June 3,  Location:  Pingliang  35° 33’N 106° 39’ E, elevation 1337 metres, riding day #15. 127 km today, 1941 total to date.

A pleasant day, with a bit of wind behind, mostly country roads very pretty, rain at the end of the day and almost cool.  We just got word that our route for tomorrow may be quite creative, one of the tunnels we were supposed to go through has collapsed.  The organizers are out route planning as I write this.

Some health updates:  My stomach/bowel problem passed in less than 24 hours, with no incidents of note.   My butt is doing well, still arguing a bit with the saddle, but so far I haven’t needed the butt grease, but I expect the need will arise.  Also, I’m very pleased to report that both knees have settled down – I’m being careful and backing off whenever I feel anything in either knee and that seems to be doing the trick – I hope.

June 2,  Location:  Changwu  35° 12’N 107° 47’ E, elevation 1191 metres, riding day #14. 84km today, 1814 total to date.

A bit more climbing today, about 1,000m up, 800 down.  Another very dirty day, a continuous stream of coal trucks.  Our first tunnel today, about 1.5km long, very dark, needed both tail lights and a headlight to be able to see.  Note the “no cyclists” in tunnel roadsign in picture below.

June 1,  Location:  Yangshou  3534° 41’N 108° 08’ E, elevation 1024 metres, riding day #13. 107km today, 1730 total to date.

First day of what will be 6 in a row.  Mostly uneventful day, other than I got to know the toilet fairly well last night – seem to be stable today, good thing as a fairly hard climb.  But distance was short.  We’ve asked a couple times where we can wash off our bikes – use the shower.  So I just spent some quality time with my bike in the shower – both of us now happy and clean.

Some pictures from the last few days below.  A couple notes:

- the large Buddha is really large, about 100’ high.

- we went over a high ridge, the whole way there were bee hives, with honey for sale

- I gather they bag the fruit on the trees as a way of preventing insect and bird damage.  Also, prepackaged for selling…