Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Day 12 (Rest Day):

First of all I would like to point out that Phil Gaimon has become kind of famous. Here is a graph of the last 8 days of traffic to my blog leading up to Phil tweeting it:
Like, I totally know that guy, you guys.
That's all I have to say about that. Moving on to.... THE REST DAY! Lets all hope there is lots of laying and not a lot of this:
A little PSA in the hallway of the hotel
A rest day means we actually got to go get our bikes from the mechanics for an easy stroll. We found out that Zach's working conditions were less than ideal:

The mad mechanic checks the hub body that I destroyed yesterday.
On our way out to the easy ride I noticed a rather unnecessary label on the elevators. Its a pretty good bet that if you have it in China, we've got it in the USA, unless that's rampant communism and the plague.
Hark! An elevator in the wild!
Having seen my first elevator, the mechanic's dungeon, and what a worldwide pandemic looks like, I was ready for an easy ride in China! Here is the only video, of many, that I took where I was not audibly honking at cars or pointing the camera at buildings and saying "that's probably where they keep the rice, there's more rice storage, that's probably more rice...."


On this rice, er, ride we saw a ton of things. We are pretty sure this was a driving instructional facility, but since there aren't 50 cannons firing pedestrians, trucks, busses, mopeds, buggies, bicyclists, and other cars at you constantly, these people will be sorrily unprepared for the reality that awaits them out there in the real world.

Practice stopping on a hill, I assume the instructor is slapping this person in the face constantly
I was more than enjoying myself, as evident in the videos of me squealing in delight at everything we saw while I was taking videos that I will not post on here for my own sake. I felt like I could do 8 more stages in a row instead of taking a rest day, so the fact that I was allowed to make some decisions for myself and explore China a little was beautiful payback for the suffering from before. I figured I should get something besides the Yak in my Hip as a souvenir, but im not a real material needs guy, so when I saw this happening I got an idea:


After a few minutes of me flashing money, him refusing it, me pointing at his brush and taking my shirt off and holding it up to him, we were on the same page. A crowd had gathered, because that's what you do (at least its not America where people just stand in lines all day when there is something interesting or good happening), and everyone was delighted to hear me butcher Jai-OH which is what everyone yells at you when you ride a bike past them. However, for no money, the kind man wrote Jai-Oh on my jersey, and I am so excited to have it:

Im saying that word wrong, but its kind of hard to read...
Once the ride was over it was back to laying down for a change and hanging out with the team in a non-race related fashion. We watched an infomercial about what we figured was an edible (questionable) sea slug that looked like a spiked pickle that was for one of the two following things:

1. Increase Fertility
2. Render one Infertile

The lady selling them could not seem to keep them out of her mouth when there was an open package around. Check out Taylor's face (far right) while we watched this thing MULTIPLE times:

She just gobbled that thing up!!!
Gross. We watched it again.

As I mentioned before, we took to reading all of the welcome binders, tonight's had a particular way with words:

BACK OFF, I WILL REABDABLE YOU!


FANTASTIC.

Before the night was over I got a chance to take a picture of a lady taking a picture of us taking a picture with her friend.
Those ladies on the right just finished taking a picture of us. We were there for a while.
Chad and I went out on a little walk that night to explore. It was cool to see how many people were out and about being social at 8pm on a Sunday night. There were drum-dance lines and rollerbladers and people doing cool talent show type stuff with a ball and a paddle, and a lot of people out walking with their families. We stood out a bit, but at least it was different than laying in bed.

Last thing, today was the day that Chad, who brought 20 MRE's to China (military meals ready to eat), got a tiny bottle of Tabasco in one. Something tells me the military is eating better than I thought.

Look at that little bug!
Rest day success. Laundry was hanging on the windows like normal drying out. Mike Woods was leaking out on to the bed from his arm and leg. I had eaten my fill of rice. Bag packed for tomorrow transfer. Water with salt made for the next stage. Legs massaged. READY TO KNOCK OUT THE LAST 5 DAYS!


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Day 11 (Stage 8): HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE

Look at this crap:
For Pete's Sake
If you are not a great climber and you open the race bible and look at this page its the same feeling you get when you open mail first because you think its a check and find out is a pretty sizable bill you forgot about. Its sad, and it kind of hurts. You kind of wish you would have never opened the book/envelope.

But, today I was feeling like a rich guy who gets bills, AINT NO BILL I CANT PAY.

Here is yet another time the race profile can be confusing. See the first dotted line about half way up that mountain? That is the "Start of the KOM" or the start of the climb. Now, it doesn't take a genius to point out that no, the climb started a long time ago. I just found a perfect video to describe what racing this climb was like for me:


Just think of me as the guy in the red, and the entire time before the dotted line is the part he is totally crushing the guy in yellow, but right when we crossed that dotted line....

I watched a front group of 20 and break of 8 ride away from me as I lost about 3 minutes to the leaders by the top. That's how that goes I guess. I knew I had good legs, however, so I rolled the dice and began the descent with the intent of making it back to the front of the race.

A group of about 40 guys formed behind what was about 40 leaders, 4 minutes down, and began to attack each other because nobody wanted to help anyone else, but everyone wanted to be in the front. I navigated the attacks (my specialty) and found myself in a group of 8, 4 minutes down on the leaders with 140k to go. We worked hard together, 8 guys from 8 separate teams, and somewhere before the Category 3 climb later on the stage, we caught the lead group!! Take that climbers!! It was great, Taylor, Chad, and Mike were all hanging out in the field, I rolled up and all 3 of them yelled at the same time: "JIIIIMMMM!!!!!"

"HEY GUYS! IM BACK!!"

Gavin had made his way into the breakaway, and we had 4 guys in the front group, we were a Continental team having a party on a 215K stage that briefly orbited the moon!!!

Then we hit the Category 3. I am starting to believe that in China the number 3 means "worst number ever" because all the cat 3 climbs were WAY TO DAMN HARD. I think they count 3, 1, 2, 4, Green, 6, 7, 3 million, 9.

By having 3 million after 7, it makes it much easier to count the number of people in every city in China. Smart move.

The climb was awful, but I was not getting dropped again, so, as I watched the Iranian KOM jersey push the fattest man in the bike race up the climb as I was hanging on for dear life, I wished for the first and last time that I was also on TPT Petrochemical Iran so I too could get a push. After an eternity, and numerous caffeine gels, I made it over the top, our group took like 3 minutes or something out of the breakaway, and it was back to 5-Hour Energy Party Time!!!

The 4 of us discussed the sprint, which basically went like this:

Chad: "Hey Mike, want to sprint?"
Mike: "Hey Taylor, want to sprint?"
Taylor: "Hey Jim, want to sprint?"
Jim: "I sure hope Gavin sticks it!"

To our relief, Gavin's group held on to a minuscule advantage at the finish line and he collected 5th on the day.

Having finished the 8th stage and knowing there was a rest day the next day, I was more willing to let the standard 200 spectators that gathered around the team to take pictures of us changing go relatively un-accosted. Although a middle-aged man grabbed my arm while I had only a towel on to pose for a picture that his 8 year old daughter was taking and I told him to bugger off. You're too old to be doing that and not old enough to excuse yourself for thats! I felt kind of bad, but I was sure he would steal my towel and run away (I don't know why, I had no prior experience leading me to believe this to be plausible).

On to the transfer bus for the longest transfer of the race. WHO CARES ITS A REST DAY TOMORROW WHOOOHOOOO GIVE ME SOME POTATO CHIPS THAT ARE "POTATO" FLAVOR THAT'S PROBABLY FINE!! Taylor continued his daily consumption of 7 to 11 chocolate bars. We tried what we thought was apple milk, which cant actually be a thing, it was gross.

Also, check out these transfers, 400k of people watching us go by because the government shut down all the roads for the entire transfer because HECK WITH YOU PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY, WE DO WHAT WE WANT!

Ahhhh man. Great to be on to the rest day. SO MANY PICTURES AND VIDEOS TO COME TOMORROW!

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Day 10 (Stage 7): The Russian Motorcycle Haunts My Day and Subsequently My Dreams

In the elevator after Stage 7 a sprinter's team asked me "We had 6 guys swapping off on the front chasing you guys for an hour and only pulled back 5 seconds, what the hell was going on up there?!"

To that, as the elevator door closed on them at their floor, I looked with a blank stare and said "the Russian motorcycle. The. Russian. Motorcycle."

Stage 7 is a great example of what I love about racing in big UCI stage races. You can get in a breakaway on a day people figured would be for the sprinters (according to the stage profile, which I shall address in a second, but we were all wrong about that), and have 4 guys ride so hard the field actually might give up, but then a 1000m climb at the end of the stage surprises everyone by being far more difficult than a Category 3 climb normally is, and the entire field explodes! Check this out:

That Cat 3 Probably isn't too hard.....
WHAT THE HELL WHAT THE HELL THAT CLIMB WAS SUPER HARD!!?!?!
 Ok, enough foreshadowing. I was feeling like a new man on Stage 7. Infection was under control with Antibiotics (which you can buy over the counter, next to the live chickens, not sketchy at all), sleep schedule was on point, my mood was 100% better than the Dark Times, and the day in the Grupetto served my legs quite well (despite being 6 and a half hours). It was time to race!!  The opening circuits were actually raced on MC Escher's Primrose Stairs in the downward direction.


It started off going down this big hill, we went around the whole circuit without any uphill to speak of, and suddenly we were back at the downhill again!! I was surfing the front waiting when I saw RussVelo and Kolss attacking, so I went with it, did a hard lap of the primrose stairs, and that was it! I was having a blast because the Russian guy was pulling SO HARD that it kind of made me happy inside, this of course would all change later, but for the time being life was good, we had over 4 minutes, and the Russian Motorcycle was in high gear.

Taking a pull while the Motorcycle contemplated his next massive effort
Another cool shot form Daebong Kim
We were going so hard that at one point the field, already 4 minutes behind, took a pee break and essentially gave up allowing the gap to grow to 9 minutes for the 4 of us. WINNERS! Right? How long is this climb again?

The guys back in the field later told me that when they hit the climb it seems the Incredible-Amazing-Climbing-Iranians-Come-One-Come-All! noticed the same thing everyone else was realizing: this climb is way harder than we thought. What do the Iranians do when there is a hard climb? ATTACK!!!!

My group had started to ride easier on the climb, with 9 minutes in hand we all figured it was a day for the breakaway considering the next stage was so hard. The next time check we got was 2 minutes at the top of the Category 3, which prompted the Motorcycle to ATTACK!!!! 35k to go, with a small climb, and then 20k slightly downhill to the finish and I went from being happy as a clam in the draft of the strongest rider on the planet with 9 minutes advantage, to alone 40 seconds behind the strongest man in the world, 20 seconds behind a cross-eyed Ukranian rider from Kolss, with 2 minutes on the field trying to hang on to the podium. WHY IS THIS RACE SO STRANGE?!

I put my head down and rode as hard as I could for the last 35k with the Russian and the Ukranian riders painfully close, but impossibly far away. With 2k to go a group of 3 from the field caught me and immediately attacked on the uphill finish. I stayed with them long enough to drop one guy, but ended up 5th on the stage when I was so close to the podium. The Ukrainian was 4th. If we would have worked together we would have rounded out he podium behind the Russian, who probably won by about 2 hours.

Crushed.
Lesson of the day: if the guy who was a domestique for 7 years on Katusha is feeling good, you may end up bonding with a Ukranian after the stage having both been terrorized to the core for 4 hours, despite not speaking the same language.

Second lesson of the day: When Mike Woods does a superman on the finish line, he loses a lot of skin and a lot of clothing, but not a lot of positive attitude.

Third lesson of the day: Taylor destroyed everyone in the field sprint for 7th. Its not really a lesson here, but he schooled everyone for 7th and its worth noting.

Day 9 (Stage 6): GRUPETTO and Taking 20% of Numbers

Stages 2, 3, 4, and 5 were all very strenuous in their own way for me, so with the infection and 4 more stages in the mountains at altitude before the rest day, I needed some rest. This is a fantastic time to talk a bit about the relationship between the stage profile maps in the race bible, and the actual stage profiles. Here is today's:

NOTE: Only 2 categorized climbs today. The first being only a Category 1... This is a lot of BS
Ahhh yes, I remember it well, 3 hours into the stage somewhere in-between the two categorized climbs already with 2000m of climbing wondering "What asshole built this road?" If you don't know much about biking, here is a quick note. On stages like this, often times there is a group of guys who end up coming in far behind the leaders, its a group that has decided "today is not my day" for any number of reasons:

1. Being Fat (a sprinter)
2. Being Tired
3. Being Sick
4. Being Unmotivated
5. Saving energy for future stages
6. Being reasonable (probably my favorite reason)

Lets not forget, after all, we PAY to do these races. While it is true that most pros also get paid to do the races by the team they ride for, it still is interesting that when it comes down to it, our team pays an entry fee for stages like this. So riders can fall off the pace and ride together in the interest of RECOVERY for 6 and a half hours.

Annnnyways. I hate the grupetto. Since I have some disease that prevents me from doing reason #5, I often end up there because I am some combination of the other ones, aside from #6, and that sucks. Thankfully an old teammate and friend Jon Murphy came up to me with 2 hours to go and recommended we tell each other drinking stories to see how long we could go without checking how long we still had to go. This was a good tactic. 

Near the end of the day a German rider comes up to the whole group yelling "Ve hav to RIDE, i spoke with the COMissare, Z time cut is NEIGH!" (This is an accurate impression, totally not offensive) This German rider was incorrect. Time cut was 20%. I asked him "What is 20% of 1 hour?" to which he yelled (spoke normally?) "I ASKED Z COM, VE HAV TO RIDE" Which is the wrong answer. The right answer is 12 minutes. It is easy to assume then, using math, that time cut was going to be 6x12 minutes, which is 72 minutes, which means we could have all stopped at a market, bought feathered and roasted a chicken, and been on our way with chicken snacks and STILL HAD 20 MINUTES TO SPARE. Whatever. That guy wrecked my easy day a little, and for that I despised him and will make fun of him mercilessly for the rest of my life.

Since not a lot happened today, lets take a second to review a few more of the finer moments of being in China!

Hotel Accouterments: 1 Toothbrush. 2 Condoms.
Fancy Power Strip
Only have to eat this 9 more mornings!!!!

Saturday, July 26, 2014

China Day 5-8: Dark Times

Ceremonial Beheading of the, um, horned animal thing
I write this on Day 8, after sinking into a pit of despair deeper than I have experienced in some time. I have a total of 5 pictures from the last 4 days because I spent most of it being angry at everything I saw, touched, heard, smelled, and even tasted… especially tasted. So damn sick of rice. I like reading my post from Day 4, what a great mood I was in! During the Dark Times, however, I wrote emails entitled “Cuck Fhina” to Annie, an excerpt:

Never come to China. Mark it off your list of places to visit. I think I just saw a dead yak in someone's driveway. Don't clean that up, it's fine… (going to go ahead and delete the rest of this paragraph of hatred)

When I get home I'm going to buy 1000 big Macs and hand them out to people and tell them to cherish their freedom, thank them for abiding by unwritten social norms, tell them to calm down the communism rhetoric because that ain't funny, and look at their car and say "hey, at least it's not a coal powered buggy, those are tough to insure." Enjoy your America sandwich and ability to breathe the air without a face mask.

Safe to say I was losing it a little. Ok, a lot. Why?

Day 5 (Stage 2): I DIDN’T MEAN TO GET IN THE BREAK I SWEAR

Zach's Instagram was on point during my dark times.
This is the truth. It was one of those, “eh, ill follow this move” and then the group takes a pee break and you and 2 other poor SOBs get 6 minutes on the field 20k into the stage. PERK: The first 60k of this race was lined 100% with people. It was surreal. I don’t know how to do that math, but if you have a 120k (73 mile) long line of people (both sides of the road) sometimes with up to 10 people deep, you have a lot of people taking pictures of you. Riding your bike through something like that is like a perpetual noise tunnel. Its amazing. I will not forget the first 60k of that race at all.


Then it was to the circuits. 3 laps of 42k. Terrible pavement. BUT, after 1 lap, we still had 5 minutes. On the second lap, with 60k to go, the field went hard up the hill (the circuit was essentially a hot-dog up and down a valley) and the gap went down to 3:30, which is when one of the break members crashed out. We got word he was chasing so we waited, and by the time he caught back on and we got back to work, the gap was down to 2 minutes and our chances were null. Total shame, I could see a scenario where we would have had 3 minutes going into the last lap and with the hill on the course I might have had a chance. Instead, someone attacked across the gap, I went with and it was the two of us with 1 minute at the top of the valley with 20k to go, and we were absorbed with 7k to go. I was pretty devastated. I put a lot of effort into that move and came up with nothing. It left a sour taste in my mouth, which was exacerbated by the actual taste of whatever is on the road in that valley…

Day 6 (Stage 3): Yak River

Drying clothing after a brutal day on the bike
The 3rd stage featured a 50k climb up to 10000 feet, where we would stay while making our way to the actual Qinghai Lake. It was not a hard climb, but it was raining and cold, so it was a hard mental day. With all the clothing I brought I started the climb feeling surprisingly good considering the effort the day before and being soaked to the bone. It was actually a welcome effort as we were all freezing and could use some warmth. So there we are, minding our business about mid pack, and a Chinese rider decided he needed to be in front of me, Dave, and Jon, like yesterday. I was on the ground before I even knew I was getting crashed. Dave and Jon both were very hurt, my bike was in need of a wheel, bar adjustment, and to put my levers back in the right spots. All in all, with 3 of us down, it took our team car a bit to get to me, replace the wheel, fix the bars and shifters, and get me on my way. Jon and Dave were both looking like their race was over, so I set off about 5 minutes down at the base of the climb in the rain on my own. Typically, a commissar would turn his head to a rocket bottle to help a crashed rider get back to the field, but when Gus got to me, he told me Jon had already been disqualified for taking a rocket bottle from him, and the draft on the car was minimal on the climb, so he gave me some food and I chased for an hour and a half before I caught a group of guys at the top of the climb who were about a minute back on the lead group. We hit the top of the climb and my group was so unmotivated to ride that we never saw the leaders again, and it was a slow cold 100k to the finish bleeding and bummed.

That night I felt feverish and was pretty banged up on the right side. I dressed all the wounds and got some sleep, crashing sucks, I was pissed off, and I knew the hardest days of the race were still to come. Why do I call it Yak River? Well:

Day 7 (Stage 4): Why you no let me race?

An early Category 2 climb on the stage split the field into a front group of 30, which I made, which then spent about a half hour attacking itself to death until 8 riders got away. I mustered up my anger and sprinted as hard as I could and made it across to the group. Typically after such a big to-do, when the break goes, it goes to the line. Today? Nope. Astana missed it, and chased it down, because FU Jim and break friends! The stage was a field sprint. I started to feel incredibly tired and angry during the stage.

That night I was running a high fever, coughing up yellow and green, felt like puking, and my leg was throbbing. It was clearly infected, and since I saw a dead yak on the road, I figured the river I crashed into after skipping off the road the day before was full of dead yak. Henceforth my infection was referred to as “the dead yak in my hip.”

I emailed Annie that night that I was 90% sure I wouldn’t start the next stage. I felt horrible, and my mood reflected it. I was impossible to be around. Dave was sharing a room with me, already out of the race with suspected broken ribs, but I bet I was winning the pity party by about a mile. Or 1.61 kilometers, depending on who you is.
A small crowd gathers to see Sam mostly naked and bleeding

Day 8 (Stage 5): We rode all the way to Utah?!

Red Bull Anyone?
After much stubbornness and complaining, I took some antibiotics, a ton of ibuprofen, two 5-hour energy shots, and mustered up a stage 4 start. It started with a HC climb that topped out at 7k into the stage, and if Drapac, UHC, and Kolss would not have neutralized the first 5k of it, I might have never seen the field again, but to my beer owing pleasure, with some chasing on the descent, I was in the peloton and in the race, despite the odds I had set for myself the night before. BACK TO IT!

Half way into the stage there was still no break established, just another day of status quo racing in China. So I started to participate after my teammates had throttled themselves going with every move of the day. In pure Tour of Qinghai Lake fashion, something crazy and unexpected happened! I got away with our GC rider Chad Beyer, a guy from La Pomme, Astana, and the yellow jersey from Kolss. I pull off the front after the attacks and see we have a gap and that Chad is with me, right then, the Yellow Jersey passes me and I point at him incredulous and look at Chad with a “what the hell is going on in this race” look.

The Yellow Jersey?!

Chad goes "Its all you man." I put my head down

The race situation, Yellow jersey 26 seconds back, field 3:20 back.

The 3 guys with Chad and I take each other off the back, probably because the Yellow Jersey was in the break and that's crazy, so Chad and I were left on our own, that group of three 26 seconds behind us, and us 3:20 up on the field. It is at this time I flick Chad through and hear “nope, its all you man!” I immediately understood the tactic. There was a HUGE climb coming up, and I was to ride as hard as I could to the base of it and give Chad the best head start that I could. So I did. Infection and all. I sang songs in my head like I do in training, and sure enough, an hour later, pulled the plug at the base of the climb with Chad 3 minutes up on the field. He ended up getting caught, but it was worth a try. I spent the next 2.5 hours on my own, eons ahead of the grupetto, and eons behind the lead group. It was a 50k descent into the finish town, which was down a valley that looked like Southern Utah, hoodoos and all. It gave me time to think, ride easy, and talk myself into the rest of the race. I crossed the line only a minute ahead of the grupetto, but the time alone pedaling easy was so valuable to me. I think it reset my head for the rest of the race. I would call it the end of the dark times. I apologized to my team for being so difficult to deal with, and they kindly dismissed it as reasonable considering the circumstances, but watching Mike Woods deal with his crash over the last 4 days (I write this the evening before the last stage of the race) I am seeing that I lack grace in the face of adversity. 

Friday, July 25, 2014

China Day 4 (Stage 1): Butts and Hotel Rooms COMMENCE

Day 4: Stage 1
Today was the first stage of the race, but since I am taking things easy, it was pretty uneventful. I am not feeling entirely inspired to write today, so here is the review:

Our mechanic Will stole my phone and took a selfie:

I guess that’s what I get.

I took a few videos on the way in to Xining today to try and convey the Inception-esque buildings, and also capture a bit of what its like to have a ton of people watching your every move, including changing into biker shorts. Like these dudes way up in a building nobody will ever use:


Heres video 1 of us rolling through town, there are so many more groups of buildings like the ones you see here, its so strange!


This last one is more of the same:


That was that. There must have been 50,000 or more people watching the race on course today, 17 kilometer circuit, lined with people the whole way. Heck, it might have been the entire population of Xining!

I have decided to end these blogs with the various rice recipies that I am having. Today we have:
1.       Breakfast of honey rice
2.       Lunch of BBQ Bacon Bits Rice
3.       Dinner of Chipotle Maple Syrup Rice (crowd favorite)


Oh yes. Time to catch some zzzzz’s on my cinder block bed and my pillow filled with very small rocks.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

China Day 3: Not In America

The theme of the day today was one of tourist awe. First of all, its strange to have a ton of people looking at you like you are some strange phenomena and take pictures of you, while at the same time I am thinking the EXACT SAME THING about them and taking pictures back. Today was the ELABORATE team presentation, but that was hardly my interest as we rode through Xining taking in the sheer mass of infrastructure going unused in this country. If all the apartment complexes and buildings of Xining were at 90% occupancy there would probably be 2 million people living here, but judging by the lack of congestion on the roads, and general lack of lights on in the buildings at night, I’d bet there were around 100,000. The crazy thing is they are still building buildings! We had the team presentation at this campus of arenas, a basketball arena, a soccer stadium, and 2 other arenas that I didn’t even get a chance to see (since I have race organizers shooing me around to different places all the time for no reason at all).

One of 4 arena type buildings in Xining

I spent most of the day in awe of what I was seeing, and I had my camera, so today I think I will do a picture blog.

Like I said, the infrastructure here is overwhelming. If you have seen the movie Inception, think about the place Leonardo DiCaprio and Mal build deep in the depths of their minds to live in together, all those huge vacant abandoned buildings that all look alike, ominous, and in a row. That is exactly what I think Xining looks like. Here are a few pictures I took to try and depict it properly:

On our huge group ride after the presentation

Buildings like this EVERYWHERE



 Still building

I mentioned a group ride today, after a very strange presentation that I hope to get the video of, we all rode the 30k back to the hotel. It was probably the first time I have been in a 200 person professional field where there was no race, so I had to check myself sometimes when I thought I was racing.

5-Hour Energy pays a toll

5-Hour Energy rides in a 3k tunnel


Fireworks before the ride


Watching them watch us watching them.

This race is a lot to take in, like this stuffed animal custom embroidered with “Tour of Qinghai Lake”

Thanks?

Or this bus that you apparently go to the bathroom in, and is numbered as if it is one of a fleet?
Talk about a bummer to have to drive that thing for 14 days.

Included with the daily forecast was the oxygen density as if its some kind of badge of honor:

Yikes.

We also were given a portable laundry machine, which is cool, but it doesn’t work, so I spent an hour in the bathroom finding out just how dirty clothes get on planes as I washed them all in the sink.




Holy crap, we are watching TV in the room and a commercial just came on with Scottie Pippen in slow motion in a rockets jersey doing a layup to some soft 70s music… no sponsors, no advertisements, just on to the next thing. No idea what that was.

The last thing I want to leave you with this afternoon is the situation of the hotel elevator music. It is a 10 second loop of Kenny Loggins (maybe?) saxophone that turns on the second you hit the button and loops until you get off the elevator. Its amazing. After just 2 days everyone is humming and whistling it all the time, either to get on each other’s nerves, or just because it is burned into our heads. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our elevator:
Amazing.

To end today, I give you the rest of the pictures I took and thought were somewhat interesting:


Wednesday, July 23, 2014

China Day 2: DAMN YOU RICE COOKER!!!!!

My coach has made a bigger deal about bringing and cooking my own food in China than anything else all year. So, I listened, and spent a significant amount of time and money planning out 20 days of food that I could pack into one suitcase with all my clothes for a 14 day stage race along with a rice cooker. The first meal in China would be oatmeal and fruit with maple syrup, not bad!! I plug in my voltage converter, plug in the rice cooker, turn it on, and it explodes.

I mean, it didn’t shoot shrapnel, but it did sound like a firecracker. DAMNIT. DAMNIT AGAIN. ALL THAT WORK. SON OF A…

I’m so mad about that. And I slept like crap on this bed, which Dave pointed out is more like a WWF wrestling mat, here is a selfie I just took. I was sitting on it but I had to give my butt a rest.

Pretty sure that box spring is redundant… also, check the sleepy face on that guy!

So, here’s a thing: At breakfast this morning, which I will now be eating despite 30 pounds of food in my suitcase, there was no rice to be found. They did have French fries and ketchup, which would have been a first for me at breakfast. I guess its not far off from hash browns, so I wont look into that too much, but I still protested. No rice?! Of all the things I thought I could count on it was not understanding people at all (check!) and rice EVERYWHERE. Ok ok ok, there was rice at lunch, and dinner, I feel in the future I will be shocked that I could ever complain of the lack of rice at a meal (Reading this 3 weeks later, the answer to that is fully and completely YES), considering it is all I have eaten since.

Something that is giving me great joy in China is the things that get lost in translation, for example:

Or the welcome text in the book here at our psudo-hotel:
Rapid operation between heaven and earth space… classic.
And countless others. I should not complain, however, because it is a treat to have even the slightest insight to what something means or what is written or what someone is saying. I talked to our translator about how when he talks I hear NOTHING resembling communication, and he tried to convince me that English is harder, to which I, with no basis of fact, dismissed him.

Things being lost in translation may be the main reason so many things we do here are insane, or at least lack even a weak explanation to excuse the insanity. So, instead of having a staff member come to the opening ceremony rehearsal at 6:30pm tonight, they figured “why bother, lets have a rider come instead.” So, naturally, I volunteered like an IDIOT, and at 10:15pm when I got back from two 45 minute bus rides, just to stand around by this girl who I figure is about 12 years old:

To walk across a stage behind her one time waving at an empty stadium, I was something other than thrilled. Three and a half hours? Can I complain? Nope, nobody knows what I’m saying. Im just a stupid American who thought he was going to get to sit down tonight. I got back to the room, exhausted, jet lagged, and for some reason a backstreet boys song was stuck in my head keeping me awake. They are lucky there is a Pacific Ocean in-between us, because I wanted to find them and destroy them all last night for doing that to me. Sigh. On to day 3!