T - 5: Sunday - A China Coddiwomple

May 22, 2022

T - 5: Sunday

Bonus, it not only costs slightly less than to Qinhuangdao, it's also less than half as much time in transit

Today is the day I buy my airline ticket.

Discounting all the ways this spring's outbreaks of Omicron would have completely fucked it up, I would very much have preferred to depart sometime near the end of March when the weather was just about perfect. However, the sweethearts at my Municipal Exit & Entry Administration have devised a new method (apparently involving a blindfold and a dart board) of determining the length which a given foreigner's Residence Permit will be, which means—even though it's a massive pain in the ass—I shall be grateful for the 51 weeks I got last year; it also means I couldn't even consider what my next step would be until I got my current (also 51 weeks long) Residence Permit back the second week of May.

Only once I had my passport in hand did I even think of starting tasks like taking my bike back¹ to the bike shop for final bits of tweaking or buying an airline ticket.

Not quite as absurdly undersized for me as the theoretically custom titanium dream frame, this steel touring frame by LKLM was given to me by the manufacturer and was "what they had available" to give me for free

Having firmly set my intended departure for last week and been telling people it was going to be Wednesday of this week, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the Friday flight. Mostly, I knew if I didn't set a date, my friends and work would keep nibbling away with "just two days later" events² and departure would get pushed back to somewhen in June.

And that's just too long without leaving the island and too long without a serious bit of exercise to burn off all the weight I inevitably gain when I don't have "traveling from one side of the continent to the other" to distract me from eating out of boredom.

With the bike scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, Friday is plenty enough slop to account for current logistics related headaches and, as a result, the Cajun Gumbo menu that Nathan and Archie's new catering business is doing a special taster set of on Sunday night becomes an impromptu and unannounced going away party as chances are reasonably good that I won't see most of these people again before I leave.

Even if you can't read the Chinese, you can tell this is a flyer from a previous event but I liked the photography better than this one's flyer

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¹ My bike spent most of last year in the bike shop. First, it was waiting for post-Tour maintenance. Then, there was something found wrong with the Rohloff that necessitated my wheel being sent to Beijing for warranty repair service.

² Like the Girls' Night Out I'm not going to on Saturday

Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 10 km (6 miles)

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