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: