Its the Orient here again. Man is China crazy I'm in Hangzhou now a city about 2 hours away from Shanghai thats has a giant artificial lake called west lake. We got here after a 23 hour train ride (sounds worse then it is sleeper cars in China rule) and are just trying to avoid the mid afternoon eat. Its 30+ degrees everyday with enough humidity that all you do is sweat as soon as you get outside. Me and my brother are going to bike around the lake tommorow morning on some crappy old chinese s/s beaters which should be good fun before eating some more delicious food.

Heading to Shanghai in a few days, now that's supposed to be a city and I'll have a access to an honest to god fixie. A beatiful ganwell pro track bike owned by a dear friend of mine. She's going to let me try and not die while biking around the city and it should be pretty amazing.

I've been watching some of the tour on CCTV 5 (gotta love Chinese state TV, all 11 channels of it!) and I gotta say that its pretty crappy that this doping thing hit I was really looking forward to watching Ulrich and Basso duke it out.

I know every newspaper and news program around has said that china is amazing and changing and rapidly developing but if any of you guys can afford it come as soon as possible. Its going to get so expensive soon that it won't be any fun, but right not its such a trip. First if your white your the center of attention places. I literally got dragged into a couple bars in the last city we were in and got jambayed (the chinese drinking cheer) under the table. They have a great drinking game that requires dice that we'll have to play on a critical vacuum at some point.

Cars are fairly new in China and its interesting watching how the bikes and cars interact. There doesn't seem to be any order to it all, you just go when you can and hope you don't die. I don't think anything is going to prepare me for riding in Shanghai and then after that in Beijing. I just hope I come out of it in one piece, but I can surely say that no North American driver will ever scare me after what I've experienced here.

Quick Food report: Our last meal for less then 40 dollars canadian we had 2 lobsters, a whole fish, a bucket of crab, 24 GIANT shrimp and it was all alive when we chose it. My god people if you have a stomach and taste buds and anything resembling an adventourous appetite you have got to come here. Its fricken' heaven, Chinatown will never be the same again.

More when I get to Shanghai, ride safe, ride fast.

Oh and Germany is winning the world cup. And thank god Brazil got there butts handed too them, even if it was by the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Zizou for the WIN!

Stephen