Made it!

And I'm in more-or-less the same number of pieces I started out with. These last, um, ten or eleven hours have been so eventful that I doubt I'll ever catch up.... but I'll try.

I started out by saving myself about $20 (US) by not jumping in a cab with the guy who offered me a ride first thing. He wanted 600 RMB for a ride into Beijing from the airport... which is a beautiful airport, by the way. Then, he went down to 400. Exchange rate is about 6.75 RMB to the US$, so he wanted a big chunk of change.

The punchline? The flagged rate is 100 RMB. Score one for the good guys, and the guidebook.

So then I found myself at one of the bus stations in Beijing. It was PACKED and CRAZY full of people... very few of whom I towered over, by the way. So there I am with my ginormous bag, plus my backpack, in line with a bunch of people with much less consideration for personal space than most Europeans, let alone Americans. Now add in a bunch of people who have no consideration for waiting in line. Lots of shouting and jostling and pushing. The guy behind me gave me a lesson in line management (turn your bag sideways to keep people from passing in front of you, which inevitably ends up with one person deciding that they were in line in front of you all along), delivered in thick pudonghua... which is to say, I didn't understand a single word of it.

Quick aside... there was this guy I heard talking to his wife, and I swear all I heard was "err, arr, arr, err". It was a total caricature of the Beijing accent.

So the uniformed officer was no more effective than anyone else at controlling this kind of behavior. But it was an interesting experience, and I ended up with my 35 RMB bus ticket to Tianjin. After that, it was a lot of smiling, a few show-my-ticket-and-smiles, and a "对不对?" tacked onto the end.

More later.... there's so much more!

En Route Bonus Post!

So I'm not yet in China like I'd promised... I'm at LAX on a crappy public terminal. So far, only a little excitement when I started out at the wrong terminal... United Domestic was servicing the first leg of my flight. But it all got sorted out, and here I am, about to get going.

I can't really believe it, even now... it's surreal. I didn't realize how much stress I'd been under trying to get this trip going... but I slept the whole flight down to LA. Now that the last of it is out of my hands.... Here goes! I can't wait!

Next stop....

Wow. I think I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for this part of this whole adventure. I'm just about to take my computer down and, so... my next post ought to be from China!

It's hard to believe that this is actually going to happen. A lot of things have come together at the last minute, just when I was about to give up on the whole project. Thanks to everyone who's helped... and those who still are.

So.... 再见！ 我出中国！

Almost there....

It's Sunday morning, and it's time to finish up the things to make this puppy work. Packing, visit O'mom (my grandmother, for the uninitiated), some quick notes to friends and so on. It still feels like the trip isn't a reality yet. But here we go!!!

Unless something bizarre happens, the next post will be from Beijing! or maybe Tianjin. Not sure how that's going to go.

Getting Ready

There's still a lot to do. I have to finish packing up the old apartment, which has been delayed because of my back pain. Hopefully I can work that out without too much problem -- both the packing and the pain. I'm getting a treatment this morning, we'll see how that goes. My car needs some serious work before I can even try to sell it, plus I need to take care of all the other things that tend to go with leaving the country for two months -- try to make the creditors happy, keep my life going and all that. We'll see how that works.