D14: 睦州 → 斗门

June 2, 2023

I've come to realize that my being sufficiently interested in rural temple art as to take a dozen pictures of the Pusa doesn't actually translate into anyone else wanting to look at the subtle variations in all the carved wood figures

When I leave the hotel in the morning¹, the hotel owner frantically pulls me aside to let me know that the police have asked him if he could photograph the necessary parts of my passport cause they forgot.

He was so apologetic and so worried that I would say "no," and so worried that he would have to tell the police I said "no," and so grateful that I thought the whole thing hilarious that I actually felt a little bit guilty over having caused him trouble but he also feels the need to reassure me that I'm welcome back any time I want it wasn't really so much trouble because "even though he isn't that kind of hotel²" and his place is very, very clean, the foot spa³ downstairs means they are always coming by to harass his customers⁴.

It seems I did get at least one photo of the glitter

No non-local motorcycles⁵ allowed beyond this point

Apparently, the original bricks weren't brick-y enough

Takes me a bit of time to find a store that has Coke 0s to supply me my morning caffeine hit⁶ after which I nearly get a fairly standard dumpling breakfast, but the shop whose wall I was in the process of leaning my bike against thought I was looking at his neighbors⁷ and stroppily told me I couldn't use his space, so I kept going past four more shops that had a similar (but cleaner looking) set up doing whatever it was his neighbors were doing.

Getting to the fifth, there was not only a suitable location for parking, there was a surfeit of customers both indoors and outdoors, so I had that along with making a video (59,000 views, 841 likes, 300 comments) about not knowing what this was but knowing I needed to try it.

For a variety of reasons ranging from invisible cancer rays to not wanting the scanner to accidentally pick up random QR codes, people like to keep them blocked off

This put me well into the heat of the day, but as I had moved off the primary routes, although all potential ferries had been replaced with bridges that were bikeable (if not pleasant to cross), I had a pretty rural ride all the rest of the way into Doumen including a decent stretch of time spent on a provincial Scenic Byway and another chunk of time on the dyke road for the western shore of the Xijiang River.

Arriving in Doumen, I was faced with traffic jams caused by road works, my Bluetooth speaker deciding yet a-fucking-gain that now (when I actually needed navigation info) was the time to turn off, and the discovery that the otherwise quite lovely foreign café owner I was coming to visit had gone down some Q-flavored rabbit holes in the direction of thinking that Covid had been a money-grab by the World Health Organization and that I was terribly gullible for wanting to get Shot 5 before the current rising wave of cases⁸ leads to a very much unwanted second infection on my part⁹.

Public cemetery and signs that must date from Qingming Festival letting you know how far to the cemetery and how long a likely wait you'll have

Duckshit Gate (Places With Interesting Names Series)

¹ Well, it's not exactly morning on account of my being easily distractible and friends in the US being awake and available for a video call

² I'm pretty sure that he is

³ Hint: they don't massage feet

⁴ If they were actually doing prostitution stings, I could maybe understand this behavior. However, all they are doing is checking to see that all hotel guests have been registered, which, now that I'm writing this, is something that I suppose could, later on, be used as additional evidence that someone is engaged in that line of business...

A river crossing that no longer has a ferry

I suppose there's enough traffic on this waterway that a ferry would be a navigation hazard

⁵ On account of most provinces and cities enacting regulations that they aren't technically supposed to be able to enact which restrict all motorcycles, my Motorcycle Riding Chinese friends (of the sort with motorcycles that cost more than cars) are perhaps the only Chinese people I know who "get" the frustration of the "hotels as a foreigner" situation. They are also the only Chinese people I know who, rather than being horrified by the idea of "yelling at the police until the police apologize," completely get it as a reasonable and ordinary course of action.

⁶ I hadn't taken the Coffee Kit up to the room, and as I go through a fair number of ice pops and sports drinks on the road, I like to limit my intake of empty calories.

⁷ I was. In horror.

⁸ China's transition from "Zero Covid Policy" to "zero Covid policy" basically means that everyone in the country got sick all at once in December of last year. For the few people who didn't get sick, this mostly meant being protected by herd immunity. However, reintegration with the rest of the world and increasing travel means that six months on, people are getting sick again and in the kinds of numbers that lead to a whole school canceling classes for a week or stuff like that.

⁹ Although results were taking 16+ hours to come out at the time, it looks like I was already C19+ when I got Shot 4 of Sinovac. Either because of the vaccine kick-starting my immune system or just good luck with how I handle being sick, I effectively had no serious symptoms (not even a fever!) and was only down for the count for a little over a day. However, because I used to have freakishly good eyesight and because my job is working with words, I have two clear data points for my having suffered lasting brain damage.

What are they thinking people will hang from the sprinkler head?

Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 913 km (567 miles)

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