Even if the usual culprits (sleeping in, talking on the phone with loved ones in other time zones, easily being distracted by things on the road and work) leading to embarrassingly short distances weren't in affect today, geography mandated that I not go very far.

Sticking to the National Road (which I don't want to do), there's a town at just about the perfect 60km distance from me. However, no hotels show up on Maps, and although I've previously tried calling police stations and asking them, I'm in Guangdong now and the prospect of being weird on the phone in my non-native language to someone who is also speaking his non-native language doesn't particularly excite me.

Being as today is a Sunday and officially Not A Work Day—unlike the time I sent her to buy 47 fresh coconuts for a party—I must ask Tyra rather than insist and, as she also doesn't feel like calling the police with a "I couldn't find the information I wanted online and I figured you would be the most authoritative source in town" appeal to ego, my options are 1. Do it myself, 2. Risk needing to go another 17km and end up in a county seat, and 3. Go another direction.

Having chosen option number 3, I'll have almost 70 kilometers between tonight's lodging and tomorrow's, but it looks like it should be a river valley the whole way and, even if there are a couple of reservoirs that will surely add some ups and downs on account of the flat being underwater, that's definitely the best choice.

Big road out of town. The midmorning work break takes place in a "I think it looks older than that" stone building that an older man swears dates to a specific Local Meeting in the 50s that he might just be old enough to remember. I get myself a giant can of refrigerated coconut milk to drink while I work and, on account of having wandered into the shop and inadvertently announced my presence, I am joined by half a dozen senior citizens who absolutely, totally, certainly, indubitably are not coming over to watch what the foreigner is doing.

It's just that my patch of shade and stone benches has suddenly become better than games of mahjongg and cards in front of the fan.

For the most part, being as they've already realized I speak Mandarin, they even have the presence of mind to switch into Cantonese when talking about me.

The side road I take for a few kilometers turns out to be just as up and over the mountain as the main road that I'd left, not because of the mountain but because I was tired of the divided highway straightness. It just does it in a much steeper and less paved fashion. I get this year's first pictures of cultivated bananas and a new Dazhai slogan for my collection so, I'm pretty happy with this.

Back on the main road for all of maybe 300m before going to the secondary road that descends and descends and descends into the valley I should be spending all the next day in and it's so damn beautiful, I actually choose to screech to a halt on two separate occasions just to take photos.

A photographer who is not a journalist (despite what the friend in the car with him says) stops to ask me about my trip and ask if I mind him going on up ahead and waiting for me someplace suitable for photos of me biking by. I don't mind at all. Or at least I don't mind until after the photos are taken and friend in the car is nattering on about everything from my heading south by southwest on this south pointing road as being the wrong way to go to the island at the far southern part of China to blatantly incorrect useful facts comparing the Chinese countryside to places like Germany.

After a slow lazy dinner marked by my finishing two of the very overdue entries in this journal and (of course) more emergency notices, I head to the first hotel I saw coming into a town because I like the idea of staying at a place named Marriott.

I'll be finishing up the check in process and in the middle of scanning the QR code when they suddenly decide that actually, they can't take foreigners and, rather than admit to their own xenophobia, it's because they've got no vacancies.

At hotel number 2, I go from zero to hostile at unprecedented I think I've actually lost my temper speeds. They're so dedicated to not backing down on the lack of vacancies that only showed up as an excuse midway through arguing with me (after I was already in an empty room that I'd forcefully paid for) that, after lecturing me on my uncivilized behavior, the police solution is to walk me to the hotel 50m away.

Other than having an elevator, it's clearly cheaper and shabbier than 1 or 2. If I weren't biking, I might care but the bed is soft enough, the water is hot enough, and the air conditioner cold enough.