This is effectively a day where, prior to the frustrations inherent in my getting a place to sleep, nothing happened.

I don't mean nothing nothing.

But, let's be honest, when you get to the point where you are noticing the difference that different kinds of pavement make on your overall speed, it's safe to say that there was nothing.

There was road construction where an elevated will be, a Greenway running along the top of a dyke, a Muslim noodle shop where I mostly consumed liter upon liter of barely lime flavored Vitamin-C water. There was nothing.

In terms of development and culture, art and architecture, places like those I passed through on today's ride have been part of the interstitial space between "Hangzhou" and "not Hangzhou" for centuries. 

When you are less than a day's travel away from the far edges of urban interesting, and you aren't specifically setting up in that location because you are escaping the hustle and bustle of "urban", there's just no reason to set anything up and, in this corridor that exists primarily for moving things to or away from the city, there really is nothing to see.

This was particularly noticeable when the cold rains came. They'd been threatening to come ever since I left the noodle shop, had even given me a quick five minute cloud burst or two followed by the reappearance of the sun and blue skies. However much they heralded the storm to come, those brief tantrums were nothing like the big rains with their pregnant drops of icy water thinking strongly about the possibility of turning into hail.

The worst part was when a car or truck would drive through one of the puddles and send up splashes of nasty road water. Even with a median wide enough for trees and shrubs separating me from the car lanes, and even riding as far to the right as my generously wide bike lane allowed for, I'd get covered in gray brown torrents of water that may not have actually been warm from the heat of the pavement but which were enough warmer than the rain water that they felt hot to the touch.

Finally, I found a petrol station and shelter to sit out the next hour and change.

This meant that I ended up coming into the edges of Hangzhou proper¹ after full dark, but I think the whole day was spent in the Streetlight Zone so it didn't really matter how light or dark the sky was.

Booked my hotel while eating dinner² then went round the corner and tried to check-in. Operative word here being "tried" because while I did eventually get myself checked in, I'm really finding that slowly and calmy going about things in a way that is likely to having a lasting positive effect for both me and the overall foreign community is way, way, way less efficient than just yelling at people.

In this case, once the police showed³—although they clearly weren't happy with me recording them⁴—they'd obviously done some checking up on existing and valid rules and regs between then and when the guy on the phone found the (unfortunately not cancelled⁵) 1987 rules on star-rated and foreign-approved hotels.

It would have been nice if their "lack of objection" to my staying had extended to "allowing me to teach the hotel owner how to register me" (or allowing me to do it myself) rather than standing 3 feet away from him and calling vague and contradictory directions but baby steps in the right direction are still heading the right way 

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¹ if Xiaoshan District can be considered Hangzhou proper

² Beef dumplings and overripe mangoes from the fruit shop next door

³ Called via their direct number and not 110

⁴ "We're recording you, you don't need to record us" and "if you post this online, you better post the whole thing and not anything  cleverly edited to make us look like fools"

⁵ They aren't cancelled because the majority of the content is related to the star rating system and the stuff about foreigner approved hotels is automatically invalidated by way of there being no method of applying for a "Foreigner-Approved" rating. However, when it comes to the rare person who wants to use logic, their existence is a massive thorn in my side