Considering the number of times I've done a north/south cross-continental journey in China, I don't quite understand how it is that I don't ever remember crossing the Yellow River. I suppose, unlike the mighty Yangtze, it might be that I've mostly crossed it in places where there was only a lot of water (as opposed to a metric fuckton of water). That, or there've been times where I crossed the Yellow and mentally recorded it as the Yangtze. Not sure which is which.

It's a fairly uneventful and fairly flat ride from Zibo to the Yellow River (not just a case of "I don't remember" because its taken me over ten days to do this write-up) but, because I've finally escaped that annoying woman, everything is fresh and new and wonderful in ways that—even for someone who enjoys dusty or decrepit things as much as I do—shouldn't be as fresh and new and wonderful as it is. For one thing, although it takes me quite a bit of effort to get off of the main roads and onto things that aren't three lanes in either direction plus a bike lane, it's the sort of flat and relatively unpretentious landscape that is only interesting because (unlike Jiangsu) there are variations in crop cover, tree type, and architecture.

There's also, of course, the bridge across the Yellow River. Not the one I originally picked to cross the big water I hadn't realized was Big Water, it's a floating bridge that I decided upon the moment I saw the first sign for it and realized I had the option to cross on a floating bridge.

Inclusive of the pontoony thing that Myf and I wandered along in some urban park in 2015 and the disturbing boat bridge I'd been on maybe a month before that, this will be my fourth time on a floating bridge and my first time on a traffic-worthy floating bridge. I like to say that I'm not actually all that interested in bridges, that it's all just an accident of having picked up a bunch of random knowledge on Tour on account of bridges combining art with architecture and explicit dates, but the fact that I've been known to detour over a hundred kilometers to visit a specific bridge proves me a liar on that front.

It's a positively terrifying experience with cars that won't stop honking at me to get out of their way, gaps wide enough to put a foot through, and a constant pitching and yawing as heavier vehicles move from one segment to the next.

Once across, I've got a dinner date scheduled with a fan and—unlike the Zibo people—he takes into consideration things like my not wanting to eat and drink until I am physically uncomfortable. Only complaints I have about him are his totally not getting it on the topic of giving a person without food storage capacity the leftovers and his keeping me out late enough that when the clusterfucks hit the fan¹ in the town where I've booked my hotel, it's really really late at night.

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¹ First, my hotel sold my room out from underneath me and tried to convince me to downgrade. Then, when I rebooked elsewhere, we had an amazingly hard time getting me checked in and registered² even with everyone being on board about it happening.

² One of the rare versions of the computer system where foreigner just didn't come up but social security card did, we tried scanning my card and got someone else's information!