D21: 三亚湾 → 保国农场

March 3, 2024

If you've ever dreamed about being stuck in traffic in a supercar, Sanya has rentals available to fulfill that dream

I've discovered why my smartwatch is recording so many more calories burned from walking than it is from biking! It's not (just) because biking is so gosh darn efficient; and, it's not because I more consistently spend 45 minutes in a row walking than I do biking¹.

Nope.

Although they are being used ornamentally, I wouldn't be surprised if these palm oil palms are also agricultural in nature

An example of the current infatuation with all things Tents and Camping

A somewhat expensive looking RV that would have been set up as a sort of hotel room at an RV campground where all the RVs are permanently parked. Except the camp is closed, and the RVs are all going green with moss.

It's because my watch's battery saving mode for "not actively exercising" doesn't read my heart rate as often as it does when I've told it I'm actively exercising. (And here I'd just figured the reason I wasn't chewing through my battery in Haikou the way I did last summer was because I wasn't always poking the screen and looking at the kinds of current data that are multiple menus deep when you aren't sportsing.)

I figured this out while walking my bike the last couple kilometers into Baoguo in the dark². Data geek that I am, I've noticed that as I've practiced walking more, I've gone from roughly 100 calories recorded for every 1,000 steps taken to more like 75. So, when I did 1,000 steps and the watch only showed 15 calories burned, I knew something had to be wrong.

No destroying or damaging rail facilities or associated landscaping

Report to railway management or public security any person or organization who is illegally occupying railway facilities or signage. (Judging by the size of that phone, this has to be based on an older drawing)

Speaking of railways, that's an oops on this bus stop translation

Cue poking around at lots of menus and a couple reboots later and I'll be ready to test things out on tomorrow's ride (which will confirm the hypothesis).

Anyways.... what about today's ride?

Left my hotel around 11:30 having skipped coffee as the strap I've added to the Coffee Bag to address the little wobble that totally isn't because the Coffee Bag is wider and longer than the bag these mounts are designed for turns it from a "quick release" one press and go system to an "easy release" which requires actually thinking. So, since I really don't want to think prior to having my coffee, this is reducing my coffee input somewhat.

The greater Sanya metropolitan area is full of these decorative boulders with corrected capitalization... because of a viral video of mine

Every time I can't find a toilet and duck behind something to relieve myself, there's always evidence that someone else previously had the same experience

Caffeinated with Coke Zero instead. Then, as the leftover focaccia from Cucina Italia that successfully stayed in my stomach after the post-medicine lung-clearing coughing fit triggered my gag reflex wasn't feeling like enough calories for riding, I also got a big plate of Xinjiang noodles from one of the many shops catering to the enormous population of tourists from northwest China that like to come to Sanya for the winter.

As the number and percentage of central Asian faces and body shapes increased the farther I went to the northwest, I'm guessing the large historically Hui³ town (with an enormous mosque) just to the northwest of downtown Sanya has something to do with the number of people from Xinjiang⁴ who come to Sanya as opposed to any of the rest of the southern coastline.

I wonder how much of the Very Obviousness of the keep out military property signs in Sanya are because of things like the summer 2007 mountain biking incident where a bunch of us accidentally found ourselves inside a control area

From Sanya Bay to Fenghuang Town, I'll ride two or three streets inland from the coast, as much because the traffic doesn't annoy me and the scenic prettiness doesn't interest me as because I'd completely forgotten until I was writing this entry that I wanted to see if what's happened in the last 15 years to the historic gun emplacements that used to be semi-camoflauged with landscaping and bougainvillea bushes.

After Fenghuang Town, I'll turn inland on a road that is simultaneously completely unfamiliar to me and weirdly familiar. Other than my one and only time riding it being about 17 years ago, it doesn't help that it's undergone regrading and widening as well as gaining some buildings. Being as that time in May 2007 was one of those trips that didn't get journalled, and it's from the two year period where all my digital photos were lost, even with that trip having a handful of oft-revisited core memories associated with it, it's kind of surprising how much I remember, like the crazy steep climb flanked by sun drenched mango orchards where we got heavy overripe fruit (that we hopefully paid for) off the trees or the rest on the climb after the Ningyuan River (which may have already had a reservoir by that point) being how and when I discovered that the weird soft Chinese sausages with bits of corn in them are actually kind of good.

I think the street signs and landscaping trees help to show the steepness

It wasn't the steepest road I was on all day

But, as can be seen from this creative example of road widening, it was the steepest large road

I know the first time I crossed the Ningyuan River was in February 2006 on my first Round the Island Ride, when the road dropped 30m farther than it currently does and everyone got off and walked their bikes up the other side.

I think the last time I crossed the Ningyuan Reservoir was in December 2009, in the back seat of a Mercedes Benz that was driving to a meeting in Ledong County where I would pretend not to understand Chinese so that my client could determine whether or not the other side's translators were telling him everything.

Approaching the Ningyuan on a very newly cut and graded section

The road to the old bridge 30m below the surface

So, yeah, funny what I can and can't remember on roads that I've either been on only once a long time ago or no more than two or three times an also long time ago.

At least with things like that first ever tin of eight treasure porridge with a lid that folded out into a spoon eaten while we waited on the traffic police to come handle a drunk motorcyclist side swiping our support vehicle or the terrifying ride in the dark because the muscle powered part of our group had unwisely spent our daylight hours waiting for the traffic police, it's because I have my journals from that other site (that I'm sure I'm going to get back online again someday).

Really weird having such a wide boulevard with nothing to either side

Old government offices in Gaofeng Township

At least some portion of today was done on roads completely new to me. I know because we didn't have GPS back then and we mostly didn't go haring off on adventures down little paths that might or might not go through to where we trying to go. Also, the farm roads I'm on don't look to have been paved for that long.

I suspect the extra three or four kilometers that might have been added to my day by not getting routed to the shortest route very likely would have been less steep and would have meant that I wasn't coming into town after dark, but you win some and you lose some and I really quite enjoyed the full range of roads from boulevard to small throughfare to things so steep I had to catch my breath while pushing the bike.

Spectacular riding, this section may have been the most perfect combination of width, traffic, and curves that I have ever had the pleasure of calmly descending really really fucking fast

What motherfucking dumb fuck asshole thought it was a good idea to install speed bumps on the descent⁵?

¹ Seriously, who goes forty five whole minutes without finding something interesting to stop and look at?

² I've found that I really like the head-mounted headlight on my head, but the one I've got right now† doesn't play nicely with my helmet, and although I'm totally fine about riding helmetless, my head is really the only place I can put my helmet. Helmet on handlebars is okay for really slow riding or walking, and the combination of pitch black moonless night and only a few kilometers left to go had me walking.

† My first head light was a bit smaller than the current one and had straps that were long enough I could wear it over top the Big Straw Hat that's often on top of my helmet. However, and with the blessing of the person who gave it to me, I gave it away to a chance encounter who was doing substantial amounts of night riding with no lights at all.

³ An ethnic minority that are effectively the same as the Han, but Muslim

I love that even a road as small as this warrants a brush trimming crew, though I personally think the sand being washed off is more important

⁴ The seven months I lived in Sanya in 2007 were from May to December (with me spending a substantial percentage of the fall in Haikou working for the Tour of Hainan), and I generally don't come down this way at all (let alone in the winter), so I can't say if seeing non-local-to-Hainan Muslim Chinese is a recent development or not.

⁵ There were half a dozen of these, and I'm guessing they were installed by someone who doesn't like that people are going fast now that the road has recently been repaved. However, with placement that very well could kill someone, I've already filed a complaint with the government hotline.

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 1,280 km (795 miles)

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