On my first (gloriously failed¹) attempt at bike touring, I was able to get a bus back to the city. On my second  (also failed) attempt, I paid a minivan driver to take me to my door. The third attempt (and first actual Tour) had a truck driver at lunch offer me a ride that I was able to take on account of there not then being limits on random people getting in the cab. The fourth had a bunch of coaches, mostly from coach stations but also one bus. The fifth had me flagging a minibus from the side of the road because I didn't think I was going to make it to lodging before nightfall.

I don't do that anymore. Not because I'm better at planning, or in better shape or more in tune with my body， or more capable of looking up advance information about what's ahead of me. I don't do that anymore, because I can't do that anymore².

The ever improving roads in China and the increasingly interconnected transit network have—perversely—led to it being less possible to hitchhike on a bus. 

You would think that better transit means more busses that run A → BCDEFGH (as opposed to A → B) with lots of stops for people (and small cargo³) to get on and off but it's actually the opposite. 

Where once twenty deathtraps crowded with people plyed a rural route at unfixed intervals, there's now a regular bus with molded plastic seats and a transit card; the minibuses that used to meander through the countryside have been replaced by spoke-and-hub networks of strictly scheduled oversized vans that only stop at fixed points; and the rise of mobile phones and the ability to call someone (possibly even via an app) to come and get you means that—even if local Traffic Safety policy still allows them to commercially operate—the tuk-tuk and jeepni type vehicles don't prowl the roads in search of customers.

I'm 3,500km into this year's Tour, and today is the first time I'm pulling my bags off my bike so I can hitchhike. I'd have to check, but I think this may be among the farthest distances I've traveled without ever getting a ride of some kind. 

That's not, however, what makes this ride extraordinary. The thing that makes it extraordinary is the vehicle giving me a ride: a pick-up truck driven by the captain of the Lianyungang Petrochemicals Base Fire, Emergency Rescue, and Safe Production Brigade.

If you didn't get the message that they've closed off a 20km² area to people without access passes, their usual response to someone who rocks on up at the series of gates they've put across the (still designated as a National Road) road is to make them turn around and go the long way. But, the people who usually show up expecting to come this way⁴ are on motorcycles or in cars and, while they might be annoyed by a 70km detour, it's not that huge of an issue for them.

I, of course, am on a bicycle.

So the gate guards feed me watermelon and radio for permission to get me an escort and I get to add a very unusual member of Chinese Emergency Services to the list of special vehicles I've ridden in or on⁵ while bike touring.

As things would turn out, the totally random courier station I picked to have my most recent taobao purchase sent to is within a shopping center inside the small "r" restricted area where the people who work at Petrochemicals Base live, so getting this ride is perfect as—had I done the detour and come in from the north—I wouldn't have been allowed in.

There were other parts of the day that were interesting or enjoyable (especially the windmills⁶) but they just don't compare to the ride with Fire Services and therefore aren't worth writing about.

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¹ I wanted to go to Beijing from Shijiazhuang. Beijing is 300km northeast of Shijiazhuang. Forgetting for a moment that 50km a day was pushing it or that I had a single-speed upright bike or that I'd never checked in to a hotel that wasn't in the Lonely Planet, I started out by going southwest.

² But,

 I can pull up an app on my phone and order a cargo truck to come get me and take me and my broken bike from wherever I am to the closest bike shop.

³ The rural logistics system which the bus network used to support was fucking amazing in terms of getting random stuff⁷ to places that weren't well served by the post office.

⁴ Without realizing that it's a piece of strategically key infrastructure that's also got a bit more potential danger to uninvolved folk than your normal factory area

⁵ As follows:

• Beijing, 2008 - Escorted by airport police on the expressway because no one could figure out how to give me surface road directions to Capital Airport and this was easier 
• Gansu, 2012 - Ambulance after my high-altitude issues. 
• Hainan, 2013 - Park rangers refusing to let me keep riding after a crash where I ultimately needed stitches
• Yunnan, 2014 - Escorted by Armed Military Police to an "approved campsite" (inside a border control station) 
• Hebei, 2016 - Police (military?) Vehicle when Snowflake and I ended up inside a Closed Area
• Gansu, 2018 - Police escort when a patrol found me walking very slowly after dark without a headlight
• Guizhou, 2020 - Police car when I effectively got stranded on a mountain that I totally would have eventually made it down myself
• Guizhou, 2020 - Police van that "coincidentally" was on patrol in a location where they could pick me up before I got stranded.
• Shaanxi, 2021 - Forest Fire Prevention motorcycle when I asked for directions to a 1,100-year-old Buddhist Grotto that they thought I wouldn't be able to find on my own.
• Shaanxi, 2021 - Bored local police enjoying the challenge of helping me try to find a 800-year-old Buddhist Grotto
• Shaanxi, 2021 - Police car when I ended up inside a Closed Area. 
• Hebei, 2022 - Police car when there was a lodging problem that wasn't my fault

⁶ Imagine a 20km stretch of "almost able to see the tidal flat" beach road with wilderness the Chinese call wasteland on one side and the sound of ocean on the other, on a road two lanes in either direction with a bike lane and the set-up for a Rapid Transit Bus Line that's never been started, and hundreds of windmills whirring away to a tailwind.

⁷ For example, in 2014, when I forgot my fingertip pulse oximeter at the place I'd spent the night, they were able to deliver it to the bus station along with my phone number and - a few hours later - the driver pulled over on the side of the road and handed it out the window.