Even without milk to accompany them, the Biscoff don't survive breakfast. This is why single serve packaging is important.

One of the things I love about bike touring is being able to notice micro-cultures. Starting yesterday, becoming increasingly prominent today, and eventually fading out completely over the next two days, a substantial number of the people in this region who have built 'modern' type villas and shophouses have decided that the ceilings of all exterior verandahs and overhangs must be decorated with a diagonal checkerboard pattern in blue and white. The majority of the buildings probably have the same boring undecorated ceilings as anywhere else and there's a scant handful of buildings with ceilings decorated in other patterns, but there's enough of them, and it goes on for a geographically long enough period across a chronologically long enough variety of buildings to be more than just one architect's whim¹.

Making up for this bit of national road being one of those bits that actively gets a lot of truck traffic, the weather is downright stunning. Fluffy white clouds in a cerulean blue sky, I'm reminded of the "it didn't necessarily rain every single day" gray overcast of all my photos from the 2008 Tour or the haze that followed me and my parents' train to Beijing on the way to start my 2012 Tour² as examples of how China has actually been managing to successfully tackle some³ of its serious pollution issues.

I'll get into You⁴ County, immediately dismiss the first bike shop and nearly dismiss the second except that my brakes are really worrying me.

With my lack of a Y chromosome informing the mechanic of my total lack of knowledge regarding anything mechanical, he insists that all I need to do is tighten the adjustment wheel before eventually allowing me to browbeat him—if he doesn't have the pads to fit this brake—to sell me a new brake assembly. As the case may be, I am rather mechanically incompetent and I still need his help at removing the old brake pads to see how worn they were and....there isn't so much as a flyspeck of brake compound left on them. 

Given that the new brake assembly (inclusive of brake pads and installation) is a whole CNY 30 (that's about USD 5), I won't go so far as to say I'm happy with the new brakes but at least they make the bike stop.

Deciding that this is now thoroughly enough random crap I don't want to get rid of to finally justify a trip to the post office, I follow the GPS one after another to four China Postal Banks before getting directions, just as the sky opens up in torrential downpours, to someplace that can mail things.

By now, it's too late for them to be open and even if I've still got daylight for riding, even if I'm still in a county seat, even if my period has started and I'm likely to be more irritable than normal, I risk booking in at a hotel that doesn't explicitly say "no foreigners" for a pleasantly hassle free experience.

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¹ Although it doesn't necessarily mean that they were any good at their job, a substantial number of rural buildings are not built by the families of the people living in them but were hired out.

² Which, admittedly, had a bunch of stunning enough to remark on blue sky days in western Hebei

³ When I've got real world cleaner air examples, and given how often I'm translating propaganda all about these major successes, it's hard to remain completely cynical. Though, on that note, this year's Tour has been marked by both an obvious increase in birds and an obvious increase in dead birds.

⁴ Pronounced "Yo!"