The latter half of 2023 has been an absolute nightmare.  You would think with covid behind us that things would open up and business would rebound but it's surely not the case. 

After the end of the zero covid shitshow, the economic impacts remain and they are quite severe.  I would daresay they are irreversible.   All around I can see things are very pessimistic and people live in dire straits.  Without relying on any meaningless official data, local governments are indeed bankrupt due to the expenses of maintaining zero covid as well as the lost income from the property market collapse.

On the ground, we see many local businesses closing and unable to survive whether they be:  gyms, massage shops, bars, restaurants, stores in shopping malls, or other business that would have ironically been most  affected during the actual pandemic.   There seems to have been a delayed effect where China is now experiencing what many other countries went through in 2020-21.  Now it's like a slow moving economic train wreck.  You know things are bad when bosses and shop owners just run off with the money since they know their shop is going under anyway.

It's definitely time for a holiday.  Combine all the economic doom and gloom with work pressure, I'm at the end of my rope, still in surival mode, and unable to start booking a single flight out of here.  

But first things first, the old Montague bike needed to be fixed up.  Bike shops were among the many others prone to economic bad news of course.  The smaller ones closed down long ago.  If there were any shops still open, they were halfway across town.  That all meant complicated logistics to fold the bike up and take in a taxi, but eventually the repairs got done that were needed.  And then a practice ride around town in the afternoon.

The weather was very good for such a practice ride and I headed out to the suburbs.  The bike was performing exceptionally well, and even better than my new one actually.  Maybe it was the lighter tires or less friction in the chain.  Whatever it was, this bike felt like it sailed along. 

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The riding was going absolutely fantastic until turning around and coming back to town.  For that I passed the south station, then all of a sudden not one, two, three, but FOUR cops jump out of the shadows and onto the bike lane path.  My guess was they were going after electric scooters, but they were actually targeting me.  They had all jumped out about 100 meters ahead.  I stopped riding and waited to see what the cops would do.  It quickly became apparent they were looking directly at me and running in my direction like a pack of wolves!  I had no idea why or what I had done to spur this on, but I wasn't about to find out.

In a quick second I reversed course, rode the wrong way down the sidewalk, crossed the traffic light then turned left and went another route.   They were on foot so I would definitely have the advantage, which I did.  The cops were outrun and outsmarted.

My only guess is that in these economic times, the cops are DESPERATE for money and will come up with any excuse or reason to stop someone and fine them for what they choose.  It's not like the law means anything,  some foreigner on a bike is a target good enough.

For that reason, unfortunately, the onus is on you to realize these things and not get caught in these situations.  It is also making sure you don't pay too much up front for gym or massage memberships, lest the bosses run away with the money which they will.