Although the day will improve after I pass Ji'an and get onto the gradually being touristified dyke road, it mostly alternates between dull and meh. 

Some of this is the gray weather that is constantly thinking about rain but never quite doing more than spitting at me. Some of it is the sort of non-scenery one gets when a National Road enters a city. Some of it is the constant traffic lights and the cycle lanes that don't seem to have taken into account the needs of two and three wheelers to re-enter their protected lane after crossing the street. 

Most of it, however is a morning phone call I got from one of the detectives regarding that bit of Incident¹-related paperwork he brought up in his phone call the afternoon of June 9th. He has work-related reasons to be traveling to the mainland so he thought he'd find out where I am and come meet me and get the thing that needs signing signed and done with. 

Later, written, communication with him seems to indicate that he honestly hadn't realized how traumatized² I was, or how much it bothers me when they contact me. I also get told that I should approach things logically enough to realize that if he was coming to take me into custody, he'd just use his ability to check the Hotel Guest Registration System and find out where I am and tell the local police to do it, he wouldn't call me up and ask nicely for me to tell him where I'm going to be so he can see if going there fits his schedule.

However, being told that this is literally the final piece of paperwork and I will never be contacted again is still a couple of days in the future. 

Whereas, today's ride is immediately after a phone call that leaves all kinds of "what if" scenarios running roughshod through my brain³ and boring straight roads alleviated by nothing but traffic lights don't provide enough distraction for me to make the intrusive thoughts go away.

My first marked site of interest for the day is a bowlderized pagoda that looks like it might be 18th century beneath the spray-on plaster that I'm sure someone thought was an effective restoration and repair method but it's is ugly as sin. I sit on the steps nearby editing the morning's video not really engaging in conversation with the various people that come by and attempt to engage with me because what if what if what if what if.

There's no marked interesting sites after that but my getting onto the dyke road at least means that I've got a bit of scenery in combination with less traffic and no as-yet-activated traffic lights.

A very fit runner (whose smile reminds me a bit of Chinese Boyfriend) coming down off some bridge at the kind of pace that shows he's run those stairs many many times, yells encouragement at me "aoligei!" you're awesome, and my funk lifts a bit. This is followed almost immediately by my leaving the city behind completely for a newly wide and straight boulevard that may have once had things (which have been removed) and which hasn't yet gotten new things.

On a hot day, or a sunny day, or really any day where I had been feeling better, I would have disliked this road intensely. After traffic lights and trucks and unusable bike lanes and gray and intrusive thoughts, it's calm and soothing. It's also unfinished and comes to an abrupt stop that, once I find my way off the dyke, dumps me into villages with the kind of semi-abandoned 18th and 19th century houses that I like.

Get to my destination a few minutes past official sunset and eat an unexciting dinner at the restaurant next door. Steeled and ready for a hassle at check-in because it's the shitty cherry I need on top of my shit sandwich of a day, the owners are lovely people who make a valiant effort to figure out the computer by themselves before inviting me behind the desk to do it for them.

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¹ On the assumption that some percentage of the people reading this have no idea what I'm talking about, "the Incident" refers to what happened in the aftermath of my receiving a package full of drugs at my apartment in China. Had the police chosen not to believe that I had no clue what the hell was going on, minimum sentencing on the contents would have been three years.

² I'd stopped hyperventilating whenever I knew I was going to need to talk to the police by early on in the 2018 Tour. However, during the times they called me in in 2021, I was unable to eat for the two days between being called and going in.

³ Because it's almost certain that the Wretch⁴ will read this, I hope he's satisfied knowing that his efforts to get revenge on me for something that may or may not have been a DDoS attack (that I had nothing to do with) and a SWATting that existed only inside his head has resulted—over the past five years—in seven trips (of between 2 and 15 hours) to be interrogated by the criminal police, a raid on my apartment, and my taking to heart the lesson of fearing crazy guys on the internet and what they can do.

⁴ If only because I know what he did to me gives him satisfaction that other people are warned not to fuck with him, I would like to avoid using this person's name or directly identifying characteristics.