Chapter 207

Distance covered: 331 km (total 8143 km)

...or is it zero?! Read on.

I woke up at 5:40, put on my running shoes and shorts, leashed the dog and went into the pitch-black streets. I did a combination of jogging, sprints, calisthenics, tai chi and capoeira exercises at a park nearby, nothing really structured but more than enough to sweat buckets, despite my bare chest in the cold of the morning (that way, I don’t have to deal with a soaked t-shirt) and to feel really good.

We were on the road a bit past 7, I was behind the wheel. There was a police checkpoint just before the highway entrance, when I lowered the window a burly cop pointed a prodded wand three inches from my face and I pulled back, startled. I thought he was about to taze me in the face for being foreign, but then he grunted “Blow!” A booze test, that early in the morning?! What the hell are those Gansu colonists up to?

I drove on the smooth and perfectly straight highway, among desolate flat scenery. There were thousands and thousands of windmills on either side of the road, feeding high tension power lines. This must have been a huge investment but I was in China at the tail end of the third-worldly times when most of their power came from burning coal, and I lived in cities that were on the way of the huge dark grey soot clouds, so I applaud heartily those efforts at deploying a cleaner energy grid.

We reached the border with Xinjiang, and there was a police checkpoint, likely the first of many. There was only a very short line-up, and it took a few minutes, I didn’t even have to get out of the car. The cop looked at my passport, said “Handsome”, and handed it back. I suspect if the car was full of Uyghurs we wouldn’t get in as easily.

I kept going, the creepy desert scenery not changing much aside from the signs now being bilingual with the added Arabic-like squiggles of the Uyghur language, and even more signs urging us to “cherish the Party” than usual. But then we reached another checkpoint, this one manned by soldiers and health workers in big hermetic space suits. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where we fucked up. The girlfriend had left Jiangsu province on the 13^th. Last week there’s been an eclosion of cases in the city of Nanjing, which is in Jiangsu province, albeit far from where we live. If we had waited a day (or maybe two to really be safe, not sure if the 14-day period is counted inclusively or not), Jiangsu wouldn’t have be listed in the places she visited in the past 14 days on her phone tracking app and we would have been good to go.

So we went to another area and the four of us had to undertake nucleic acid testing, which involves a nurse sticking a Q-tip deep in your throat. A bunch of people were in a similar boat, and in the big dusty parking lot where we had to wait for the results, we had conversations with other stranded poor fucks, talking about our travels and comparing overlanding gear. It was still a bit early for lunch, but what the hell, if we’re stuck here. We deployed a foldable table and were about to start making pasta, when a soldier came and yelled through a bullhorn to go back to our cars and to hate our shitty lives, the way they’re meant to be hated. I was a bit mad, but it kind of makes sense, after all if you just let a bunch of possibly infected people fraternize in close proximity like that, it’s not the smartest thing. I have to be coherent, since the onset of the pandemic what has been angering me is not the strict measures that make sense, but the nonsensical ones (mandatory fayssah mursks on the airplane except when people are served food and shoot spittle everywhere, fucking useless glass-fogging fayssah mursks in general, retarded partial lockdowns like those in Quebec, tracking apps developed by fucktards that crash your phone with all the bloatware they put in). And if I’ve been living a life mostly unaffected by the pandemic, well, it’s mostly because of those strict measures.

Speaking of fayssah mursks, it had been weeks since the last time I was told to wear one, so I didn’t even bother to carry one in my pockets. The girlfriend gave me one from the glovebox while we went through that sausage machine, and at some point I got out of the car to go pee, and had to walk near other people. I reached in my pocket and it wasn’t there, then I saw it, rolling around on the dust, carried by the wind. I put it on, but then when I came back to the car, my mask was there, under my computer. Gross. I hope the person the other mask belonged to was an attractive woman and not some old grampa with halitosis.

The results came in, all negative. We still had to backtrack to Guazhou. On the way back I sat on the backseat, sipping a red ale imported from Ireland, and watched the UFC event from last weekend, that I downloaded yesterday. It was a smaller card mostly filled with prospects rather than established talent, and the main card delivered like a caffeinated Meituan waimai guy. All the fights were very close and involved multiple momentum changes and incredible displays of toughness, and unfortunately when it’s so evenly matched, some split decisions went to whom I feel was the wrong fighter. I thought Miranda Maverick edged Big Carb Barb, Kyler Philips should have gotten the nod or at least a draw over his zombie Brazilian opponent, and the main event between TJ Dillashaw (returning from a two-year suspension for shooting EPO like Lance Armstrong) and Cory Sandhagen was also a high-level banger I thought Sandhagen won.

Back in Guazhou, we checked in the same hotel and went to eat at the same restaurant, having a big meaty feast. Mama-in-law bought five huge melons from a streetside cart, baba-in-law scolded her because the car is already full of stuff but her justification is that they’re cheap, and we’re about to head into the desert, which is notoriously melonless.

The girlfriend and I walked a few blocks until we reached a pet shop and bought a bag of dog chow, as we’re running low. On the way, a young guy with a big hammer and sickle on his T-shirt engaged in a short conversation in English, he had lived in Hamilton, Ontario, for two years. I imagine foreigners are rare here, to say the least. The city was full of SUVs with license plates from every province, but not many laowai go on self-driving trips, so if they go west, they’re more likely to fly.

Back in the hotel, we watched the new Rick And Morty. It was funny and all, but too absurd and too much shit was packed in. I hope the show doesn’t go in that direction too much.