It's been very nearly a year since I got bogged down on being annoyed by the collage software on my phone making it difficult for me to scroll back more than two or three days at a time.

If you're reading this in chronological order, the February 12 entry–where I was trying oh-so-hard not to get all excited about a job offer that was sure to turn out like the never materializing task mentioned at the beginning of this journal as how I was supposed to be spending most of January and February–isn't that long ago. If you're not reading this in chronological order, just go back a few days to W4 entry for no real information other than I was very late and my lateness was sure to weigh heavily against me.

I got the job.

Or, more precisely, the job got me.

For the first time since, let's call it October 2008¹ and the Pre-Race Services Department of the Tour of Hainan, I've got an employer. 

Which is why there was no 2025 summer bike trip. And since the most likely time for me to finish writing up the text of a journal² is when I'm preparing for the next trip, the lack of a summer 2025 bike trip is why I just never got around to writing these last few days.

As I finally write this, I'm sitting in the apartment I moved into in March³, enjoying my nice ocean view and–for the first time since leaving my parents' house to go to university–my nice furniture⁴. I'm technically in the middle this year's Round the Island (as a relay hike⁵), except that the last two times I carefully planned to go out for three days, and I got a last minute notice of in-person work on the first day; and the two times I decided that they were definitely going to spring suprise in-person tasks on me both resulted in two or more free days in a row. 

I'm specifically not biking on this Round the Island because it's easier to find my way back to Haikou if I don't have a bicycle with me. Also, because I want to do something different. And, because I've got this crazy idea of learning to run⁶ and attempting to do a (half) marathon.

In Qionghai, the morning after this journal came to a sudden stop and wasn't updated for 11 months, I went to the courier station to pick up the stuff I'd bought online, only to find that Chinese New Year-related shipping delays were still in effect and it hadn't all arrived yet. Sat around outside for far too long because the tracking info said that the things I had ordered were on the verge of arrival before coming to the conclusion that I could have a relatively restful ride south to Shan'gen, where I've never previously spent the night, and come back to Qionghai again tomorrow on my way north.

Did anything interesting happen on that day's ride? Nothing that I can think of, at least until I scroll through photos to add them.

Nor, unless you count accidentally finding that I'd booked in at a small hotel I'd actually quite liked the previous year, did anything exceptional happen the day after that.

The day after that, however, that was where the exceptional happened. Not in the ride, but in the situation with the hotel. And, in the grand tradition of Marian Having Situations With Hotels While on a Bike Trip, despite this situation neither involving raised voices nor the police, I'll leave that for the next entry.

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¹ Between the end of that year's Race and the registration of my own company three years later, I had work permits from four different companies including a sketchy stem cell therapy hospital that wanted me to find them medical tourism clients, an overseas Chinese diplobrat trying to convince people other than his parents' friends to fund his environmental protection NGO, and a ski factory. However, unlike the experiences with the travel agency that tried holding my passport for ransom as a contract negotiation technique, the school in Wuzhishan, or the advertising firm in Sanya, none of those companies ever required me to go to the office*, and considering how difficult it was to get my salary out of them, I don't think any of them should be considered as employers.

* Being as the middle-aged German nepo baby who owned the company in Sanya was sufficiently incompetent at everything other than spending daddy's money that he didn't notice when my leaving Sanya for Haikou on Friday evenings in May turned into Friday afternoons in June turned into Thursday afternoons in July turned into only physically showing up for meetings every two or three weeks by September, it's somewhat questionable whether or not that falls into the category of being "required" to go to the office, but I'm going to count it anyways. 

² Because let's be totally honest, the number of times I've finished uploading all the pictures to a journal, or even half the pictures to a journal, is abysmal.

³ I stayed in the old place at least five years past when I really should have moved out, but the combination of well below market rent and the fear of the far too many necessary tasks* involved in moving kept me from considering it until after Typhoon Yagi†, and then I was in the middle of a Tour, and then it was winter snowbird season... 

* Not just the going through and getting rid of stuff, but also the disassembly and reassembly of large pieces of–occasionally antique–furniture I had managed to acquire while living there 

† It's not that anything that wasn't already failing (or failed) broke because of the typhoon, so much as the number of friends whose simultaneous house-hunting hijinks post-Typhoon let me see how much the local real estate market had improved since I moved into the village in 2010.

⁴ The massive antique wardrobe that I've had since shortly after I moved into the old place was (and still is) one nice piece of furniture. Now, however, I've got multiple pieces of nice furniture, and rooms that are thematically decorated with actual decor.

⁵ A hike where every time I get called back to the city, I do my best to restart from the same place I left off. Also, if I find myself in a situation where I need to get a ride to my hotel, I plan to start the next day's walk by attempting to get a ride back to where I tapped out.

⁶ Last year, my bad leg acquired jumping as a skill. And, it's not like I'm a stranger to doing cardio...