June 28, 2021
D74: 徐家坪 → 略阳
I did not sleep well last night. Mostly, this is because I didn't sleep. With the rain fly over the hammock per the advice of the workers from the nearby Old Age Home who came over and chatted with me, it was a good 5 or 6℃ warmer than it might otherwise have been and—as in Daqiao when I'd similarly been unable to wash up before a warm sleep—I was uncomfortably unable to fall asleep as it seemed as though everything itched.
Cooling off to comfortable around 1am, I found that rain on a hammock-tent is substantially, substantially, SUBSTANTIALLY louder than it is when there's another inch or five of space between your ears and the fly.
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Around 6am—maybe a bit earlier—I was awoken by a dog standing perhaps 5 or 10m from the edge of the area that could roughly be considered as "my" site barking it's head off to announce to anyone that was listening that Something That Wasn't Here Yesterday Is Currently Here.
I took this as an opportunity to get out of the hammock, pee, eat a piece of fruit out of my handlebar bag, and swallow a couple of Benadryl as the previous night's general sense of itchy unshoweredness had now resolved itself into dozens of mosquito bites along every bit of skin that had been pressed up against the thin nylon fabric of the hammock.
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This helped knock me out until past 10 when the general temperature of the outside world and the rain fly's lack of ventilation cooked me out of bed.
Given that there was work on my plate, I probably should have made yesterday a short day and stopped in the town where my temporary companion turned back. Then, instead of a long day followed by a very short one (because of the poor night's sleep), I'd have had two ordinary length days with one of those being a low effort day where someone else was carrying most of my luggage.
At the same time though, when all this Covid stuff is over and borders are open again, I still want to ride from Amsterdam across Europe and Russia to China and I need to get info the habit of being able to sleep outdoors.
Although a few cheap and nasty places showed up at the 13km point, I continued to the County Seat and—on the basis of my being back in Shaanxi Province—celebrated my ability to book online by booking a hotel that was squarely in the mid range of what the city had to offer and which clearly indicated¹ that there would be no problems with my being a foreigner.
Since I'm mentioning "no problems", you know—of course—that there were problems.
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I can't think of any way of doing it², but I'm really feeling the need to find some way of finding what's in the Records about me that some senior police apparently have access to but which the on-the-scene first responding officers don't.
Although I try not to get to that level, do in fact have specific strategies (like eating first) to keep "that level" from happening, there have been plenty of times where getting angry and throwing a temper tantrum has solved things; there have also been plenty of times when logic and a call to senior officials for advice has solved things; there have even been times when a hotel has called the police about my refusing to leave the lobby without a room key and the police have immediately taken my side.
Then, there have been the times like tonight.
This wasn't as blatant as the angry one handed³ passport snatch followed by a phone call made deliberately out of earshot, and my passport being handed back to me with both hands and an apology. It was, however, very clear that they looked me up and that they really didn't like what they saw.
It started with the standard beat cop behavior of separating the angry parties and appearing to listen attentively while calming them down⁴. At this stage of things, no matter what they themselves think, the police will actively work to make sure both sides think that the police agree with them as this approach gets people to more cooperatively provide information that leads to an eventual decision (or an eventual arrest). On the basis of having done this (a lot), I was rather confident that it was going my way but I should note that the hotel was also confident.
When the slightly more senior officer (as evidenced by being the sort of person that doesn't just have a bodycam clipped to her shirt) showed up, it was very definite that I had won.
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By the time the Very Senior Police Officer (older than the other three, and obviously no longer subject to physical fitness requirements) showed up, we were already at the stage of booking me in. However, he was there to let me know—on behalf of the Government—how very sorry they were for the inconvenience caused by the hotel's inexperience⁵, and how much he hoped that I was having a lovely time in their County.
He also insisted that I not trouble myself with attempting to shove my bike in the lift that was so pitifully tiny you wouldn't even have been able to swing a cat in it (partly because the cat would disagree and partly because I lacked a cat to swing), and I certainly shouldn't want to be discomfited by having my bike in my room where it might be in my way when I could instead put it behind the Front Desk and have it be in their way. After all, they were just service staff, and it was their obligation to suffer minor nuisances for the benefit of customers such as myself.
¹ By which I mean, although I paid with yuan after booking via my Map program's link to Qunar, they were listed on CTrip's foreigner facing platform Trip.
² China doesn't exactly have a Freedom of Information Act for me to invoke
³ The polite way to take something, especially something made of paper, is with both hands
⁴ Americans of an age with me will understand my referring to this as the "Mr. Rogers Technique". The police are quietly disappointed in you for being angry and shouty and really think that you should use your words rather than your emotions.
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⁵ Inexperience in this case meaning that they had told me they weren't going to honor the price I'd already paid, wouldn't accept extra money to bring the amount paid up to whatever "new" price they were actually selling rooms for because they "forgot" to update their listing, actually didn't have any vacancies tonight, and that it was my responsibility to cancel my nonrefundable booking because I surely couldn't be expecting them to take the ding for the booking website failing to realize that a hotel which had explicitly listed itself as foreigner friendly didn't want to take foreigners.
Today's ride: 23 km (14 miles)
Total: 2,803 km (1,741 miles)
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The others aren't in print yet but I've been paid and the publishers are the ones who hired me.... and I've been paid...so being in print will presumably happen.
2 years ago