would want to randomly visit a place like this

Non-rectangular windows, blue glass, white tile, must be late 80s or early 90s

Today, however, I will make coffee. I will sit outside the hotel and chat with the owner¹ and two of his friends and make coffee. They are politely interested in the coffee making but, although they accept having a small cup (split three ways) forced on them, they have no real interest in the coffee.

Although it won't be anywhere near enough food to fuel the day's ride, and I won't even realize that I hadn't eaten enough until dinner's calories are producing an all over body high, breakfast is mostly the fluffy honeycakes bought the previous day at a shop inside Dengzhou's restored city walls.

A lightpole in the middle of nowhere seems to be a great place to post a warning about the dangers of private moneychangers

No fishing! Violators will have their fishing rod confiscated.

First time I've seen a tile mosaic public service announcement on the proper application of fertilizer

Then, with basically zero regard for the fact that it's coming up on the hottest part of the day because it's only 37° today and not 40°, I'm off for a very pretty ride east along rolling countryside hills where nothing I attempt to find exists and my greatest accomplishment of the day is successfully managing not to get heatstroke.

Coming in to Taiping as night falls, I pore over Maps and my listed lodging options as I don't quite wolf down my food. There are a lot of places. They are also, now that I'm checking carefully, mostly marked not open or aren't answering the phones.

Apparently this is just the name of the town and not the name of someone famous from the town.... which ruins my theory as to why there was space themed public art

Two interesting rural "theme" hotels. One is also a dentist, the other one is a hotpot restaurant

Paying for my meal and a Sprite Zero², I start round the corner towards a flashing "rooms rooms rooms" sign that doesn't appear to be any of the marked hotels, and discover that it's both one marked as not open and is open.

This is then followed by a frustratingly long, inefficient, and annoying check in procedure which includes highlights such as "I thought I successfully signed up for the Hubei Health Code, why is it asking me to sign up again" and a bunnysuit from the local hospital showing up at the hotel lobby to test me³.

Sometime between the early 80s and the mid 90s.

The map clearly shows this narrow little bridge as the former main road but I think the bridge has been rebuilt in the last decade

The worst thing about it all isn't that it took 90 minutes. The worst thing is that everyone was so fucking professional and nice and willing to admit that they didn't have a goddamn clue what they were doing and would therefore need to ask someone above them for advice and guidance, that I'm going to have to write a letter praising them.

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¹ For reasons I have never figured out, in a family owned business, I always assign the label of "owner" to the first person I meet. With its "owner and his wife" in this case, it can just as easily be "owner and her husband".

² Carbonation is like spicy water and zero cal stuff has flavor enough to make me drink more than I would if just water flavored water.

These straight trunked trees provide fuck all in the way of shade

³ Because of a combination of factors including it being my secondary phone that stayed behind in Shifosi while I went to Zhenping and not my primary one, and Big Data not being as comprehensive as it ought to be, I have not been yellow coded as a time and space tracked secondary contact. However, even if they didn't have it yesterday evening when I came through, this part of Hubei now has swab-on-entry for people coming from that part of Henan so—without quite knowing that I technically⁴ fall into the bucket for mandatory two tests in three days—they want me tested anyways.

⁴ Big Data hasn't connected the dots. However, at least one Epidemic Prevention & Control supervisor spoken to on the phone has realized that there probably aren't two bike touring foreigners.

Seems like it was only yesterday or the day before that I saw my first rice paddy of the trip

Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 2,213 km (1,374 miles)

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