First Impressions

After nearly 24 hrs of total travel time from hotel to hotel, I’m in
Xi’an, China for the first two stages of the Tour of China (we move on
to other cities for the following stages). This may have no real
organization but I’ve never been to anywhere in Asia so here are some
random observations I’ve gathered from my first couple days here:

Everyone I’ve come in contact with is EXTREMELY helpful, or at least
intends to be. The race organization has dozens of Chinese in their
late teens/early twenties working for them to help deal with all the
foreign teams. All the helpers speak English, and thank God they do
because not many other people do. As soon as we exited baggage claim
at the airport, Ty and I were met by a small group of giggling young
women waving “Tour of China” signs. Another young gentleman with them
showed us to a bus right away and had us to the hotel in no time
(actually I have no idea how long the bus ride took because I passed
out immediately and didn’t wake once). In addition, each team has an
assigned translator to tag along to races/other events (basically
whenever we leave the hotel). Our translator was sooo pumped to meet
us and to show us around the fancy hotel upon our arrival, and I
sincerely felt bad that I couldn’t share in her excitement… all I
could think was “Look lady, I’ve seen a hotel before, I’m effing
tired, gimme dat room key so I can go to sleep.” Nice lady tho, she
meant well.

The food. It’s Chinese, but it ain’t no Peking Restaurant on the
Athens East Side, that’s for sure. I’ve had a hard time eating any of
the meat dishes since I’ve been here. I showed up all open minded and
the first couple meals loaded my plate with a little of everything
from the buffet. After the second day I realized that no matter how
many times I tried it, most meat makes me nauseous. I’ve found that
nearly every dish has one of two characteristics that makes it
unappealing (or maybe both when the chefs get creative, yeck): either
it’s seafood and tastes strongly so, or its meat that seems to have
been prepared in a blender so that bone shards outnumber the amount of
edible meat in any given bite. My usual meal consists of white rice,
steamed veges, and hopefully one meat dish I can identify as edible
(it’s hit or miss with those). A couple times they’ve graced the
buffet with a Western item or two such as mashed potatoes or french
fries, but somehow they manage to taste slightly like fish as well.

In addition to tasting like fish, almost everything smells fishy and
my stomach no likey. Our hallway, musty fish. Chinese BO, sweaty
fish. The elevators, sweaty AND musty fish from the people that ride
in them. Some areas outside, dirty fish. Seriously, somehow stank
fish is the default smell here when anything is going to smell bad.
It makes me slightly nauseous just walking out into the hallway and
down the elevator to make the trip down to the restaurant every meal.
I keep checking myself and I’m afraid I’m starting to smell like it
too, possibly from the food we’re eating? Oh yeah, mix cig smoke in
there with stank fish. That’s the smell that’s everywhere.

Traffic is scary. I’ve seen 2 traffic accidents in the last 3 days
and I am outside a very limited amount each day. I’m sure there are
some traffic laws but as far as I can tell, WHO CARES!? It’s like one
huge game of chicken out there. Traffic lights are followed by about
50% or the drivers, the other half get to a red light, wait til the
edge of the intersection to slam on the breaks if they must but then
continue to creep on out no matter how many cars are coming the other
way. A lot of swerving and honking goes on, but eventually they just
get so in the way that a crossing car finally lets them through.
Though there are 6 lanes on a lot of these roads so sometimes cars get
stuck in the middle of the intersection and are forced to wait for it
to “clear” before they can proceed. Tonight as we were driven to the
team presentation we didn’t stop at a single red light and cut off a
cop from a few lanes over to swerve into a bike lane when traffic got
too bad. That brings up riding outside… There are huge bike lanes
(maybe too big because they are able to fit cars and busses as well)
divided from the road by a median. Sounds safe but with all the cars,
busses, mopeds, and rickshaws darting in and out of the lane, you
gotta cover your brakes with a hairpin trigger finger.

That’s all for now, I should probably stop complaining.