SUNDAY!   Guess what?  WE F’ING MADE IT!  That’s right.  The Riding4Beer® 2011 China Tour successfully made it from the Himalayan valleys north through the flood zone to Chengdu!  It took a long walk uphill, a gypsy taxi ride through deserted streets, two different trains, a lengthy wait in a town that doesn’t even have one yak and 31 hours total – but, WE F’ING MADE IT!

So, working backwards, the second train to Chengdu through the major flood zone was an overnight sleeper that we didn’t catch until about 10:30 pm from Guangtong and there isn’t much to report there.  We slept through the darkness of the flooding but definitely felt the bumps and heard the squeals of the temporary tracks.  However, let’s talk about train number one from Lijiang to Guangtong.  It left around 8am and we had tickets in “hard seats,” which we ridden before and are basically hard metal seats in rows like on a bus – BUT NOT ON THIS TRAIN!  Because of all of the flooding and rerouting and general chaos in the railway system, our “hard seats” were eight people stuffed into a 6ft by 8ft (NOT KIDDING) sleeper compartment!  VERY F’ING COZY!

Oh, this story gets so much better.  We left at 8am and by 9 o’clock the old farmer guy (one of the lucky eight in our 100 degree no air conditioning compartment) whips out a bottle of Chinese Everclear (180 proof) and some OJ and starts making “Screwdrivers” for everybody!  NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING!  Let’s just say that while we LOVE beer, there’s nothing like a few good cocktails with your closest friends (none of whom speak a single word of English) at 9am!  After that six hour drunken train ride we spent eight hours in the Guangtong station (a deserted metal shell in the middle of nowhere) waiting until the sleeper train pulled in.  Oh yeah, and on the first train after everyone was blind drunk in our compartment, we got ‘em playing poker for five Yuan a hand, and after that strip poker, and after that….

                               2 PICS TO TIDE YOU OVER - IT'S BEEN A LONG 31 HOURS - TIME FOR BEER!

      
             Our BFF making screwdrivers at 9am!                     All 8 of us (minus Kevin -taking thepicture) - 6ft x 8ft!