Holy Shit. . .All Aboard. . .Shanghai Here We Come!!!

Last night we had a meeting to end the evening. The band director let everyone know that everyone who had a large instrument or extra suitcase(s) that they could live without for a day maybe two, were to take them downstairs and they would be transported by truck to the hotel in Shanghai. The reason that he was suggesting this was that the sleeper train had very limited space for luggage storage. So much so that whatever you brought with you had to stay in your sleeping compartment. Let's not forget that there are four people to a sleeping compartment and with all of the women that are not willing to part with their curling irons and hairspray even for a day, should make this a very interesting trip to say the least. All of the big instruments were transported downstairs along with only two suitcases, that's right only two suitcases . . .Holy Shit Are We In Trouble!



The day started with an early breakfast consisting of Rice, Rice and more Rice. Then it was back to the room to retrieve the rest of our suitcases and check out of our respective rooms. Everything went off without a hitch and we loaded the bus with the rest of our collective belongings. Did I mention that. . .Holy Shit We Are In Trouble! There were so many suitcases that they wouldn't even fit underneath the bus in the luggage hold. . .Holy Shit Are We In Trouble! I think everyone can see a theme starting to develop. With our Shanghai Sleigh loaded to the gills with every one's worldly possessions it was off to do some last minute shopping. What the Fuck! Do we really need anything more. For Christ sake I think somebody even bought the bones of a Chinese Emperor, or at the very least one of his concubines. Well it was another successful shopping trip where we bought the last remaining items that we hadn't bought to date. I believe that it consisted of Chinese Powdered Deer Penis, two meditation balls and the last folding fan in China . . . SCOOOORE!



After our stop, it was back aboard the Shanghai Slingshot and off to the Beijing Railway Station. We arrived at the Railway Station and parked in the parking lot which was not far according to our mountain goat guide John. It was in fact about three quarters of a mile away. We unloaded ALL of our "Shit" into one huge heap along side the bus and proceeded to sort the hugantic, ginormous pile out, and each grabbed our respective bags. We then proceeded to hike like a tour of wayward explorers on a quest for Mount Everest. There was John in the lead, which by the way he did not have any bags in tow and was walking like his "Ass" was on fire. With a combination of the lovely Beijing heat and the Nascar pace in which John had lead us to the front of the railway station, I was now a seething, sweat soaked ball of happiness. We waited for a few minutes while our guide John got everything organized and we tried to rehydrate as quickly as possible. It was at this moment that John gathered us into a huddle and informed us that for security reasons that if anyone was to talk to us that we were to claim to be Russian. What the hell do you mean Russian! Well I guess John felt that Americans were being made out as targets and that we would be safer traveling as a tour of Russians. I still don't know why in the hell anyone from Russia, a communist country, would want to take a tour of China, another communist country. Maybe it was in search of Chinese food. At any rate we complied with John's wishes as we did not want to wind up. . .Well, DEAD! It was bad enough that this was a train station and we all know how popular it is to bomb train stations amongst terrorist. My comfort level was not very high at this point. We then proceeded through what they called the "Security Check Point". Hell, being greeted by the Fucking Wal-Mart Greeter has more security than the damn railway station. Now I see why the terrorists bomb the shit out of train stations. Hell I surprised that they don't sell bombs in the Fucking gift shop in this place. . .Holy Shit, Holy Shit, and once again Holy Shit!!! We then ascended to the second floor on the escalators with all of our treasures in tow. We arrived on the second floor of the train station to the most crowded room of people that I believe I have ever been witness to. Hell it worse than Wal-Mart on welfare day. John quickly made arrangements for all of us Russian to occupy a room around the corner by the gate where we to board the Shanghai Express. As we filed through the crowded room I was witness to one of the most amazing thing I think had seen so far. A mother with her child squatting and pissing on the floor. That's right all of you civilized people "P-I-S-S-I-N-G" on the "Fucking Floor". This really made me wonder that the other day when I had my brush with the "Call of Nature", I should have dropped my drawers and just "Shit" on the God Dam floor myself. I doubt that anyone would have even batted an eye. After witnessing this I can honestly say I have seen it all now. We rounded the corner to the area where our gate was and proceeded to wait as we had about 45 minutes until we had to board the train. While we were waiting to board our train I scoped out our surroundings. I began to wonder why we were on the second floor when the train tracks are on the damn ground. Well my question was soon answered. The answer was very simple, it was so that everyone who was "Stupid" enough to bring luggage with them would end up damn near falling down the stairs, breaking the handles off of their rolling suitcases, and becoming an angry mental patient in search of someone to kill.



Well we hear the call "ALL ABOARD", and it was off to the races. People popped out of everywhere and we descended through the gate like a pack of wild hyenas chasing the weakest wildebeests or at least the elderly Wal-Mart Greeter. We filed down a tunnel to a flight of stairs, not an escalator like when we came up to the second floor, but a set of God Damn stairs. It was apparent now that someone hated us Russians to no end as the escalators off to the right were not working and surely why should they nobody would be "Stupid" enough to bring luggage on a sleeper train. My conspiracy theory mind was now working overtime and I was well on the road to drawing my own conclusions to this cruel game we were now part of. I believe it was on the lines of rats in a maze concept or at the very least the strongest shall survive theory. We all got to the bottom of the stairs but not without damages and mental issues. I am now sure that if one more Asian Asshole lays one Fucking Hand on me they are going to eat an all American elbow sandwich, not Russian, AMERICAN! We were now beating a path for rail car two and wouldn't you know it the stairs emptied out at rail car 16. Oh boy another twelve mile hike. After a hike that seemed to extend into Mongolia or at least halfway to Shanghai we arrived at the door to our rail car. The snake of people and luggage wound for quite a distance and goody goody only 15 minutes to board. The occupants of our cabin were in the middle section of the human snake. As we were entering the rail car we were surprisingly greeted by our guide John, and he looked very panicked as he told us that we only had five minutes left to board and it didn't matter weather of not we were on the train, hanging from the train or even underneath the damn thing it was leaving the station. He said we "MUST" get on board ASAP HURRY HURRY HURRY!! We did just that, everyone in my cabin were like a foursome of Army Rangers with a loud shot of MOVE MOVE MOVE!!, we bailed into our tint little sleeper cabin asshole to asshole elbow to elbow and a mixture of sweat and luggage pile on top. We laughed our asses off for at least 15 minutes as we so wedged in or cabin that it was like we were a giant ball of tangled yarn. There I laid with my 60 pound backpack on my back, me on my back with my legs flailing in the air like a dying cockroach. I finally got to my feet to the popping sound of a Pringle Potato Chip can exploding. That's right my fat ass just popped a Pringle's can of sour cream and onion potato chips all over our new cozy sleeper compartment. From the look on the face of the female cabin stewardess she was none too happy with the recent potato carpet that we had nicely woven for her viewing pleasure. She proceeded to clean up the mess on the floor an shot us one pissed off Bruce Lee look. As a matter of fact believe that in some sort of twisted Ninja way we all lost three years off of our lives. . .I'm sure of it.



We organized our bags in the area created for this purpose and to our surprise it all fit, but then again we are guys and for the most part we don't have all of the tune up equipment that women have. We had numerous visitor before dinner and they were all amazed as to how much bigger our sleeper cabin seemed than theirs. I guess you could call it bigger if you from "Munchkin Land" or at the very least an infant. It wasn't long and "Diner Was Served". I must admit dinner was pretty good even though it had rice in it. After dinner we wandered to the "Bar Car", where you would think I would find a place to unwind, get away from kids and crowded spaces, no such luck. We entered the Bar Car to both the Fresno State musicians and the Oregon State musicians already three sheets to the wing having a frat style sing off where each group was spouting off it's respective school song. . .Fuck Me Running I'm Getting To Old For This Shit! We bought a few bottles of water and retreated to our sleeper cozy for a movie. Bobby had hes laptop fully charged so we watched a movie then it was off to bed. I was very surprised as to how smooth the ride was and how well I slept. That was at least until I was woke up at around 2:30am by the sound of Michael Hayes repeatedly saying Dennis. . .DENnis. . .DENNIS!. When I woke up I found Dennis Crow fumbling with the door handle, rubbing leavers and flipping switches. I asked him what the hell he was doing? He told me that he was locked in and couldn't figure out how to get out of the room and he really had to piss. I immediately started to laugh at the sheer desperation in his voice and the inability to find the lock lever. I unlocked the door and let him out. When he returned he told me that earlier in the evening someone had knocked on the door but he couldn't figure out how to open the door then either. We had a good laugh over the whole thing and decided to try and get some more shut eye. We were woke up a few hours later by the train steward telling us that the bathrooms would be closing in about a half an hour and if we wanted to use them this was the last call. We found out that this was because the toilets flush onto the tracks and they did not want this to happen too close to the train station. . .Yuck! Although with the recent discovery about where it is acceptable to relieve yourself this new tidbit of information comes as no real surprise. It was a quick "Hi Ho Tinkle Away" and we were at the train station in Shanghai. As we were in our cabin gathering our personal belongings Dennis was moving his blanket and pillows and what do you think he found? Well, he found what appeared to be a "Fecal Smear" on his sheet under his pillows, That's right a huge "Shit Stain" on his sheet. This is where Dennis lost his mind and shouted "What the Fuck Is That"? It would appear that someone had gone to the bathroom on the train and found that there was no toilet paper, as is so popular in the god forsaking place, and they were without their socks. We then could only come to one conclusion and that was whomever did this must have come back to their sleeper cabin and wiped their ass with the sheet. So this is what we now call the legend of the "Fecal Sheets". We had only a limited amount of time to laugh and be grossed out by the large sheet of cotton ass wipe and then we found ourselves undergoing another hysterical panicked evacuation from the train, "Good Times Good Times". With the nasty thought of the fecal sheets fresh in our minds we walked another fourteen miles through back alleys and broken sidewalks to where our bus was parked. This particular bus was half the size as the ones we had in Beijing, which resulted in us having to leave half of our luggage on the sidewalk in the possession of a complete stranger where it would wait until a truck arrived to pick it up and delivery it to our hotel. That's right we parted with some of our luggage on the streets of Shanghai. This has all the makings of a tragic movie where the treasure of the far east that were contained in our abandoned luggage were sold on the streets in a quickly developed open air market. We nervously went to a breakfast where none of were in the mood to eat as all we wanted to do is to be reunited with our belongings.



We left the restaurant in short order on the bus and soon arrived at the hotel to find a massive pile of luggage in front of the hotel. The massive group of people began the sorting and checking in process and it was a mere three hours until we were in our rooms safe and sound. We freshened up and then met at the buses for our next outing. . .A Tour Of The Bond Area". This must be Chinese for "River Walk", because that's exactly what it was a walk along the river. On one side Old Shanghai on the other New Shanghai. After about forty five minutes into the walk a heavy rain storm hit, and low and behold there were umbrella salesman coming out of every nook and cranny as a matter of fact I think one may have actually came out of my own ass. After we had all purchased an umbrella (Not before thoroughly bartering for them first) we made our way to the meeting place, the tea room. . . go figure. The tea room was gorgeous but there was only one problem. It was built to hold twenty Chinese people and three full size people. Unfortunately there were about one hundred wet teens and their chaperone's crammed in the tea room. Well all were crammed in there, everyone but our mascot "Thimble Bladder" AKA Dennis Crow, who was across the courtyard taking another "Wicked Tinkle". We later found out that he was the only white person in the crowd across the courtyard, thank god he was pretending to be a Russian. After a while the rain had subsided enough to retreat to the rocket guided death buses back to the Galaxy hotel. We thought that the bus drivers were aggressive in Beijing, man were we sadly mistaken. These bus drivers really don't give a shit about anything. I actually think I saw the driver close his eyes and grip the wheel and turned into traffic to make an abrupt U-Turn. The turn was a success much to the dismay of the screaming passengers. Well we arrived back at the hotel in time for dinner, another round of showers and an evening cigar amongst the stars. Oh yeah by he way the relief from the extreme hot weather that we were hoping for now that we were on the coast. . .well no such luck we were still in hot humid hell. There is much to do tomorrow so I had better go and let every one's eyes rest from the lengthy read.