At the final tea stop we were met by a bunch of people who'd come out from the city just to see us. Including a group of reporters and photographers from the various daily papers.

         With a cup of hot red tea and too much sweetened condensed milk in me I couldn't face getting back in the car for another hour. Especially not when I heard that the route we were taking in from here was going to involve off-road bits. And look, here I was with an off-road bicycle.

         In the past when there were events involving newspaper photographers I was pushed up near the front to be seen in all my foreign-ness. But sometime between the July ride around the city, the September parade in Danzhou and now I stopped being a foreigner and started being a "one of us". I'd never been farther forward than the middle of the pack since day one and I wasn't going to be now. Even for a staged photo.

         If you know exactly where to look in the newspaper you can see the edge of what might be my helmet. Might be. There was another rider with the same brand, model, and color of helmet.

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         We went down towards the expressway and turned off on some random dirt road that could only be found by someone who knew it was there and knew where it went. From there I did my best to stay up near the leaders so I wouldn't risk getting lost. It wasn't too hard to do, compared to everyone else I was very well rested. I'd had an easy day the day before and an easy day today.

         We got to a paved road, waited for most people to catch up, went about a hundred meters and turned onto another dirt path. Twist, wind, twist, turn, around, down, splash, mud, rocks, twist, and suddenly there was pavement full of parked cars and a new looking building with a courtyard full of familiar faces.