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Prior
to his departure for Chengdu, Jeff says goodbye to our guide, Mr. Lee.
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October
19, 1999
Hello
America, and others who are not in China right now. This is Jeff calling
from the Around the World 1999 Team with the report for Tuesday October
19th. Today was a great day. We had a 5 a.m. wake up at our hotel in Zhongwei. Our earliest rise so far. We have
discovered that getting an early start is the key to avoiding traffic.
Mainly the giant trucks hauling coal, bok choi, and pigs among other
things.
Today's drive
was beautiful and relatively easy. We took off at 6:30 a.m. and covered
just over 300km to Lanzhou, a big smoggy city with a population of 2
million people, located in the Gansu province along the Yellow River. The
scenery of today's drive to Lanzhou was rolling hills, sand dunes, to dry
air and mountains,
finally to
the insanely bustling city. Nick, Chanda, and I while riding in Alaska, the
1962 Rover, treated Mr. Lee, our guide, who speaks very little English, to
some new wave hits of the 80's. We caught him tapping along to some of the
tunes.
Mr. Lee is
kind of a funny guy. He's very serious and quite and commands a lot of
respect. We dubbed him "Sam", an acronym for Secret Agent Man. We
joke daily that he is an expert in Kung Fu and regularly kicks ass on
anyone that doesn't cooperate with him on his mission - basically
transporting the "gringos" through China.
Back to
today's update, we stopped on the road to take a toilet break. Doug spotted
a very old man riding his bike on a really deserted road. He stopped to see
us - possibly the first time he's ever seen "gringos" in person.
We said "ni hao" and we were on our way. We bee-lined it to
Lanzhou so we'd have plenty of daylight to work on the rigs.
The Land
Rovers require a lot of maintenance. Not because of reliability issues, but
because of the kind of driving we have been doing. A lot of crappy roads -
bumps, dips, washboards, dirt, gravel, rocks, you name it, constant
bouncing around and banging for 300-600 km/day. It takes its toll on the
cars.
Today, Earle installed
CB antennae and hooked up the CB's. Doug and Chanda worked on repairing the
bugs in Hercules, the 1970 Land Rover. I helped Todd adjust the valves on
both of the rigs. Nick was fixing and fiddling with all sorts of things,
like he always does, mainly he was installing a new gas gauge in
Alaska. He's
still out in the parking lot as we speak working on things.
That's about
it for the Tuesday, October 19th report. Doug and I are off the hotel salon
to get our feet massaged for 2 American dollars. Until next time, this is
Jeff signing off for the rest of the team at AroundtheWorld1999.com. Thanks
for tuning in.
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