D38: Bắc Kạn to Na Rì

March 13, 2018

The change in grade isn't usually quite so obvious

I wasn't expecting to go quite so far today. If the hotel which I thought existed had in fact existed in a "visible from the main road" type of way, I'd still have been cutting it very close on making it before full dark, but I would have just barely squeezed under the line. As it was, the hotel (if it exists) appears to be about a kilometer off the main road in what satellite view clearly shows as a field. A phone number is provided on Google but I don't speak Vietnamese and given how few minutes of precious precious sunlight I had left to me before I really was possibly going to find myself having to walk in the dark, I decided that looking for the hotel or asking for information or trying to find someone who could help was more trouble than just going another 8 kilometers.

I wasn't expecting to go quite so far today but, even so, I really shouldn't have spent as much time as I did faffing about this morning. Work accounted for maybe as much as an hour of the time I spent at the coffee shop and I'm reasonably sure I didn't actually get on the road until very nearly noon. What with knowing I had mountains today, this was extremely irresponsible on my part.

It was also irresponsible on my part when I stopped for fruit at around 4:30pm and accidentally discovered a not marked on any maps Nhà Nghỉ not to stay there. I didn't even parse the sign at first. It's just that when I u-turned to stop and buy fruit, I overheard like six different people say the word "Nhà Nghỉ". (One of the rare advantages of having next to no language is that the few words you do understand literally JUMP out at you.) But, I thought now that I'd come down the worst of the mountain that the road was going to be flat. I didn't know that it was going to go up 50 meters and down 50 meters and up 50 meters and down 50 meters and up and down and up and down and up and down the whole rest of the way. It looked flat on the topo!

The morning (or the noon as the case may be) started out with a lovely long downhill. I lost close to 200 meters of elevation in just over 10 kilometers. Furthermore, since I was a real main road, I lost it with giant sweeping curves, broad shoulders, clear sightlines, and generous banking. It would be as fast as I'd go all day.

I turned from the QL3 on to the QL3B crossed a bridge and promptly found myself heading up. As previously mentioned, I've temporarily lost use of my super granny gear most likely from cable stretch and I don't trust my personal skills at rear derailleur adjustment enough to risk losing more gears. This makes me even prouder of the fact that I never got off and walked. I may have added a whole bunch of zigzag switchbacks whenever I could sufficiently see that no traffic was coming but I did not get off and walk. I also managed, for the first time ever, when standing up on the pedals to hit 100 rotations before I absolutely had to sit back down again.

It's still this steep and windy -after- roadworks have been done to make it less steep and windy!

I'm pretty sure, even in Yunnan in 2014, I have never had an uphill quite like this one. Thankfully, the same gray nasty and intermittent sky spitting that had contributed to my just not wanting to leave the coffee shop this morning also kept things pleasantly cool. I managed the whole day on the morning coffee, one water bottle, and a salty lemonade drink purchased about halfway up the climb.

When I got to the top of the pass, that's when things got gnarly. Although I was still on the part of the road that had been upgraded, the blind curves and occasionally signposted 11% grades just weren't something I was comfortable riding down. Even if I had perfectly adjusted hydraulic disc brakes I still wouldn't have been comfortable. Twice, I got off and walked. Once over a kilometer. I made it all the way up hill without walking but I couldn't manage the same feat going down.

About 80% of the way down the big mountain, the road stopped being upgraded. It narrowed from two lanes with acceptable width hard shoulders and really nice banking to slightly wider than a large truck with dirt and gravel that had been driven on sometimes. This was also around the time that I started getting into villages and having various obstacles like small children or cows.

The up down up down up down up down which I would do rather a lot of in the 50 meters of actual elevation drop I still had left before the end of the day was unfortunately within that fuzzy space where it's difficult to see on the laptop and impossible to see on the phone. I wish I knew why Google currently insists on getting rid of the topo lines when you zoom in too far.

I never changed provinces so I'm not sure what happened with the road improvements. There were clear signs that there had been some intention of continuing them but those signs were just as clear that it had been some years already since they'd not been done. Many of my sharp curves with steep dropoffs had most of a wide curving cut through the mountainside already cut. Just not cut all the way or turned into a road. The smoothed off sides of mountain ready for a widened road that hadn't been widened had been smoothed off and graded far enough in the past that they were starting to grow greenery and trees and in a few cases had collapsed from landslides.

The expensive parts (cutting into the mountain and regrading) have all been done but the road has never been built

On one of the few straightaways, I managed to high-five a couple of kids coming downhill on bikes as I was coming up. That was fun. A while after that, some guy on a motorcycle u-turned and pulled up alongside me and after trying a few times to talk Vietnamese at me while I just looked confused at him, he reached out, shook my hand, and left. I'm not sure why but I really do think the people in rural Vietnam are nicer on average than the people in rural China.

When it got dark dark, so dark that I really ought to be walking my bike instead of riding it, I rode very slowly. I waited for cars or motorcycles to come up behind me and I used their lights for as long as I could. It was only 3 or 4 kilometers like this but even so, this would be a perfect application for the headlight I never carry. Really though, it's day 38 and while I've raced the sunset three times this trip, this is the first time I've lost the race. Seems kind of silly to carry a headlight when that's how much I'm going to use it.

For dinner I had some fried spring rolls, some tofu, a can of beer, and a can of passionfruit juice. Basically, everything edible from the convenience shack across the road from the first open hotel I saw. I've got mountains again tomorrow. I'll have to make sure to eat better.

Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 1,871 km (1,162 miles)

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