Somewhere over Alaska

3/12/01, - 4:10 AM Texas Time

The last two days have been a blur - trying to spend all the rest of my Yuan while I still can, the busride back to Kunming (more shopping at the airport), the flight to Pudong - both uneventful as one might might hope. Our hotel in Shanghai was nicer than the previous - 5-star, located right downtown. We arrived about 7, sat down to a nice dinner (my last meal in China was -- spaghetti!) and had a long and spirited discussion on the future of sand sculpture over lots of Tsing Tao beer.

I didn't want to go to bed - as one of the first people out of here (Alex and I were scheduled to eatch the 6:30 AM ride to the airport the next morning) I wanted to hang out with the other sculptors as long as possible. Amazingly enough, our hotel featured a full bowling ally and even more amazing, they let us play until 2 AM My arm is still really bothering me so I had to do the left-handed thing.... pretty rough to start with but by the third game I had kinda gotten the hang of it and probably was doing better with my left hand than I had ever bowled with my right (it has been a long time indeed since I put on a pair of those silly shoes.)

Woke up before my wake up call (more shopping at the airport) and got on my plane and here I am on my way back home. We should land in Detroit in about 5 hours and I will be able to use my cell phone again and will maybe upload these pages from Houston when I get there later this afternoon where I have a 3 hour layover before flying into Brownsville and the peak of spring break on lovely south padre island. I get about 4 days at home before heading to my next contest in Las Vegas (talk about a study in contrasts!)

I feel like there is so much more to write but my battery is running low and another nap sounds like a good idea and maybe I will add more to this account at some future point but maybe I won't.

What a trip.