Story Time

Now it is time for a few short stories from my first mountain trip. The beautiful and massive Himalayan Mountains were everything I thought they would be and more.  As I said before I spent my time between the elevations of 10 and 13 thousand feet.  However, besides the lack of oxygen I felt like I was at sea level because of all the mountains that towered above.  Later in the week we headed up to the grasslands...unbelievable.  There we rolling hills of grass in every direction as far as the eye could see.  I kept catching myself completely forget that I was 13,000 feet (2 1/2 miles!) above the ocean...then I tried to do physical activity and was quickly reminded once again.  Well here are a few short tails from the adventure.

This is a picture of me riding on the back of a locals motor bike.  I was the lucky one as I got to ride with just one other person.  My teammates on the other hand were three deep (these were no Harley's, more like dirt bikes)...I thought they were going to fall off or tip over.  It was kind of a surreal moment once we got going.  I couldn't believe I was where I was doing what I was doing.

Then I looked forward....then behind....then forward again.  This top picture is what I saw behind me...

AND this is what was ahead (hence the double take).  We were driving away from the utopia and into what looked like a clip from the movie Twister.  A long story made short the other guys somehow out ran us (even though they had 3 people on their bike) and my driver didn't know where we were going.  Now, I can communicate in English, Spanish, and Chinese...him? Nope, nope, aaaannnd NOPE.  So, as the large pieces of hail began to pound us I called and figured out where we were suppose to go.  Only a few painful minutes later we arrived and ran into our waiting tent.

The little town that we used as a base camp for our trips lay right on the road to one of the biggest tourist spots in China.  So, a few years back all of the stores were required to get matching signs that had both their Chinese and English names displayed.  Here are just a few of my favorites:

This one isn't too unusual but I still thought you guys may enjoy.

This baby was my second favorite!  I was too creeped out to actually look inside.

NO explanation or debate needed...the Gold Medal ladies and gentlemen.

We also did a good bit of mountain biking.  I think the longest was a little over 60 miles in about a day and a half.  Well, for some reason my rear tire went flat on two different rides (I'm sure it had nothing to do with the size of the rider) and on one occasion my only spare broke and I had to run my bike the last couple miles back with it on my shoulder.  The locals enjoyed though as I got a lot of laughs and honks (but no offers for a ride).

This was probably my favorite find of the trip.  I have already experienced some small things over here, (KFC experience) but this one "takes the cake" (Where does that expression even come from?  Respond if you know).  Anyways, everything over here is just a size or two smaller than you find in the states, including the people.  However, a motel that we stayed in one night provided complimentary toiletries...yay.  Inside a yellow box I found barbies toothpaste and soap.  There was hardly enough in the tube to brush once and I kept loosing the bar Tic Tac of soap under my finger nails.

Unfortunately, my last experience is picture less as my camera had already died.  It was on the way home that our 6 hour bus ride turned into 14 hours due to multiple landslides that blocked the road.  At one point we moved about 2 miles in 5 hours.  The best part?  The truck in front of us was carrying loads of honey comb boxes escorted by clouds of bees.  Bees?  Really?  Who writes this stuff?  And these were no normal bees, they were "Crazy Kamikaze Asian Bees" unset because their honey was being stolen.  Therefore the decision was to either stay inside the stationary 100 degree bus packed with half dressed sweaty people or battle the bees.  It didn't take long before I welcomed the swarming bees.  You have to just smile...