D6: 吴阳 → 袂花

May 24, 2023

It is utterly pissing down rain when I wake up which gives me the excuse of spending an excessive amount of time getting up and getting ready. Considering that I neither take advantage of my room food nor make myself coffee, the only excuse I've really got is that I do a stellar job at editing the Shuangfeng Pagoda video¹.

I recently bought myself this adorable little folding phone stand that, so far as I can tell, is intended to provide someplace to put your phone when watching videos or having a call with someone, but which is just about perfect for setting up shots of "Marian bikes into view" and "Marian bikes out of view again". There's also this technique called key frames which let's you do a perfectly smooth digital zoom tracking exactly the object you want to track.

I still prefer the quick and messy "I'm standing in front of a thing" videos that are, at max, three shots (me in front of thing, thing from a distance, and thing from close up) but, although it does require me to intentionally set up takes, the difference in what I can do with just this little stand is night and day in terms of quality.

A certain degree of similarity between today's mural and yesterday's

I have literally dozens of photos of primary schools with a quote from Deng Xiaoping on the gate, and it's always the same quote .... that's not this one

My favorite kind of propaganda has got to be the deliberately vandalized stuff

The stuffy head and headache haven't gone away² and an initial reconnaissance of local pharmacies show that I'm in one of those regions that doesn't do OTC Sudafed but I've still got quite an impressive stash from the gift package I received in the mail in February so I'm not worried yet.

Today is mostly a good day. I get my first random person flagging me down and stopping me specifically to give me a bottle of water; I wave to at least a dozen people (cars, motorcycles, and e-bikes) that are taking a picture or video of me; and if I never actually get to see any Sites of Interest, I at least have a mostly pleasant time avoiding the main road.

Mostly pleasant. There was one bit where I'd missed the turn onto the dyke road, got routed in a great big circle by the GPS insisting I must be on the dyke road, and then had it turn into a messy muddy quagmire of a single track perhaps a kilometer later.

I'm also less than thrilled over a recent update to Maps which has happened on both phones as now I am only reliably being told the location of bookable hotels. While it may be the case that I generally don't want to show up somewhere without an advance reservation, I like to know if a town has more than a few options.

I suspect that the place I would have been heading for the evening (which has the offices of a Qing dynasty Yamen) has hotels. Although it is on the outskirts of a big city, and therefore doesn't really need to have hotels, it is a town and it ought to have two or five somethings that I can call up and ask: "are you a hotel and do you have rooms?"

If the Antiquities Atlas is to be believed, mid 19th century. Local security guard disagrees.

Instead, I've got to change plans and head towards a truck route just south of Maoming City where I'll overpay for a place that gives me attitude over my bringing a bike into their lobby and then doubles down with "it surely won't fit in the room" (when the room ends up being roughly half the size of my apartment). I get the feeling that my no- nonsense I'm not putting up with anything death stare over the first two statements may have contributed to the guy on the desk not even wanting to attempt to say anything about my ID being a passport.

¹ Currently at 1,453 like and 447 comments, it will be the second video of the Tour to crack 100,000 views.

² Nor will they until I start taking antibiotics the next day

Unauthorized Guanyin mural on a closed dangerous bridge

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 455 km (283 miles)

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