D12: 九所 → 海口

January 23, 2025

Today was one of those days where everything went sideways. Because it's both irrelevant to this journal and none of your business, I'm going to skip over all the reasons I'm justifiably annoyed at Chinese Boyfriend and focus all my grousing on travel related things.

First, I started my day off by filming a lengthy sequence on day to day bike maintenance which I wouldn't realize until hours and hours later and with no suitable backdrops for redoing "Marian checks her tires¹" that I'd done it in portrait mode rather than landscape and had therefore rendered it completely useless for the Media Center's purposes.

My keycard and the frosted glass bathroom door have different hotel names on them

First Hope School² of the Tour, my research team³ seems to think it was built with funds donated by the Overseas Hainanese Association of Montreal

The remaining star motif in the concrete caused me to date this bridge to the mid-60s. All the surviving in use bridges on this stretch then turned out to be mid-60s

As it was also both in English and set up as "a middle shot" in an ongoing storytelling sequence, it's also unlikely that I can salvage it into something that works for my almost exclusively portrait mode, almost exclusively Chinese language Douyin.

This section of the Coastal Tourism Highway is also the G225 national road that runs down the west side of the island, and, unless your purpose in being on this Road is to go to one of the dozens of scenic areas that I've mostly never seen any purpose in visiting⁴, it doesn't really have a whole lot of qualities that redeem it to a touring cyclist.

First "this mountain is closed for tree growing⁵" of the Tour

First saxophone player of the Tour AND he resumes the standard pattern⁶ of having biked to a park to practice music

I mean, prior to the bypass being built around the corner where Tianya Haijiao is located, the traffic was orders of magnitude worse than it is now. But, the towns—like Maling "Little Santorini"—are real towns that grew up naturally rather than being placed there by urban planners and the roads just aren't equipped to handle the vast numbers of people who have forgotten how to look both ways before crossing or who think red lights only apply to cars.

Just after crossing into Sanya, this Coffee Car is run by a guy who has a bricks and mortar coffee shop in Chengdu

I'm used to Rural Surrealist Trompe I'oeil, however, this seems to be Impressionism

There are things and places where I would have preferred to linger but I'm hurrying my way into Sanya in order to make it to a bike shop before they close so I can leave my bike with them for a short jaunt back to Haikou and then to Wenchang for the first rocket launch of the year. I will get there with plenty of time to spare only to find that the very reasonable 20y per day storage fee is applied per bag.

With my bike, my handlebar bag, and every pannier that I don't take with me being separately counted as a one bag.

Daniele from Cucina Italia has already said it's okay to leave my bike with them if I can't make it to the bike shop before they close, so I'm off to there because no way in hell am I paying 100y per day just because this shop happens to be a short walk from the train station.

An almost Thai way of having a shrine outside every single home on this stretch

This road in Yazhou is named after Yuan Longping⁷

Except...

The place he and Tessa thought would be good to leave my bike isn't just "not a bike shed," it doesn't even have a gate or fence of any kind. Cause security cameras are totally enough, and besides which who steals bikes?

Get that solved, walk to the tram with two panniers and my handlebar bag because 1) the hook on one of the Vaude bags just gave up after 13 years of service, 2) they really don't have anywhere in the restaurant where leaving my bags is feasible, and 3) Sanya in January laughs at the idea of successfully getting a taxi.

Everything just about handled, I board the train for Haikou only to find that sometime this morning, the launch that was supposed to be the ending segment of my long video has been rescheduled for February 11.

Trees vs. Roadbuilders, this time it's not just old, it's also holy

¹ Because I'm justifiably annoyed at Chinese Boyfriend, and because my super awesome electric mini pump is a gift from him that I frequently photograph myself using (on account of it being a gift from him that he should know I'm enjoying), it stands to reason that it was probably his fault I messed up my video. Amirite?

² A no longer active program where enterprises, wealthy individuals, and sometimes random organizations sponsored the construction of a school

³ Every so often a "why is this" or a "I don't understand that" posted in my WeChat group gets a very in depth answer by someone who clearly took a decent chunk of time to look it up for me.

A second Martyr's Grave, this one is on its own by the side of the road, instead of being in a graveyard

⁴ Only reason I ever went to the Nanshan Buddhist Temple and saw the Guanyin-on-the-sea is because I was taking part in an activity which the Provincial Tourism Development Commission sponsored in 2015, and I've never been to Daxiao Dongtian or Tianya Haijiao.

⁵ Always made of concrete, if these have dates on them, they are usually for a 20 year period that ended no later than 2015. Not sure if they are no longer doing this method of reforestation for the purposes of eventual harvest, or if they now have other ways of posting notice

I wanted to be impressed by this absolute beast of a touring cyclist who looked to be in his 60s, and is doing 160km days, but he was incredibly boring to talk to, and had a superior attitude at me when he still thought my Rohloff was a pedal assist motor

⁶ All of last Tour's sax players were fruit sellers

⁷ Known as the Father of Hybrid Rice, he died about two years ago. The majority of his life's work took place in Sanya

Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 801 km (497 miles)

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