Day 246 (China): shed at km marker 931 on G310 - Luoyang (power plants everywhere)

daily distance: 174km
total distance: 14,640km
riding time: 9h 

So, I left my shed early in the morning and got under way.

Covering mileage. That is the name of the game it seems right now. Got some breakfast on the road, the usual daudse, and then saw km markers that were indicating G209. What? Wrong road? Couldn’t have been - or so I thought. And it wasn’t. Turns out that I was on the right road, but the G209 and G310 use the same road for a while and therefore the G209 markers take over.

This was confirmed by a truck driver whose buddy loaded me up with a giant grapefruit and tons of mandarins. Which really made my day. This was completely unexpected - need to change my China image a bit it seems. And then I pedaled on and on and on …

I went from km marker 888 to km marker 777 and then some today.

Had long ups and downs which were demanding given the distance that I was traveling. Demanding at any rate. I thought I was out of hill country, but there were plenty of them today. Steep and long.

And I didn’t know how far to go today. I did have a strong tailwind and so I made it just before a larger city when the craziness of driving in the dusk basically forced me off the roads. It felt too dangerous. I did find another shed amazingly heading into the city and was grateful for it. Though it was tight.

What was scary today was the number of power plants though. At one point it felt like they were all around me … and I am not joking. Four were within sight at one point. Guess all that outsourcing that we are doing to China as our manufacturing base has to be leading to something.

On the other hand, there were wind turbines too - alas right in the middle of some heavy coal country. Here is both in the same picture - coal on the left and wind turbines on the right.