to Hutubi: One more day down G30

September 6, 2016

It’s so nice to stay in a hotel with an elevator. Especially when the room is above the first floor.

We head out going east on a nice side street for the smaller traffic. We ride 7kms to get to a round-about where we need to make the decision whether to go a little out of the way 4kms back to G30 or take the G312. We decide either road will be busy with traffic, the G30 gives us a nice shoulder and no worries about oncoming traffic. We head for G30 one more day. The shoulders of the G30 are littered with chunks of coal, wood debris and worst of all shredded tires. Today Patrick has a flat front and rear tire, while Rachel has a slow leaking rear tire, all probably caused by the small metal wires that emerge when truck tires shred. We are carrying four spare tubes, but this is getting ridiculous.

The corn fields are ready to harvest and those that have been harvested, we see heaps of corn scattered for drying on side roads. Red peppers are also piled in the fields for drying. At exit 686 we leave G30 for the last time. Just before entering Hutubi we stop at a roadside restaurant for a noodle dish. It is another Uighur run place with nice lagman noodles, and a meat, celery and tomato topping.

Patrick had read in another CGOAB blog about a hotel on the main street. We find the main area of town and start asking where there is a hotel. We find one but after first thinking we have a room, when we show our passports they say no. They give us directions to another hotel. Patrick takes passports in with him, the desk staff get on the phone to ask if we can be given a room. The answer comes back: no.

They direct us back a block, one man on a motorcycle to show us, to Holiday Wuyang. Thinking this might be out of our budget, pleasantly surprised they take foreigners at 265 yuan. A cart is brought to unload our luggage, bikes stored in the luggage room, and we are shown to our room. Large and very nice.

We have lots of tubes to patch this afternoon.

Adding some air along G30. We each have a slow leak, probably caused by a little metal wire from a truck tire, and are too lazy to replace the tube. So every day or so we add air to keep them at pressure.

Our fancy "approved for foreigners" hotel in Hutubi.

The hotel spawls, fortunately we can leave our bikes in a safe room at the reception and use a cart to haul our bags.

Today's ride: 81 km (50 miles)
Total: 21,855 km (13,572 miles)

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