D20/B1: Xixinzhuang to Jiaokou 西辛庄镇 → 交口县

September 26, 2018

Obviously this building was here the last time I passed this way but I didn't notice.

In 2012, I rode from Xiaoyi to Xixinzhuang via Zhupu Town. When I got to Xixinzhuang, having just spent 4 utterly miserable kilometers on the S321, I said "fuck it" and took a bus to Jiaokou because I couldn't handle the trucks.

Today, I ended up on a bus to Jiaokou with the same driver.

Yesterday, I rode from Xiaoyi to Xixinzhuang via Zhupu Town. I took what seemed like a slightly more circuitous route (certainly it was a bumpier lumpier route) after Zhupu but, as I've gotten to the point where I openly admit to not actually liking tents when beds (of any quality) are an option and I now know all about checking online maps in advance for lodging options, I was only really expecting to go as far as Xixinzhuang. It's just that I sort of expected I was going to bike the whole way to Jiaokou.

With it's gouged out decorations, this is one of those old buildings that very definitely was Cultural Revolution damaged rather than merely old and fall apart-y.

This is what happens when a wooden column doesn't have a stone plinth

Last night, the cops pooh-poohed both my preplanned intention of taking the X438 through Wenquan Township or the bike shop's recommendation to head down to Shuangchi Town on the S224 and going to Xizhuang Village before taking the X440 most of the way across. Both of these routes still included significant amounts of time on the trucking road and, per the police, would "probably be hard to navigate and not very well paved". Considering what I dealt with on my way to Xixinzhuang, and what I showed them pictures of, I'm not sure why they thought I would have a problem with "hard to navigate and not very well paved" but, whatever.

Conversation with locals both over breakfast and just after seemed to follow what the police had said, however, and the generally abandoned nature of the countryside in this area along with my not having a tent convinced me that the truck road would be manageable.

And it was.

Mostly.

Sort of.

Kind of.

At many grocery stores and other places with scanners of various types, people who don't understand how radiation works or what light is like to add a cardboard cover to keep the scanner from randomly poisoning them. The lack of understanding science on top of the lack of understanding the reasons behind doing something has led to this ayi having a cardboard cover over the printed QR code that you scan to pay her.

This gas station right here is where I gave up and got on the bus in 2012

Signs on ongoing and previous road widenings.

Helped along by being a slightly wider road than it was 6 years ago, a slightly lower volume of traffic, and greater knowledge on my part that the truckers honest to goodness aren't trying to kill me, I did alright on the truck road. Really the only reason I kept stopping was because of this frustrating annoying thing that felt like something was rubbing somewhere only I couldn't figure out what or where. By the seventh or ninth time I'd stopped the get dried on mud out from underneath my fenders and off my brakes, I no longer had any recently acquired shiftable clumps of annoyance to be a cause of the rub wobble rub sensation like a ghostly hand periodically grabbing me and slowing me down without me pulling on the brakes.

To further frustrate me, it clearly wasn't an out-of-true wheel as it didn't happen once per revolution and both wheels happily spun freely when I wasn't riding.

In Dameijiao, I was at the point of being really sure it was probably the front wheel (but no idea what or how or why) and had pulled the front wheel off for diagnostics when I discovered that even though my rim was true, my wheel was wobbling because of something in the hub. This was discovered with perfect timing as the once a day bus from Jiaokou to Xiaoyi and Xiaoyi to Jiaokou was, at that very moment, stopping in Dameijiao.

Upon asking and finding out that there was a bus (one bus) going to Xiaoyi, the person whose shop I stopped at called the bus and had a bit of a back and forth discussion of the "where are you" "I am here" variety that finally devolved into discovering that the bus was 150m up the road from us and willing to wait for me.

The advertising on the bus antimacassars is quite interesting. In 2012 it was for a fertility clinic. (With infertility being defined as having been married like a whole 10 months already and not yet preggers.)

And in 2018 it's for a Drug Rehab Clinic that has Four Star Hospital Rooms and Airline Style Service, and will Maintain Privacy. It's safe, offers pickup and delivery service, and (for a totally unnecessary dose of disturbing) offers birth control implants.

The cause of the wobble turned out to be the un-prettiest collection of trashed ball bearings you've ever seen and, with exactly 90 minutes in which to work before the bus left to go back to Dameijiao, the shop got my wheel apart, replaced the bearings, bitched about the integrity of the people who I pay for regular maintenance and check-ups, and tightened all my spokes.

I'm pretty sure ball bearings aren't supposed to look like that

Talking to the bus driver on the way back to Dameijiao, I decided to just take his bus the whole way to Jiaokou. I'm glad I did. Sitting in the front seat of his bus, I can confirm that hardly anything was particularly scenic or nice to look at and the constant flow of trucks would have had me very stressed out.

Jiaokou is at an exit on a new expressway that wasn't even being started the last time I was here. Having an expressway has brought a lot of changes. The town has buildings tall enough to have elevators. Office buildings even.

I couldn't even attempt to stay at the same hotel as before as the whole block is gone.

The place in Dameijiao where I left most of my bike and most of my gear when going back to Xiaoyi

Today's ride: 9 km (6 miles)
Total: 1,163 km (722 miles)

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