Thursday, April 8, 2010

Shenzhen To Zhengzhou

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After a morning factory visit SHENZHEN, we traveled to ZHENGZHOU. The vendor in Zhengzhou, which was two-and-a-half hours away, sent a MINIVAN to pick us up. About half-way thru our trip, the van broke down in the middle of a bridge, much to the consternation of the RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC. Our driver got pretty violent with the stick shift trying to get the van to go before accepting the fact that the transmission was completely shot. While he was busy yelling into his phone, traffic beeped and honked at us, as they angrily swerved around us. After about an hour, a couple of cops came to push the van to the shoulder. We must've been quite a sight standing on the shoulder, judging from all the bewildered looks we got from passing commuters...

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We got back into the van to wait for another van to come pick us up. Missy killed time by sketching in her notebook, while everyone else plugged into their iPods. Crazily, a crowded white van broke down directly behind us, just as a tow truck arrived and just as our replacement van arrived. As we boarded the new minivan that came to rescue us, we watched as the tow truck hooked up our broken down van. To our amusement, they started to attach chains between the two broken down vans, forming a short train. We didn't stick around long enough to see if this crazy idea would work...

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Soon we were trudging through traffic in this really long tunnel. We saw some dude just totally park his car in the right lane as he hopped out and started PISSING on to the side of the tunnel, oblivious to the long line of cars backing up behind his car, oblivious to all the spectators watching him taking care of business, AND, MORE AMAZINGLY, oblivious to the fact that the end of the tunnel was just 20 feet away...he could've easily waited like, another minute to exit the tunnel, pull to the side of the road, and pee behind the relative privacy of a bush or a tree. OF COURSE, I had to take a photo! Luckily, I was only able to get a blurry image - just enough to show that the story wasn't fabricated, while leaving out all the unnecessary and explicit detail. The pissing exhibitionist was the cherry on top of a long and crazy day of travelling...

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