What to do?

Gansu Province has been interesting and challenging. More road construction and as you may know a bad crack in my rear wheel (now Sally's rear wheel since that reduces the weight on the wheel), her broken rear rack and two nights ago my rear rack broke. I think my rack is/was 20 yrs old. Got it splinted up with a tent peg and some hose clamps coupled with a piece of rubber rope and it seems to be holding fine. We are about 200 km east of Zhangye, in the Hexi Corridor, in a hotel complete with all the luxuries of life. We've been battling the wind for several days and yesterday was quite nasty so we bailing in here after about 35 km of strong headwinds. Today seems nice but we're sure the wind will pickup again so have decided to take a bus to Zhangye and ponder our next move. The "Corridor" centuries ago was the main route into/out of the "MIddle Kingdom". Today it is a busy highway thru a very arid landscape dotted with poor villages with people scrapingn out a living farming, somehow, this barren, rocky land. Lots of building construction which in China seems to mean lots of big, new empty buildings. Tower cranes everywhere!!! We are just starting to see some hills to the south but nothing different than we have seen for the past at least 2 weeks. Thus we are ready for some different scenery; where that scenery will be is the question we have been asking ourselves. Physically we are doing OK, a bit worn down from the past few months. Mentally we are a bit worse for the wear but hanging in there. We'll probably spend a day in Zhangye and try to catch a train to Urumqi (per original plan). From there where do we go in Central Asia and how do we get there; or do we go to ..... The answer to that question should be divined over the next week. If we show up someplace unexpected don't be surprised. Stay tuned for a few more frequent updates over the next few days.