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!