In 2017, on account of my discovering the historic street in Longgang that we probably would have come across if we'd gone up the road to my previously planned (but abandoned because "lazy") pagoda to the north of Longgang, I already proffered an apology to Myf about us missing out on cool shit just cause 2015 me just didn't feel like it.

Now, I've got to go and apologize to him again because, that same day, when we stayed at the really miserable roadhouse in Jiajiayuan, he was unable to convince me to walk into the offices of the totally no longer a tollbooth and say "hey, here's a picture of me and the tollbooth staff in 2008, and I thought I'd say hi". Myf was certain there would somehow be someone who remembered me from 2008 but I thought seven years and a change in what that particular government building did made it far too unlikely to risk momentary embarrassment.

I wasn't supposed to be staying in Jiajiayuan tonight. I was supposed to be staying in Honggang another 15km down the road. However, I forgot about the rather large climb shortly before Jiajiayuan and, even if I skipped the pagoda again¹, even if I limited my visit to the Longgang historic street to photos and no video, it was still an hour past dark when I rolled up to the intersection where a dust and sweat covered me once asked "can I look at your maps?" because going into a bricks and mortar store and buying a map of someplace other than Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, or where you currently are just isn't a thing in China and now that I had crossed into a new province, I had no way of knowing where anything was.

Even if I hadn't had what would have been a long and sweaty day (inclusive of something like 25km of roadworks) I'd camped the night before so I was probably pretty ripe smelling. In any case, I remember enthusiastically agreeing when someone who heard me say I planned to camp if I didn't find a hotel before dark² offered to let me use their showers. 

I then came out all damp and fresh smelling to a Very Angry Manager who didn't think staff should be letting homeless bums use their showers. Watching the mental gymnastics of my transformation from "homeless bum" into "foreign tourist", I was soon enough invited into his office and it wasn't much longer after that that phone calls were being made and permission sought for me to spend the night at the tollbooth offices. 

I'm pretty sure I still thought I was sleeping in my tent and that I was putting my tent in their courtyard parking lot but, when I got back from dinner at a trucker restaurant across the road, a bed in the guest dorm had been made up with a bunch of flowers in a plastic mug perfuming the air.

After me, at least three other cyclists were hosted by the Jiajiayuan Tollbooth. Two of them, a foreign pair heading south to Hong Kong that same year, wrote in their journal about how they went in search of traces of Marian, because once they found one place that I had been welcome, they found that the people I had liked were all very likeable people. The other one was a Chinese person who found my name when they signed the tollbooth Visitor Book.

On the hill before Jiajiayuan, there are a number of places with signs for lodging - the countryside resort place with the advertised open air swimming pool doesn't answer their phone; the gas station restaurant and its second floor rooms for truckers are both dark and look to be locked. Descending, there should be a half dozen places or more like the roadhouse where Myf and I slept in 2015 but I don't even see the remnants of signs for them. With each passing year, Chinese roads get better, logistics get better, and the services³ that once existed everywhere for the people who made their lives on the Road gradually fade away.

Then, I'm at the Jiajiayuan Tollbooth intersection. It's a Weigh Station now. The restaurant across the road looks to still be there. Both it and a small shop to my left have signs out. I vaguely recall not liking the restaurant for some reason or another so I start with the shop.

Thirty yuan with a fan and I don't need to go any farther in the dark? Yep. That works.

And then, while I'm sitting in what I shall euphemistically refer to as "the hotel lobby" eating ice pops from the freezer, someone from the Weigh Station comes over to pick up drinks and goes "you look familiar....did you come this way before?"

¹ Although I skipped it in 2008 and 2015, I did climb up to the top in 2017. 

² This being back in the day when I deliberately didn't carry a headlight because I thought it would encourage me to find lodging before it got too late.

³ The few times I've been on a modern truck route this trip, the petrol stations have showers and washing machines and the convenience stores sell everything from beer to a car outlet powered rice cooker.