T-4: Thursday

May 11, 2023

Sometimes, you just need to gorge on cheap sushi

Today was a busy, busy day.

I picked up all the bits and bobs I'd recently mail ordered, got my hair thoroughly cleaned and cut (with the back of my neck shaved all the way up to the bottom of my helmet), did 2,000 characters of translation for a Bayer AgTech press release, finished a section of Tibetan Medical Bathing, edited a book release announcement for the Foreign Languages Press, finished six more minutes of the Taishan documentary, and discovered that the miniature power banks I'd bought were too big for the sunglass cases that I'm using as physical amplifiers that also protect my bluetooth speakers.

I've had the undercut every summer since roughly 2004 (when I moved to the tropics). Raising it to helmet level and adding the rattail dates back to late 2006 or early 2007.

I also acted as a headhunter for the Baishamen Night Market for foreign-ethnicity vendors and introduced the Kazakh-not-Russian lady I previously mentioned as being a capital-I-level "influencer" to the China Daily for a project from May 14 to the 22nd that wants a high follower count European to visit Sichuan.

If I had had any downtime, which I didn't, I would have spent that downtime poring over the gloriousness that is the China Antiquities Map Series which I just got sent in PDF form by a most excellent professor of archeology and fellow distance cycling nerd. Although I don't have the time to do anything with it right now (there are 500 pages just for Guangdong Province!), I see myself annoying my long-suffering assistant Tyra at some point after I'm on the road and asking her to find me some good detours of things no one has ever heard of.

Speakers, power banks, and a sneaky picture of the environment at 570 Café

That, or since I'm reasonably sure that I'm going to end in Tianjin¹ spending some time with the Chinese boyfriend (who lives there half the year), I might just send the Tianjin section to him in search of places the two of us can visit together by motorcycle².

¹ The original plan was to go from Shenzhen to Inner Mongolia, via Jiujiang, Jingdezhen, Suzhou, and Tianjin. However, on account of my wanting to get C19 Shot-5 as soon as I'm eligible for it, I'm instead going to take the ferry and ride along the coast to Zhuhai before popping into Hong Kong for Indian food and the jab. Even before the Chinese boyfriend's location became a matter worthy of adjusting plans, I was already pretty sure this would make Tianjin my end point

Seen here are the first mini hotplate I bought (600w with an on/off and a temperature controller), the much smaller one (300w, no controls), and, for scale, the sunglasses used by the Wuzhishan 1867 Continental Cycling Team³

² He's an Ironman Age-Category Winner with aspirations of getting enough finishes to go to Kona. Even if he's willing to do so, I'm pretty sure we will not be biking together.

³ One of barely a double handful of Continental Teams in the country, the team owner is one of my oldest friends in China. Needless to say, if I needed or wanted any race kit other than sunglasses, I wouldn't have a hard time getting it from them...

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 78 km (48 miles)

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