There was so much lovely scenery going on today by heading north that I mostly don't regret the later discovery that neither the large city I'm aiming to use as my jumping off point for a Guangzhou Interlude nor the much smaller city I end up in are on the train line to Guangzhou.

Mostly.

Really the only problem I'll have with where I end up tomorrow and how it effects my trip to Guangzhou is my waiting until too late to buy my ticket and my ending up with a seat instead of a bed, but—at 21 years in the country—I'm overdue for the right of passage of taking an Overnight Train in hard seat¹ class.

Besides which, even if I had known this, it wouldn't have affected my needing to go to today's destination as today's destination is the newest location I picked for getting the thumb brace and, even though it's not hurting as bad as it was, the relief in my shoulder and neck within an hour of putting it on will show that I definitely still need it².

Aforementioned lovely scenery notwithstanding, today is another day where I can't find anything sufficiently exciting as to be worth making a video of. Considering that I consider everything from a "no livestock on the expressway" sign to the art of vintage metal Rural Safe Electricity Usage posters valid video topics, I find myself wondering if the twenty some odd days that have passed since my last Interlude are causing me to get into a rut or—as my videography and editing skills have improved—it's really just a lack of anything sufficiently unique enough to make me want to spend a whole hour of my life in documenting and sharing it.

At the kind of "place with an elevator" that I used to avoid on account of dingy family-owned places being more likely to only care "are we making money" than random staff whose potential refusal of my business is just a way of making their shift less hassle, the Front Desk calls her boss to ask how to deal with me and I get checked-in without being registered³. I also, in her flustered confusion of a Foreigner staying in her hotel, get given a key card that—despite her carefully affixing a sticker with my room number to it—hasn't been activated, so I have to go back downstairs again and fluster her even more.

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¹ I almost managed this all the way back in 2002 on a trip from Shijiazhuang to Xi'an but I discovered how to upgrade to a berth somewhere around midnight.

² Without going into the bizarre weirdness of my malingering post-vaccination muscle soreness being worst in the arm that's only ever had Sinovac, the self-diagnosed issue appears to be a kind of tendonitis that isn't particularly affected by or related to the biking.

³ Since I got so proactive about registration post-Incident, I have learned (outside of the temporary epidemic prevention and control rules no longer in place) that all fines and penalties for my not being registered are entirely on the hotel, so I'm not quite as insistent as I have been some years.