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Today we’re taking a day off from our journey to Qinzhou, though the only facts that differentiate it from our regular days is that we stay in the same moldy hotel for two nights and make no forward progress. The cavorting, riding, swimming, smoking and drinking are present in their usual quantities.
Charlie’s awake early, if he ever went to sleep. I arise at 8:00 a.m. and join him for a Nescafé and baozi breakfast from the sidewalk shops. George is cajoled awake by mid-morning, and soon thereafter we’re off to explore our environs.
Conversing with the locals through pantomimic dances and onomatopoeic exclamations, we’re convinced that there is a river nearby. Once our orienteering trial and error has delivered us to its whispering current, we volley in with raucous delight.
Being an Ugly American is a physical thing. We work our bodies constantly in pursuit of inanity, and it shows (I wish this shot were tighter, but the camera had exposure issues when it zoomed in.)
The life of an Ugly American isn’t easy. It takes A-1 Man material, as you see in ours eyes (and our toned physiques.)
It’s no surprise that, with talent like this, there’s a tacit competition to look the best. When a local farmer rides by on his little motorbike carrying this haybell, George borrows it for a quick set.
Though he may not win that contest, George can claim to be the most aqueously adventurous on the journey. If there is water to be found, you will find George in it. If there are places to climb that can then be lept from, you will surely see him climbing.
But even George has some sense of when to say no (or to ask his friends if he should say no.) After ignoring a fence and what might have been a warning sign in Chinese, George climbs a swaying, degenerating concrete flight of stairs deep within the intestinal caves of an underground river.
It’s an incredible spot, and we all see that this will undoubtedly be his greatest leaping into water experience ever, but also almost certainly his last, as the river rushes deeper and more angrily into the earth beyond the reach of the vibrantly colored lamps.
The majority vote: no.
1 Comment
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Support Barack Obama
That last picture has me green(e) with envy. Soooo damn cool.