I don't know much of anything about Huanggang beyond it having been the source of a series of textbooks that apparently plagued Myf's childhood in Beijing. Huanggang is not, in fact, supposed to be my destination. Luotian, which I passed through in 2008, is.

However, after a great deal of staring at the topo map, I come to the conclusion that even if 27 year old me had no problem making a single day's ride from Huangshi (where I'm going to meet a friend) to Luotian, 41 year old me will not be happy doing it the other way round.

So, I abandon my plan to swing farther east than truly necessary, to seek out the Luotian Giant and the Luotian bike club, and the itty bitty ferry crossing I made in 2008 when my nice two lane macadammed road suddenly turned into dirt and decide instead to head to Huanggang.

First stop of the day is technically a Confucian Academy with actual ties to Confucius from when he was still alive. Technically because I get to the stone bridge a few dozen meters before the parking lot and I realize that I don't actually have the necessary brain cycles available for actually enjoying someplace like this the way its supposed to be enjoyed. It's a pretty ugly bridge too, a stone plank variety that basically substitutes massive pieces of stone for simple wooden planks at the cost of ensuring that no boat will ever pass beneath and no cart will ever easily roll across.

On account of there being so damn few of them left versus arched bridges with nicely carved lions and the like, I'm going to assume that bridges like this were easier to build, required less skill, and cost less, and were considered less worthy of being repaired a few centuries down the road from when they were built.

Leaving the environs of the Academy I didn't visit, I take some higgledy piggledy farm roads that get me out to the national road without having to backtrack.

Generally, I'm not a fan of being on national roads if I can avoid them but this one is alright. Featuring stretches of up to 5km at a time of fully upgraded Class II highway¹ interspersed with bits that last look like they were widened when Xi Jinping was a county level official, I'm just about getting tired of the one when I find myself back on the other again.

As well, even before I turn from one national road to another, the detritus of the ages is still visible if you know how and where to look. Today it will take the form of a guesthouse that closed 30 years ago, a rotting 1960s movie theater with the pebbled stone façade that marks it as having last been freshened up in the 80s, a supply cooperative where the gaggle of old folks playing cards nearby get into quite the heated discussion over whether it's 50s, 60s, or 70s, and late 90s town department store.

Then I turn off for the second Site of Interest that I won't visit. I get at least as close as I did to the first before realizing that Lin Biao is both one of those Important Revolutionary Leaders who I know stuff about and whom I have no kind of interest in seeing sanitized for tourist consumption. Besides which, it's also past 5pm and I tell myself that any staff at his Ancestral Home have probably either gone off duty or are about to.

By the time I get into Huanggang and get dinner, I've not exactly been chasing the sunset but I've been riding fast nonetheless cause it's a big flat road and it's really really boring.

Turn the corner outside the restaurant to check on the possible lodging whose flashing sign I've seen but they've got a second floor lobby so I go another 5km farther to a booked in advance place where the certainty that this is a love motel² serving a nearby university has me cringing with the expectation of trouble that never comes. In point of fact, getting checked in (properly and on the computer) goes smoothly and, after paying an extra 20 to get the a/c remote, I'm up the stairs and ready to pass out.

¹ Like a divided expressway with bike lanes and crosswalks

² My room's round bed kind of confirms this.