SATURDAY!   Okay, if you are reading this, the Riding4Beer® 2011 China Tour made it onto the train in Lijiang and are headed north through the flood zone towards Chengdu.  Speaking of Lijiang, can you say “Dirtbag Hellhole?”  Folks, we pretty much roll with the tide wherever we are, but in this case it looked like the tide rolled though our room (think closet size) and left only dirt and mold behind.  But, ya gotta take the good with the bad, right?  Even the REALLY bad!

Anyway, assuming this train “thing” works like we think, we’re saving about 3,000 miles of backtracking to finally head north.  That’s a good thing, right?  Plus, when do you ever get to tour a disaster area close up?  They say the train tracks have been “temporarily” repaired for “light” travel.  When we heard that, we immediately went on the Atkins diet (NOT), threw away our tube of “Just For Men” beard dye (Stacy’s) and tossed three satin thongs (Kevin’s) to help out by traveling “light!”  Hey, whatever we can do because we’re just caring sort of people.

The plan is to leave Lijiang about 9am this morning and ride in a “hard seat” (code word for third class, metal seats, bottom of the barrel) car for about five hours to some yak eating town called Guangtong.  Then, after cooling our heels in the train station there for about eight hours (practicing our Karaoke), catch the overnight train with a “soft sleeper” (code word for dirty sheets, but compartment only shared with two other “friends”) to Chengdu arriving about 3pm on Sunday (just in time for afternoon Mass!).  Folks, if it works like we think, we’ll be chatting you up from Chengdu (Giant Panda capital of the world).  And if it doesn’t, we’ll be eating panda for dinner somewhere in between…

              Only 2 pics today - we're stealing the internet here at the station from

                                 China Southern Railways and DAMN is it slow!

     
   Our entire room - note mold by green bag             At least our TV had free Chinese porn!