Aug 9 On the Road

Unfolded/reassembled my bike and filled my panniers, then put my suitcase back on my hostel bed. On our way... To breakfast. THEN on our way to tour. 

Occasionally "greenways" appear in the correct general direction and we follow them. 

Random old temples and pagodas appear next to us. 

Today I saw someone riding carrying a s

Coke adds life. 

Lunch was tofu with preserved egg and donkey meat sandwiches. 

Marion called to and we stopped to chat and mutually photograph this group of touring  cyclists. 

This is one of the gates that used to protect the city. 

This is the Marco Polo bridge. The grooves in the stone are ruts from horse drawn wagon days. 

The bridge spans YongDing river. 

We stopped and bought half a watermellon to supplement our water and ate almost all of it before moving on. Very hot today. 

Pagoda of Luck. The signs at the bottom told nothing about it except for that it was an historic treasure and the dates the signs were installed. Marion hypothesized that there was more info on the backs, which we couldn't see due to the big reatrictive fence. 

I have toyed with the idea of buying a cyclecross bike from Giant headquarters, but this small Giant store didn't carry that model. 

Marian's derailleur needed servicing and she realized that she needed a new rear tire, and then she spent time calling the Beijing service shop that gave her bike a tuneup, but didn't apparently do really anything. 

This reminded me of the tree lined streets of the Netherlands. 

A partially completed adventure? Park. Log ladders, high ropes course stuff and a giant climbing wall, all were unfinished and rusting....

We finished day in QingLongHu, just west of Beijing. The hotel was an eye opener. 

China is a land of smells, sights and sounds, about evenly distributed among the extremes. It is not bad, just different. Most people have active solar hot water. The hotel we are in appears to have only blistering hot water showers/sinks. Kind of contradictory to my expectations, thinking I would appreciate a cold shower. But Marian could communicate with the owners and got some cold water thrown in. I had worked around it by putting about 3c hot water in a basin, then adding the initial only cold water from the faucet, before it too turned really, really hot. AC though!
Route from Marian's GeoTracking app.