On Wednesday evening at 9:15pm my flight from San Francisco landed at JFK and a little over an hour later I was opening the door to my apartment, thus ending my once in a lifetime Japan/China adventure. I was tired and my body clock was trying to determine just which time-zone was correct. I gave it a boost by immediately ordering in pizza and wings. I am happy to report that as of today everything seems to be in-synch.
Thursday was a day of catching up, sorting through and reading 3 weeks worth of accumulated mail, paying bills, taking stuff to the laundry, restocking the fridge etc. etc. etc. and becoming one again with my beloved Big Apple. I definitely had jet-lag though.
Friday was an excellent day ending with The Eagles concert at Madison Square Garden. It was outstanding. On Saturday I got back into my theater routine by seeing two Off Broadway shows: “Three on a Couch” - about a famous author who fakes his own death so he can read his obituaries and the effect it has on his wife and his Shrink; and a one-man show by Mike Daisey called “How Theater Failed America” - excellent.
For the upcoming week I have already scheduled the following: Monday - “Bombs Away” Off Broadway; Tuesday - Yankees vs. Toronto; Wednesday - New York Philharmonic; Thursday - Yankees vs. Toronto.
Now, about my Japan/China Adventure - it met and exceeded all of my expectations. I was unable to post anything on this blog once I reached China because the Chinese government has blocked access to all known blog sites, yes, that is correct, the sites are blocked.
So, what I want to do is create an overview of the trip with my thoughts, comments, and observations. I am working on that now and should be able to post it/them in manageable segments during the upcoming week.
I will, however, post the following observation about what I consider to be the highlight of the entire trip, walking The Great Wall of China. This is an excerpt from a family email --
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.....I hope to write about my thoughts in some detail later but the highlight of the entire trip was The Great Wall of China. We were there for about 4 hours on Friday. When we got to the entrance our tour guide said we had two options, on the right would be the "normal" side and on the left, the steeper more difficult side. Most of our group opted for the "normal" side. Did I? You already know the answer to that. Yes, this 74 year old guy chose the steeper, more difficult side and off I went with 6 other people from our group.
Well, it was one of the dumbest things I have done in a long time because the steps were irregular and very very very steep. But up and up and up we went until about 45 minutes later we reached the top viewing point for our entrance station. I took lots and lots of pictures and had mine taken when I finally reached the top.
When I turned around to begin the descent it became obvious that this part was going to be much more difficult and dangerous and I was right on both points. I was very very careful going down because one misstep would have had dire consequences. It was also very hard on the knees.
About half way down I thought to myself - you egomaniacal asshole, why do you always do things like this? It's not like CNN is going to carry a special news flash: "Breaking News from China - Bill Norris has just walked The Great Wall of China via the "more difficult" path - more news as it develops."
I have to admit that I was tired, sore and drenched in sweat when I finally reached the exit area. But, I had, in fact, walked The Great Wall of China via the more difficult route. Yahoo!!!
I later bought my first "things" on the tour - a black T-shirt that says: "I Walked The Great Wall," and, an authentic Beijing Olympics T-shirt, also black....
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So, my cyberspace friends, it is great to be back in The Big Apple in the good old United States of America.
Billi Pod
wanjr@aol.com
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