May 24,   Location:  Yanling  34° 06’N 114° 09’ E elevation 65metres, riding day #7 (4^th of 6 in a row).

Interesting day today. Heavy rain for the first 4 hours, then cleared off to sunshine.  Left things rather muddy.  We had to navigate two really serious 6” deep mud holes around a bridge under construction.   I made a minor mistake in copying the route direction notes..  End result was an extra 48k added to the planned 140 – so a 188k day.  My all time high for a day.  The good news is that tomorrow is only a 155k day.  The other good news is that the first 1,000k is done!  Only another 11,000 to go.

One of my fun things today:  I was drafting behind one of the 3 wheeled little trucks, commonly the father is driving in the single front seat, with mother and child in the back, commonly they are in a canvas enclosure, open to the back.  In this case the young kid was maybe 1 year old, I spent 10k (20minutes) waving and making faces with the little kid, to the great amusement of the mother.

May 23,  Location:  Yuli  33° 51’N 115° 29’ E

This is the home town of the philosopher Lao Tsu (Laozi or “Old Master”) a 5^th or 6^th century BC philosopher, credited with creating Taoism. See picture of the large statue and the guy on the OX cart.  Throughout history, his work has been embraced by various anti-authoritarian movements – I like this guy already!

Also attached is a recent photo, most of you won’t recognize the guy in the picture, hell, I don’t recognize the guy when I look in the mirror!

A couple other photos from the day below, it was nice to get onto some back country roads, the heavy traffic and blaring horns of the larger highways start to get to you.

…Ron – a.k.a the guy with the sore backside