W1: 白沙

February 2, 2024

First "frisky dogs" of the Tour, complete with a third (very loud, very agitated) dog watching from the roof of the building

I'm pleased to say, despite yesterday's rather insane terrain and exertion levels¹, today's decision to stay in Baisha was borne not of physical need but a combination of work and logistics.

As previously mentioned, I'm currently handling an over 40,000 word proofreading/polishing² job with the promise, should I finish it in time, of being given another similarly huge job. This is one of two massive projects on my plate, though the other one³ doesn't have a deadline and isn't really suitable to hotel room type working conditions. More importantly, in terms of biking, the cool location and interesting person I specifically want to visit on a work day are somehow only two days away from me and riding today would mean getting there on Saturday (i.e., not a work day).

Banana, sunflower seed, protein powder oatmeal with a salty egg and a dollop of lard to get me started, I take my time slowly and carefully making coffee. Adding in a barely noticeable amount of honey causes the okay if you insist that these are "notes of mango" to really pop.

Work, work, work. Pay for my next night online cause I don't feel like putting on clothing and, what do you know, even when I pay online through an OTA⁴, my second day still costs less than the first! Frustratingly, since my whole reason for paying online was "not wanting to put clothing on," my online payment triggers someone coming upstairs to take a picture of the payment screen on my phone as—and I quote—something is fucked up on the computer.

This is also how we discover that I'm checked in to room 506 with a keycard for room 506, but the open door I let myself into last night is room 508.

This is the room I was supposed to be in.

It lacks the Crimes Against Wallpaper of the room I'm in

At least the horizon is even in this one

Around 3 or 4pm, I go out intending to get a massage four or six doors down the street from the hotel. I can't find any obvious staff or awake people so I let my GPS point me somewhere about 600m away, and promptly get distracted by the 9-passenger open air electric buggies the town is using in lieu of busses. I actually pay 2× the fare just so I can ride to the end of the line and back to where I started.

I don't know how massage place number two compares to the first attempt, but I'm well pleased by both the price and quality, and even more pleased by the blind massage guy feeling the need to ask a sighted family member whether or not I was pulling his leg about being "not a Chinese person."

I was going to say that all the rooms with open doors had better decór than mine...

Bought frozen dumplings on my way back to the hotel intending to cook them on the "hotel safe" mini hotplate I have for making coffee in places where I shouldn't be using open flames, but I was impatient about not poking at the cooking food and I end up—instead of having pork and chive dumplings—getting a kind of pork and chive flavored gruel.

Then, I went back to work.

¹ The smartwatch shows me at 2,583 calories above metabolic baseline, on less than 40km of human-powered distance.

This is their local bus! Isn't it adorable?

² Or, in this case—because the combination of a short deadline and non critical content means that I'm not getting the source text for comparison, and the majority of the issues are clearly from the quality of the source Chinese—complete rewriting.

³ Translating a book on the religious rock carvings of Tang and Song dynasty southern Sichuan.

⁴ Online Travel Agency

I noticed this last year, when leaving Baisha. All of their local Public Service Announcements⁵ are jointly posted by the Traffic Police and the Tax Bureau.

⁵ Text reads: Drunk drivers of motor vehicles may face criminal charges, the revokation of their license, and the inability to get a new license for a five year period.

Refusal to pay taxes—in addition to having said payments and late payment fines levied by the authorities—will result in investigatation in accordance with the law.

Today's ride: 2 km (1 miles)
Total: 319 km (198 miles)

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