Darth Mall Grab

LOL. My wife go to the library often and always grabs me the latest Concrete Magazine. This Darth Mall Grab sketch by FOS is awesome!

Pennswood

Here's a cool little video of Pennswood pressing boards. They are probably my third favourite board manufacturer behind PS Stix and BBS.

Justin Eldridge in the Woods

Just saw this instagram photo of Justin Eldridge hitting out of the shit. Based on his stance and the tree behind him, I'd say the fairway wood or hybrid he has in his hands is a bad choice. Image from Biebel.

China, Part 2 of 3

Day 4 - There were a few hiccups on this two-day leg of the tour. Our day started super early with a 4:30am wake-up call. The guide wanted us to be at the airport two hours before our 8:00 flight. It seemed like a bit overkill as we were through security and at our gate by 6:20.

As soon as we arrived in Xi'an, we headed straight for the Terracotta Warriors. This was probably the second coolest thing I saw in China. The excavation site is pretty amazing. The main building is the crazy familiar one you generally see in pictures. It's rows upon rows of warriors. It's said that each one has a different face. In the back of this part is the warrior "hospital", where they take broken pieces and re-assemble the statues. Once completed, it is inserted back where they found the original pieces. What's amazing is the tomb all these warriors are guarding, that of the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang, is 5km away. Chinese archeologists are gonna have jobs for generations excavating everything in between. Like the Ming Tombs, because of the lack of technology to preserve artifacts, the tomb has not been opened yet. The farmer who first discovered the site while digging a well back in 1974 has a little desk in the gift store and signs books. Nice gig!

After the Warriors, the plan was to head back to the hotel, rest for a bit, and head out for a dumpling dinner and Tang Dynasty show. Ummm, not gonna happen! There were rallies against the Japanese with regard to the Senkaku/Diaoyu island and the protesters blocked traffic from entering and leaving the city for most of the day. We were stuck outside the city wall in the gnarliest traffic I've ever been in and ended up going straight to the dumplings and show. The show itself was good for what it was (nice costumes, good performers) but the food was terrible. I have no idea how anyone can steam dumplings and have them end up being dry and plasticy. We didn’t even make it to the hotel until 9:30pm and remember, we started our day in Beijing waking up at 4:30am.

China, Part 1 of 3

Here's a little summary of my trip to China. At the insistence of my Mom, we used a tour company and went on a four person/three city/eleven day tour. She left all the planning up to me and I decided to book with The China Guide. Yan Ban was our contact person there and pretty much everything went smoothly. I had a general idea for our itinerary and Yan and I emailed back and forth making adjustments. A few benefits of booking with them are:

1. There were no forced shopping/factory stops,
2. There was flexibility in the restaurants (two of us don't eat meat),
3. There was flexibility in the hotels (I got to book them myself),
4. They accept credit cards as payment through their website.

There was a lot packed into our trip but I suppose that's the nature of a tour. We zipped through a lot of sites in a small period of time. There were lots of things at many of the sites that we probably could have spent more time at but again, it was a tour.

The first city we visited was Beijing and we got to fly direct from Vancouver. Our guide and driver picked us up from the airport and we stayed at the Park Plaza Wangfujing (nice hotel!).

Day 1 - In the morning we visited Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and Jingshan Park. We probably could have spent an entire day at these three sites. We didn't see Mao's body (there was a super long line up anyway) nor the museum in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City wasn't as epic as I expected. In the afternoon, we went for a rickshaw ride through a hutong, went up the Drum Tower (longest steepest staircase I've ever seen), Temple of Heaven and a kung fu show.

After the first day, I got a general impression of the main tourist sites being kind of beat up/unkept. You would think the government would try to keep everything in tip top shape but it sort of reminds me of an old fair ground that wasn't being maintained. The highlight of the day was actually quite random. We drove by a big white dog and this is how the conversation went.

me: "look at the big ass white dog... wait a sec, he's wearing glasses!"
wife: "you're a jackass. It's probably a statue"
wife turns around.
wife: "jeez, it is a big white dog wearing glasses!"