迷失的老美

Well, the “kneecap” incident this morning proved a snapping point, no pun intended.
I can no longer deal with this insane traffic every morning. The BIKE lane is NOT for CARS. And I know what you are thinking right now “holy shit! two posts in one day! How can this be?!”
Basically it boils down to this, let’s take a ride on the logic express to conclusion station.
The kneecap would never have been shattered if I had not grabbed it.
I never would have grabbed the pipe if it had not been swung at my head.
The pipe never would have been swung at my head if the driver had not gotten out of the car with a pipe.
The driver would not have gotten out of the car with a pipe if he was sane
(logical error, Chinese are not sane)
The driver would not have gotten out of the car with a pipe if I was not pissed at him.
I would not have been pissed at him if I was Chinese
(logical error, I am not Chinese and I am sick of this shit)
I would not have been pissed at him if he was in his own damned lane.

Destination: Reached

So, what would keep him in his lane? A barrier perhaps? Separating the bike and car lanes? Like the ones that exist all over the place?

Solution: Found

With this bit of knowledge I will be going to the Transportation Management Bureau tomorrow to request a fence on that stretch of road. In fact, I will be requesting it until I have one. The Olympics are coming up soon and the pressure is on to sweep all of “China” under the carpet and hide the fact that Chinese are self-centered and horrible drivers with no sense of rules or regulations in their heads. I think that my suggestion and story will be taken with a grain of care, but what’s another fence to keep a resident foreigner from making a scene?

Needless to say, this should be interesting. I am also requesting that an exit/entrance be swapped to fix the traffic on 2nd ring. The traffic problem is so obvious it’s not even funny, and it’s such an easy solution to the horrible design of Beijing roads that I might have a chance of seeing results.

Results coming tomorrow!

“Normal” This is a word that never applies to me it seems.
Shanghai – I had to go on a day trip for a presentation. I left early for the airport, but missed check-in by about 3 minutes. Then I went to the wrong counter (Beijing to HongQiao must go to counter “Q”). I rush over to the counter and beg to cut in line, as I am already late and MUST be on that flight. The girl says “You are too late, you cannot check-in”. In a panic I resort to the tried and true line. I point over to the other counters and say “She said it was OK”. This got immediate results and I was allowed to check-in. From check-in to boarding it took me all of 8 minutes to get through everything. If only it was as fast in the US.

Xinjiang – So me and Jude are going off to Xinjiang for holiday. The tickets were a fun issue. In China, traveling over a holiday is generally seen as “insane”. This is due to the fact that half of the country all wants to go somewhere else in the country, resulting in something best described as a “ratfuck”. The odd thing about this, is that everyone is determined to leave on the day the holiday begins or the day before. This results in high ticket prices and low availability. Anyone smart realizes that if one waits a day to travel, all prices are cheap. So, that was the plan. Fly out on the 2nd for a 60% discount. Well, 60% didn’t happen, I was able to get 50%. But, I have the fun of ordering tickets awaiting me.

Wednesday: A coworker helped me order when I was in Shanghai, but she didn’t have all the information she needed, so I ordered them myself. Ok, cool, ordered! 40%, but that’s all that was left.
Thursday: Tickets come in the morning that she ordered, she says she doesn’t want them, both that set and the set I ordered are canceled. I call back and reorder with a promise of them being delivered at 7pm. Oh, and they had 50% available again and would give me those. OK!
6pm comes and me and Jude decide to book the return flight while we are at it and I book, tickets will be delivered on Friday.
7pm comes, there are no tickets. So I call. The company claims that there was no order at all and rebooks along with the return flight all to be sent together the next day at noon. OK!
8pm comes, I get a phone call asking if I am still in the office. Well, that was odd… should not be.
Friday: Calls early in the morning about tickets. wtf? I said noon. 10am, and there is someone there with tickets… Jesus fucking Christ why me?
I get to the office and hey look, tickets, but not the return set… these are the tickets that there was no log for! Jude is on her way to pay for hers, but it gets better now. A second person shows up with a full set of tickets. Cool, I just realized what happened. The company screwed up and had no flights left at the time. Seeing as they are just in a building full of other travel agents they used another company to send me tickets, so, they had no log of it themselves! In the end, I got to pick and choose which flight was the best, got my 50% discount and paid. Oh what fun tickets are in China!

Kneecaps:
So, today… It’s Saturday, but hey look at that, it’s a holiday on the 1st, so that means we have to work on the weekend. Hooray! I am on my way to work, riding in the bike lane like I do everyday. A van pulls out into the lane and I stop. Just get back into your lane you god damned farmer. So, the guy gets all pissed off and brings out a PIPE with which he intends to hit me which screaming things about foreigners. He takes a swing at my head and the whole “survival” thing kicks in. I grabbed the pipe in mid swing and ripped it out of his hand, then proceeded with a backhand to his kneecap… which seems to have shattered as he could no longer stand without his knee buckling under him. 2 seconds, no thought, just reaction. Result = broken kneecap and lots of adrenaline. I toss the pipe into the 2nd ring moat and get the hell out of dodge.

Lessons learned this week:
1) If you can convince someone they are not responsible, they will do things for you
2) Don’t let me order tickets
3) My self-defense reaction is to break kneecaps. I scare me sometimes.

So, due to past stupidity and a seemingly never-ending line of bad luck, I had to force a little good luck. This was in the form of a fast weekend trip over to Yinchuan.
Background info:
Yinchuan is the capitol city of Ningxia Province. This is Hui land, land of Halal food and Islam. Now, I know what you are thinking, OMG TERRORIST. But this is not the case. I have never run into so many people who were actually friendly and helpful. Halal (清真) food there is some the best I have had in China, easily rivaling Sichuan. Cabs are cheap, cars are few and roads are big and well paved.

Pictures speak better than words, so, here goes:
Ridin’ Spinnaz!

A gate

Climbed this

Great view from the top

Little Tiananmen, built in 1985. Yea, I’m confused too

The best coffee boat, which had no coffee >_<

Monkeys monkeys monkeys!

There’s the yellow river.

Lot’s more pictures, but all I can say is that I didn’t stop for all the tourist spots, nor did I see everything there was to see in the city. This means that I will be back.

So, we finally moved to the new office. This means a longer commute for me now, but it’s ok. 25 minutes or so instead of the 5-10. Wangfujing is better anyways. Everyday for lunch I have to ride a while to get to where I want to eat, and by then I am not so hungry. This is a good thing.

This also means that the Trek is being put through its paces more than it is used to. I am still so incredibly glad I brought it over last time, it has never given me a problem in its 10 years and that is more than I can say for anything on the market here. That being said, 10 years in the US and it stayed good as new, 6+ months in Beijing has been eating this thing up. Brakes getting loose, derailleur getting futzy, one of the handlebar caps was stolen (I still do not understand the logic behind this), and the grime of Beijing was piling up. So, time for a tune up… but where?

I googled and baidu’d around and saw something about Trek opening a few shops in 2005 in Beijing. Checked out Baidu, and sure enough it was there.
I am actually going to plug this site. If you want a real bike, go to this place. The service is insanely good, a full tuneup will run you 100-200RMB and leave your bike looking brand new and running better than it ever has. All their bikes and gear are imports and the markup is NOT bad at all. I picked up a set of lights so I can maybe stave off death for a while longer on the streets at night here. The staff is great, speaks English, and very skilled. No banging on your frame with a hammer to force something to fit here, they actually have all the right tools.
The tuneup ran me 150 and they completely disassembled the bike, degreased it, polished up everything, trued the rims, replaced the ball bearings, regreased it and put it back together in about an hour or so.
If you are tired of your Flying Pigeon or your other random 300 kuai bike, go here and drop a thousand or two and you can walk away with a decent bike that you can rely on. Spend a bit more and you can go top of the line, same as in the US, upgrades out the ass, reasonable prices and friendly staff who are actually helpful and know what they are doing.

The only thing they are lacking is good locks, which is a good thing, the fewer there are on the streets, the fewer chances the pros here have to learn how to pick them.

Also, ran into the CEO of a pretty cool site while at the shop, it’s kind of like dianping (which rocks for all things China). It’s called localnoodles and it’s more or less designed for us expats.