By now I was back on the G30 and so I couldn't cycle in the dark again. Instead the plan for this day was to simply go fast and try to cover as much distance as possible on the expressway. And that is exactly what I did. I took very short breaks, kept my average speed high, and covered 150 kilometres. Aside from the not-very-exciting fact that I saw more areas of corn farming and a lot more desert it seemed like this day would pass without anything worth mentioning happening. And then something worth mentioning happened.

It was almost dark and time to camp, but difficult to get off the G30, because of the steep embankment and barbed-wire fence (although I could slide everything down the steep embankment, I wouldn't be able to get it all back up again in the morning.) So it was with some relief that I hit upon a solution. Finding a gap in the fence at a flood defence that was also raised higher I escaped the expressway and pushed my bike around on the top of this flood defence. It looked like this:

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But the flood defence also had steep sides and there was only one place where I could get down. Even then I had to take off all the bags and carry everything down individually. I took down the first two bags, and found myself in a relatively flat area that was protected from the wind and hidden from the road. It was rocky and not perfect, but it would do for the night. I was exhausted so I took a seat on the ground to rest for a moment before going back up for the other bags. It had been another boring and tough day, but it was over now and I could rest easy. But then I saw something on the ground a little way in front of me.

Holy-moly, is that what I think it is?

Oh man it is.

You have got to be kidding me.

That can't be real.

Sh!t it is real.

No, it can't be real.

But it is. It is what I think it is.

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I poked the skull with a rock. I was pretty sure that it was real. It looked pretty old and had a big piece missing from the back of it. My best guess would be that it had been dug up when the flood defence was being built and none of the workers had wanted anything to do with it. Maybe that was why the side of the flood defence wasn't smooth here and I could get down.

Either way I didn't very much fancy sharing my camping spot with a human skull. My first instinct, as you may imagine, was to get as far away from it as possible. However, there really was nowhere else for me to go. It was getting dark and climbing back onto the G30 to cycle further wasn't an option, nor was there anywhere else to get down off the flood defence (I did check again!) So I was kind of stuck here with the skull. I decided that if we were going to be spending the night in each other's company we should at least be friends, and so I named the skull Fred. But then I thought that Fred wasn't a very Chinese name, and the skull might not like that, so I renamed him Ow Mi Nek.

Even though me and Ow Mi Nek appeared to be getting along very well I still couldn't quite bring myself to camp right next to him, so after it was dark I went a little further away to pitch my tent. Traffic couldn't see me now because it was dark, and, although I was a little more exposed to the wind, the lack of human skulls was a bonus.

I spent the night sleeping a little restlessly. Every time the wind flapped at my tent my imagination envisaged the ghost of Ow Mi Nek coming to kill me. And every time a truck beeped it's horn my imagination envisaged the ghost of Ow Mi Nek farting. But the night passed and morning came without any ghosts doing anything, and I packed up and prepared to leave.

But the really weird thing about this whole episode, and this is so creepy you really aren't going to believe it, but when I went to carry the first of my bags up to the flood defence the next morning, well, the skull of Ow Mi Nek.... it was gone!!