A Rider on the Storm

So, I arrived in China safely. However, it turns out that it was in the middle of a typhoon. But before I could even get out into the typhoon I had to play a brief game of MarioKart to get my bags from the baggage carousel to the company van waiting for me. Except that this particular game involved several hundred other participants with their own bulky carts and the only guidance I got was from a Chinese guy who didn’t speak any English and who seemed to pop in and out of the Chinese crowd at random intervals. However, with the aid of a banana peel and a heat-seeking turtle shell, I advanced to the next stage and escaped the airport.

Unbeknownst to me, I managed to “escape” directly into a typhoon. I knew that Wuxi was only about 70 or 80 kilometers (approximately 45-50 miles for you “foreigners”) from Shanghai. So, it should normally take about an hour, maybe a little more depending on where the airport is and where my apartment is. I arrived in Shanghai late to begin with because one of the pilots apparently couldn’t find the plane in time for us to take off as scheduled. I know he didn’t get stuck in a typhoon in Toronto, so I’m guessing he was either drunk or just didn’t care enough to get to the plane on time. Both admirable qualities in pilots.

Anyway, I arrived in Shanghai a little over an hour late and it took me about half an hour to complete the Oriental stage of MarioKart. So, it was about 2:30 Shanghai time when I left for Wuxi. Approximately six hours of flooded roads, constant honking, and an amount of traffic consistent with the evacuation of a city of over 20 million people (yes, that’s right, people were being evacuated because of the next typhoon that would supposedly hit a couple days later), I arrived at my apartment in pouring rain. Keep in mind that this was after 48 hours of traveling and somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours of fragmented sleep. I was not a happy customer and my stomach felt like it had its own airplane food-induced typhoon ripping around in it.

Things have gotten better since then, but such was my arrival in China.