China!! We made it! After a L O N G flight from Detroit we finally landed in Beijing and after getting accustomed to the chinese way of traveling by train we made it with our board bags to the hotel. Nicola, myself, Melissa, Brad and Daniel decided to fly here two nights early to get accustomed to the time difference and check out what China has to offer.
We started off by heading to the forbidden city which was so incredible! I was blown away by the size off it and even though I’ve actually visited Beijing once before when I was really young, it still felt like the first time. My fellow friends had all brought skateboards and to not get left behind I spend $5 on renting a bike and biked around Beijing with the rest of them. We did get about as many stares as Aliens being 4 Americans and one Swede out and about in the big city.
After a quick noodle lunch we started our mission to try and get to the Great Wall. With several Taxis turning us down, no-one to speak english with and trying to get 5 people in one cab we finally got one guy who told us he would take us there! After a cheerful 30 minutes in the cab he stopped at what was definitely not the wall and said “we’re here!”. After all of us trying to speak English, Swedish, Mandarin and sign language to get him to take us to the wall he answered by taking our money and driving off.
By now it was way after lunch-time and we we’re starting to get a bit stressed since the last entry of the wall was meant to close at 4pm. Stranded in the middle of no-where with no idea where to go we started to get desperate and out of luck we find the one guy who could translate for us! Piling into another cab and again getting cheerful we went off only to get stuck in what we called “The Great Trafficjam of China”. The trip which was meant to take about one hour and a half turned out to be close to three hours and we were all sweating since our cab didn’t have any AC. After getting deliriously high of the fumes from the passing trucks and going from hysterically laughing to yelling at each other we F I N A L L Y made it to the wall and it was all worth it!!! The wall was one of the most amazing sites I’ve seen in my 23 years on this planet, I can’t believe what humans are capable of building!
Anyways, this morning we flew into Linyi and just had our test rides. The comp starts tomorrow and we ride our semi’s around 11 I believe. I’ll keep you posted 🙂