Jan 7, 2006
The Great Wall

Our hotel room in Beijing was much nicer than the one we got in Harbin, except for the small of paint when we got there. After a while I didn’t really notice it anymore. The bathroom and shower was very strange though. The entire bathroom itself was a shower, the drain was in front of the toilet and there was a power outlet on the wall with a little plastic cover over it right where the showerhead dumped out the water. That plug was also the only other plug in the room other than the one the TV was plugged into.

We got up at 8am today and packed up all our stuff to leave in the hotel’s lockup room so they could resell our the room, and so we didn’t have to take all our stuff to the Great Wall. We walked down the street to this bus touring company and got tickets to go to the Great Wall for 80yuan each, which is way cheaper than the 450 yuan for a cab to take us there and wait for us since it also included the tickets to get onto the wall. The bus ride was not that bad other than the fact that the seats were too close together. Audrey and Dan both slept on the bus but I just looked out the window. The trip took a little over an hour and a decent amount of that time was just getting through the traffic down town Beijing. When we got there the tour company tried to rip everyone off by only taking us to the very bottom of the hill where there were a few gift shops. It was about a 10-15 minute hike up to the entrance onto the wall from there, and they wanted another 60 yuan each to get a ride to the top. We just did the little hike to the wall. I went very quickly and had to wait for Dan and Audrey to catch up. We decided once on the wall to go to the left, where most people were going to the right. Going to the left was not as tall, and it didn’t have any splits in the wall where you could go left or right, but it was a hell-of-a-lot steeper. I don’t know the elevation of the wall is where we started or where we ended up, but some of the steps on the wall had to be 24-30 inches tall. Again I spent some time while climbing waiting for Audrey and Dan, but we eventually all made it to the top. There were a good number of foreigners there, many of them spoke English and they were from all over the world. Once we made it to the top, there were even more independent merchants selling everything from jewelry to custom engravings of the wall. We ended up getting a certificate stamped and signed that said we made it to the top. The people there are good at very high-pressure sales. And nothing is cheap at the top of the Great Wall since they had to haul all their crap up there. Their English was for the most part very bad since they just memorized a few phrases to help them sell their crap, but they must do all right since there were lots of them at the bottom, top and on the way.

Hiking down the wall was much easier than the climb up, but its one of those times you realize you have muscles you didn’t think you had. I thought that my knees would hurt really bad when I was done or the next day but they didn’t at all. At the bottom we had about an hour to burn before our bus left for downtown Beijing, so we used the 2yuan off coupons to buy some beef noodles for lunch. They were very good but the place was very cold so the hot soup wouldn’t stop steaming, which made it hard to eat without getting a bunch of steam in your face. Especially since I’m very poor at eating with chopsticks. Dan and Audrey both fell asleep on the bus ride home. The bus had to stop to get gas, which was about 4.55 yuan/liter. After some calculations I figured out that its about the same as in Los Gatos. The other interesting thing was that the gas station was on the freeway. It was just like a rest stop on highway 5, but a gas station instead. I think they did this since it’s a toll freeway, and you have to go through gates when you get on and off. When we got back we had about 5 hours to kill before we had to catch our overnight train back to Shanghai. We walked around some of the old streets in Beijing, went to an Internet café, and also stopped by a Trek bike shop that I saw from the cab. After seeing that you could buy a common bicycle in china for $20 at the grocery store, I didn’t think they would have anything like Trek, but sure enough, they had the same inventory as anywhere else, including my mountain bike, for the same price. The guy said though that it’s much cheaper to buy components in china from Shimano than anywhere else in the world.

Overnight Train to Shanghai from Beijing

Our train left at 7:51 local time, and was supposed to be about 13 hours long. The train was about 20 cars long, 2/3rds of them being sleeper cars, with 3 bunks high the whole way down. Audrey got to sleep on the top, and Dan and I were on middle bunks next to each other. They did lights off around 10:15pm, and we had to be quiet, but Dan and I weren’t ready to do that after finishing up talking with the other people in our bunk, we went to the food car. They said they were closed, but the guy let us hang out in there and buy beer anyways. We were the only ones int here, and we played cards for about an hour and a half, drank about 3-4 beers each, and then quietly went to bed in our bunks. I didn’t sleep that well on the train as every once in a while there would be 2 jolts, followed by 2 more. They were car-coupling jolts when the train would slow down or speed up and they were felt for both couplers at each end of the car we were on. I had never been on a train quite like this, and if I actually spoke their language it would have been much more fun. Even so, I would much rather travel this way overnight than by plane, even though the plane is much quicker. If you are traveling, the overnight train makes much more sense because it acts as your transportation, and as your hotel, since that night you don’t have to stay in a hotel room.

You can find many more pictures from Harbin’s Ice Festival on Flickr. People with real cameras and tripods took some excellent pictures and posted them. They can be found at http://flickr.com/photos/tags/harbin/

so yesterday I decided to buy some running shoes and to run st. Joseph’s hill.. the route i usually bike ride. Well as it turns out i ended up walking about 75% of it. Hopefully next time I can run a little bit more. Today I went on my regular bike ride, but it didn’t turn out so regular. I rode to the top of St. Joseph’s hill, and then down to the launch ramp at the lake. I was feeling pretty good at that point so i decided to ride around the lake. When I got back to the launch ramp I decided to go home the hard way, up the steep hill and to the split where Jones trail will go back to town or i can go up the hill more to the summit. I decided to once again go to the summit for the 2nd time that day. It was harder the 2nd time and went a little slower, especially since I already drank 3 liters of water and had no more. It was an easy ride home from the top, and the trip was about 23 miles long. Much longer than Ive been doing. Tomorrow morning I hope to do Spin class at 6am, but we’ll see how i feel. Now I’m going to go eat some food and go do my homework at Starbucks in Los Gatos. If its still the 16th of October and before midnight, come see me at Starbucks.

So today i went on a much longer bikeride than normal. When I was done I went almost 19.24 miles and climed and decended near 2000 feet. I left the house and went to the bike shop to get some things checked out, and then headed up kennedy road. At the top of kennedy road is a fireroad called kennedy trail (i think). This trail winds up the hill for almost 4 miles of switchback after switchback and eventually puts you on top of the mountain. This hill is right in front of the large white radar cube that is visible from almost everywhere, actually its about 300′ lower. I’m now exhausted and dont really want to move. Im sitting at starbucks with jeff matt and dan and have not done anything worthwhile. I think I’ll go home now.