The RSI Driver Team World Tour FY08 Continues...

Well, here I am again. It is Thursday evening, and Mike and I have just spent our first full day here in Dalian, China. I am in my hotel room and finally have some time to fill you in on our last 36 hours or so...

It began around 5:00am or so on Tuesday morning, March 18th, when I awoke from my short nights sleep, showered, and headed out the door to begin my return trip to China for work.

I arrived downtown Milwaukee and picked up Mike in our parking lot around 6:30am. From there we headed to O'Hare to catch our 10:55am flight for Shanghai. Paving projects in Illinois made the journey slow, but we eventually got there and dropped off the rental car around 8:45am. Checking in was uneventful and we headed to the Admiral's Club (AA lounge) to await boarding.

The club was large, but no free food and only a coupon for one free drink (which neither of us used) is all we had to show for our short wait at O’Hare. As we sat there relaxing, I caught a glimpse of concern on Mike's face. Tragically, the concern was well founded, as he had just made the realization that he had forgotten his IPod. Naturally, I offered condolences and have not teased him about it since (yeah right!). Anywho, around 10:30am, we made our way to the gate and boarded the big beautiful American Airlines 777.

Our business class seats were much more high-tech than what we experienced on our Asiana 747 on the last trip. These were fully computer-controlled. I put it through it's paces by first going for the full recline position. I wanted to know what my maximum comfort level was going to be for the 14 1/2 flight to Shanghai. To my surprise, the seat arched, raised, then lowered, and lowered, and lowered - until I was seemingly near the floor and nearly flat in my own little happy space. I felt very comfortable and hoped that this trip would not be so bad after all. It was, however, at that moment that I realized that all of the coach passengers were filing by on their way to their own personal hell, and I felt a sense of compassion and returned my seat to a more normal position. I couldn't wait to finish the meal so I could see of I could get some real sleep.

After a delay due to cargo still being loaded, we taxied all of about 30 seconds (easily a record for quickest taxi at O'Hare).. W then slowly accelerated down the runway, lifted off into the overcast sky and headed north. I set my video screen to GPS display to monitor our progress and awaited my lunch. About 30 minutes into the flight we received our lunch. We had the choice of Western or Asian cuisine– I went for the Cowboy Steak – it was quite tasty and for dessert, I had the vanilla ice cream w/ brownie. Immediately after eating, I pressed the “Zzzzzzz” seat position, wrapped up with my blanket and attempted to sleep.

After about two hours of sleep (that is great for me on a plane) sat up a bit, and watched “Dan is Real Life”. Kind of a chick-flick, but it was ok. After that, it was a bit of a daze but I think I laid down for awhile and watched all 6 episodes of “The Office”.

When I said earlier that we headed north, it was in fact, absolute north. We went straight up over Hudson Bay, and actually passed within 90 miles of the north pole. The clouds cleared enough a bit to present me with an unforgettable view – miles and miles of ice and snow. We came back down south over Siberia and then actually flew SSE toward Shanghai.

Somewhere after crossing the north pole, the guy next to me flagged down an attendant and was not at all feeling well. They ended up paging a Doctor on the plane and it turned out that he had a severe migraine. He said that he had taken 2 vicodin and 2 hydrocodones, but it didn’t help with the pain at all. They got him some ice packs, a HUGE barf bag, and told me not to open the window or turn on the light. Too bad for me since I wanted to look out the window and read a book – oh well. After the Dr. gave him something else, he was knocked out for the rest of the flight. Upon landing, he woke up and said he was doing better. Unfortunately for me, I just had to lay there and watch our slow progress on the screen for the rest of the flight.

We arrived in Shanghai Pu Dong airport around 3:00pm Wednesday (after about 16 hours on the plane). It was like landing in Denver – nothing around the airport but farm fields. We had to go through customs, pick up our luggage, then check in for our flight to Dalian. Once we checked back in, we waited a bit in the terminal and at 5:00pm headed over to our gate for boarding.

Our flight from Shanghai to Dalian was scheduled for an hour and forty minutes aboard an Airbus 321. It was packed 3x3 seating, but actually quite a new plane. For those of you who have flown on any China airline, the newness of the plane was a pleasant surprise. The inside was brightly lit with a strong Asian twist – as one would expect. Bright blue headrests, crisp led signs in green and red, were actually quite impressive (as impressive as the inside of a passenger plane can be). The flight was smooth and Mike and I both drifted in and out of sleep and we landed in Dalian around 7:30pm – about 20 minutes late – again, do to long cargo load times.

Upon arrival, we gathered our belongings and headed to the baggage claim area. It was there that we spotted our rides Frank and Nancy, from work. Mike, in a state of excitement, exhaustion, and general confusion, headed over to say hello. As he approached our friends, I was wondering at what point he would realize that he needed to pick up his luggage from the conveyer belt. The answer soon came – he realized it just after exiting the passenger area. That is to say, the point of no return. As he spun around, I waved and cheerily picked up my suitcase. As he stood there red-faced and weary in the distance, I began to wonder just what his luggage looked like. After a failed attempt by Mike to quietly re-enter the baggage claim area, I knew what two things had to be done: 1) Savor this moment for posterity in this blog and 2) retrieve his luggage for him. A large blue bag making it’s second loop on the conveyer was my best guess – so I retrieved it, and after a short discussion with the baggage claim verifier, was able to bring his bag to him.

We took the standard 20 minute harrowing taxi ride to our hotel – The Swissotel (same place as last time). On arrival at the hotel (now about 8:30pm), we checked in, and headed to our rooms for some much deserved rest.

After a surprisingly restful nights sleep, we met at 8:20am for breakfast in the hotel and then headed to the office. Our 5 block walk was accompanied by a hazy, cloudless sky and about 45 degrees. We took the familiar elevator ride up to our area on the 23^rd floor and Frank showed us to our office. We would share an office this time, in a nice sized room with a view. There we sat down and began our work for the day.

At 11:30am or so, our team took us out to a familiar spicy Chinese restaurant. It seems to be the favorite lunch spot as we had gone there twice before on our previous visit. My mad chopstick skills soon returned to me as I feasted on the tasty lunch. My favorite dishes today were the mushrooms, spicy noodles, and the Chinese dumplings.

We returned to the office after about 45 minutes, and finished up the day around 5:45pm or so. Mike and I both “hit the wall” around 4pm and decided to just eat back at the hotel for dinner. We both chose to take it easy and just get room service tonight. I went with the California burger – tasty but not nearly enough catsup (can you ever really have enough catsup?).

Interesting side note of a political nature: The CNN feed is somewhat messy – with screen glitches every couple of seconds or so. I Didn’t think much about it until CNN reported that China was intercepting their video feed and “screening” it for content regarding Tibet. About half of the time that a CNN report comes up on the subject, the video and sound cuts out. Very strange.

It is now 9:30pm, and I am going to wrap this up for the night so that I can get some sleep. Good night all.