D2: Beihai City to Xichang Town

February 5, 2018

There are various degrees of cold which are measured not by marks on a thermometer or windchill but instead by how much clothing you have available to wear and whether or not you can duck inside a heated building. As a result, when I get off the ferry it is not merely cold or even fucking cold, it's ridiculously fucking crazy cold. Hopefully, when the sun properly finishes its job of rising it'll get warmer. It must. It has to. It's currently colder than today's weather report's predicted low.

I maybe got 6 hours of sleep last night. That's being generous. The boat was so slow and so steady that, so long as I didn't try to walk down the hallway to the toilets or anything like that, I didn't even notice it moving. Walking down the hall was sort of an exercise in being a pinball bouncing off one wall and then another like a hopeless drunk.

Not having anywhere to change, I'd slept in my thermal bib tights. Luckily it had been cold enough that sweating in my sleep was not a problem and therefore nothing had gotten damp and there was no risk of chafe or otherwise unhappy skin. Unluckily, it meant that I had nothing warmer to wear than what I was already wearing. I'm at 21° North Latitude. I should not need to be dressed like this. Thermal bibs and a regular jersey and a thermal jersey and a thermal vest. But I am. And I'm still cold.

Heading the right direction this time? Maybe?

After I turn myself around in circles seven or eight times in the quest to find the right direction without actually talking to anyone at this ungodly hour of the morning or squandering my extremely limited phone battery by looking at maps, I see a Starbucks where I spend at least an hour on a ham and cheese panini (with surprise raspberry jam) and a passable latte. Then I head to the closest bike shop because why the fuck is my rear tire leaking and no there's way in hell I'm dealing with this on this level of sleep or in this level of cold.

I'm in some part of Beihai I've never seen on either of my previous trips. Crumbling 19th century buildings that look a little like Portugal and a little like Malaysia. Bike shops number one, two, and three don't patch tubes anymore. They only swap them. Number four, however, the Giant, he's cool. Plus, he's able to give me useful road information that there is a shorter way than what I've planned by using some unmarked ferries that he is able to tell me how to find.

A building from the 1920s that once belonged to someone famous. It's look dangerously unrestored.

I bike out of the city into a blustery headwind and if the day weren't so godawful fucking cold, I might even be happy.

These apartments have giant holes in them. Reason given is Feng Shui but it probably doesn't hurt in terms of wind load.

As I've chosen not to take the main road out of Beihai (been there, done that) I have to contend with the surface of the not main road.

Around the time I get lostish looking for the small roads I decide to just turn my GPS on and give it a try. I'm not sure what I think about this. I like that it gives me all sorts of useful information like "turn here" or "ride straight for 200 meters" or "you have already ridden the equivalent of 7 laps around Tiananmen Square" but I feel like I just followed directions. I didn't internalize anything. If I had to go back, I'd not be able to find where I turned or where I should turn without using it again. I don't like that.

Now this, this is the kind of scenery I like

I eat a decent meal of soup noodles near a medium sized village wetmarket. The sun actually comes out from the behind the clouds. It's still godawful fucking cold. And gray. And windy. I'd be utterly and totally and completely miserable if I were on the main roads but the weather, my lack of sleep, and that occasionally gasping certainty that I can't breathe whenever I bike past someone burning crop stubble, they aren't exactly combining to make the scenic rural scene fun.

At least most of the time when the rasping turns to coughing, the coughing turns to gagging, and the gagging turns to vomiting, I only lose a mouthful or two of what I've most recently eaten. (One of the reasons I don't wear a helmet any more is that if I have any breathing problems at all, ever, at any time, the strap across my throat is a fabulous trigger for making me vomit.)

On the plus side she was able to put a zipper back on my wind vest. On the minus side, it turns out the zip track is also broken.

Once I've eaten lunch—and kept almost all of it down—I'm feeling a lot better. The fact that the weather is now merely cold as opposed to cold and ugly also helps.

I kind of can't believe this toll bridge is actually a location my GPS knows

I suppose there must be plans to put an actual bridge across this piece of water.

Not just a toll bridge! It's also a drawbridge.

I think this is one of the most beautiful pieces of post-apocalyptic redneck engineering I've ever seen

This Rural Credit Union building is so very very 90s

It says what kind of a shit mood I was in that I passed a temple with interesting lions out in front and all I did was stop to take one picture of one of the lions.

I hit the wall while I'm looking for the ferry. Not sure how many of them were xenophobic assholes being douchetards and how much it was just exhaustion on my part but it really felt like they were all jerks. Especially the part where they'd laugh and laugh and laugh because I'd said something funny like: "can you speak Mandarin?"

I'm long gone past dragging ass by the time I limp my way into Shagang where, for some godforsaken reason the only things resembling open restaurants aren't serving food. It's another 14km after that before I make it to Xichang though at least I get a little fruit and a fried shrimp cake into me before I face that.

This looks like an open restaurant to me. Does this look like an open restaurant to you?

When I get into Xichang, my first step is to find dinner. I end up being so wiped that the effort of eating all my hot seafood congee while it's still hot is too much for me. I find a hotel, take a long hot shower, and crawl into the blankets, not even caring that the bed is hard.

Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 92 km (57 miles)

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