D15: 屯昌 → 官塘

February 22, 2024

I'm beginning to think that I don't possess the ability to get moving before noon. It doesn't matter when I wake up or what the status is of my journal updates or video editing or social media checking, and it doesn't matter if there is or is not work or whether my clothes were prepared the night before, I just can't get going

Today's excuse was some tummy grumbles that didn't quite hit the level of being an actual upset stomach. Had a shit when I woke up, again after my first bite of oatmeal², then when making my coffee. All told, I think it was five or six times. But never with the feeling bad, simply farts that definitely weren't going to only be a bit of bad smelling gas.

Hella impressed with this driver's skill at sharing the road

Considering the in-room oatmeal, I was feeling kind of like a cop-out in also going to get lunch at Tastien³ but the route that the GPS sent me on ended up being quite devoid of places I could have stopped to eat more than packets of crisps and ice creams, so it probably wasn't a bad thing.

In order to maximize "roads new to me" and to avoid any backtracking of roads I'd ridden yesterday, I'd originally figured out a very complicated route to Qionghai. However, notifying the people I knew in Qionghai that I was coming, the one South African couple³ enthusiastically invited me to come to their home and they were enough south of the city proper that I didn't even need to set any intermediate points to get a road that was 100% places I had never been.

The amount of thought that has gone in to staff uniform design and other branding is insane

Everything combines traditional Chinese elements with fast food. Even their name is a transliteration of "tasty"

Because this pump was a gift from my boyfriend, I have an unusually large number of photos of me using it

At first I was on a former county road that had been upgraded to a provincial route.

Then I was on a county road.

Then I was on a numbered country road.

Then the numbers went away.

The first time I had to get off and walk up hill, I might maybe originally could have pedaled it if I hadn't screwed up shifting and gone from the middle ring to the big. The second, third, and fourth times, it was a combination of steep enough to be difficult to push with fatigue.

Pizza had been ordered for 7pm and the road was supposed to be mostly downhill for the last 30km so I kept refraining from pushing my arrival time back, but—especially with getting some of those descents where walking is the only safe option and a quick piece of work from Media Client—if I hadn't had pizza and people waiting for me, it would have been awfully tempting to give up on the cusp of sunset at the first actual town I came to.

While photographing this pagoda, someone helpfully came up to me and told me the pagoda is manmade. I responded that pagodas are usually manmade and was told "except for the ones that were built by gods."

But I had people (and pizza!) waiting for me and I wanted to socialize while stuffing my face with delicious fat soaked carbs, so I spent those last 20km doing the kind of uninterrupted speed that my smartwatch not only showed me going from "intense" exercise to "aerobic" but "aerobic" to "anaerobic."

It was really only the darkening sky (that only finally got dark enough to need a headlight in the last 10 minutes), this road was lined with an astonishingly large number of old houses and mansions that, on daylight ride⁵, would have previously required my usual slow dawdling and exploration.

When Jianlibao starts tasting good, I know I'm exhausted

I've never really explored much of the Qionghai countryside and, even with the Bo'ao area having a mansion that's a nationally listed Heritage Site, I'd just kind of assumed there was nothing like this in Hainan. Glad to be proven wrong though. Equally glad for how flat it was now that I was booking it.

The streetlights weren't the greatest but they were good enough that I also didn't absolutely need to pull out my headlight⁶. Not that there is any guarantee that they'd have been better drivers if they'd more clearly noticed me, but—while still on the small roads—there were a few times where cars coming from the other direction and passing something slow-moving came way the fuck closer to me than I was comfortable with.

A couple of their neighbors met me at the gate after I found their housing complex, and then the people who knew me were wanting to hug me while I'm literally dripping with sweat and can feel the dried salt in my hair, which was simultaneously this awesome feeling of being liked and just being really grossed out cause I totally wouldn't have wanted to hug me in that condition.

In to the shower without even bothering to take my clothing off, I can't describe why, but especially when you know you have access to a washing machine and aren't going to have to be squeegeeing the excess water out of the clothing and you aren't actually doing this as part of the first round of laundry, there's something that just feels extra good about getting undressed in the shower.

¹ While I did have pizza at Happy Monk during the Emergency Work Break, it doesn't count as "Tour Pizza"

Astonishingly ugly statues on a sluicegate bridge

Sadly, this particular reservoir did not mark the end of the up

² Assorted raisins, peanut crisp, pickled turnips, and lard

³ Of course, they were out of the duck burger that I wanted, but their chicken burgers are better than Wallace or KFC.

⁴ I've known them for about a year. They've known me for much longer. In being introduced to some other friends who were over their for dinner and drinks, it was quite the disconnect realizing that they thought I hadn't really liked them until about a year ago, and I had to admit that this was actually around the time they had become differentiated from the mass of "international school teachers who come and go" to actual people with names and personalities.

⁵ Like I'm going to have to figure out how to do when I continue

⁶ Which, honestly, is bright enough that the darkness outside the immediate circle of what I can see is now extra dark and I end up in a zen state of only experiencing the road in front of my wheels and nothing else.

War Against Japanese Aggression memorial

That apparently (but not actually) dead tree is a kapok

Once again, I found myself within a year on my Guess the Age of the Bridge Game

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 895 km (556 miles)

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