Another day where nothing particularly notable happened during the biking bits. However, as I approach my final destination for the evening, just to the south of the Yangtze and finally out of the Great Developed Corridors of Modernity, I start getting hints of unique architecture such as houses festooned with the double happiness character, butterfly shaped roof vents, or significantly placed grindstones.

The typhoon that Hainan barely noticed has finished dissipating to the point that I even got sunshine yesterday. However, a new typhoon has formed and is getting ready to hit Fijian, so I'm back to gray drear and rain.

A morning flat tire found as I leave my hotel room leads me to a trip to a local Giant bikes where the mechanic is friendly and the shop cats interested in me, but he's also very insistent that we take my rear wheel off and change the tube instead of (jointly) going to the hassle of pulling it out the side and patching it.

This is a problem on multiple levels, none of which will be obvious at the time.

First of all, although we get the wheel back on fine¹, things aren't adjusted quite right and there's drag on the chain that wasn't there before. As part of my reason for switching to internal from a derailleur system is my lack of competency at adjusting those parts², all I can do is identify that Something Is Wrong, but not what or how to fix it.

Next, although all Presta valves look the same and all Schrader valves look the same, and all Presta to Schrader converters look the same, they are not the same. Assuming I can even get the pump head screwed on without completely flatting the tire, the tube that is now in my wheel simply refuses to go above 35psi when taking air from my pump. With the bronze colored adaptor, it won't take any air under any circumstances, and with the green, from 35psi, it starts leaking air out faster than I can put it in.

Obviously, since my tire has just been filled with the shop's full size compressor, this will remain completely unnoticeable until a later date when I go to top my tires off.... and then I'm fucked.

That's in the future though.

The present is continuing flat and straight with occasional outbursts of rain that ought to send me for shelter but which don't because I'm ornery like that and I'd rather be cool and damp than hot and sweaty³.

First hotel that I pick on Maps times out without confirming a room. Second one confirms almost immediately, but I won't know until morning that the hotel owner and I have friends in common until I'm checking out as no one is home when I get there and calling the "sorry we're out" number posted by the front desk just gets me instructions on where to find my key.

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¹ Quick release in Internally Geared Hubs meaning that it's merely a pain in the ass 

² This is not for lack of trying to learn

³ Also, I am now less than 1,000km away from Chinese Boyfriend, and have acquired a reason to not dawdle.