On the way back from our visit to Suzhou, Siqi wanted to stop at the lake. We more or less achieved that, but things didn’t go as planned that day. See below for a few photos of the lake and a strange story or two about our journey back home.
Taihu
We were hoping it would stop raining so we could walk around in a park at the edge. We even went to what we thought was a mall (it was a convention center with a few food shops and a movie theater) to kill some time to give the weather a chance to relent. No such luck. Eventually, after refueling, we went and parked on the roadside and got out to take photos in the rain. Luckily, it wasn’t raining heavily.
Rain
I took some more photos on the way back.
Deja vu
We visited the clone of the rest stop we’d visited on the way to Suzhou. They literally built two just the same on opposite sides of the highway. See?
(The floor tiles are a little different.)
Detour
Right after we left the rest stop (which had a big gas station and everything), the car started giving some sort of warning about tire pressure. Was there an air leak? It gave no details. We got off the highway.
We followed the car’s online map down a little country road to the nearest gas station.
Siqi got out some sort of tire kit from the trunk. It turned out to be a clever device for patching a tire, but it couldn’t measure air pressure. The gas station didn’t have an air pump or pressure gauge, but the attendant pointed us to a local garage that might be open. We went there, and it was, and they let Siqi use the air pump for free. In the rain. Then we continued on our way home.
Apparently the problem was just that he hadn’t put in air for a while. Next time we’ll do that before the road trip instead of after!
