Sorry for the lack of updates. I got another horrible sickness and was confined to my bed. I had a bad sore throat that would just not go away. When I was finally feeling a little better, my buddy Leo convinced me to go to Beijing with him, but after 4 hours each way in a cold car with 6 people, I had a relapse. After about 10 days, my girlfriend Shenqi (申琦) actually got me to take some Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine is very strange. It comes in little vials that look like some type of illegal drug. You stick a short thick straw in the top and suck out the contents. Anyway, Shenqi got me two types of medicine and after another week, I was finally feeling better.

Of course the day after I got better and was finally feeling alright, Shenqi got into an accident on a bus. She was standing in the back of the bus and the driver stopped suddenly and she fell head over heals and was slammed into the back door. She now can’t walk, laugh, or cough without pain. Nothing is broken or anything, she just needs to rest up and heal.

Some happy/sad news came from the states. Back in September I had put my airplane, a 1982 Mooney M20J 201, up for sale, but hadn’t gotten any serious buyers on the line. When I left for China, my friend Chuck McGill of Safe Flight Intl. offered to help me sell the plane, and finally sold it a few days ago. The buyer is a student pilot from San Diego who wants to get his private pilot’s license in the plane, even though getting it in a Mooney will be significantly more difficult than doing it in a Cessna 152/172. I am sad to sell the airplane. It was like my baby. I loved flying it, working on it, and everything about it. I purchased the airplane in July of 2002 which means that over the 3.5 years of ownership and 700 hours of flight time, I averaged 200 hours a year, not factoring in the fact that I spent 6 months in Italy and 5 months in China. Not too shabby. Selling the airplane was a good move for many reasons, but I am still sad to see it go (and a bit excited about what the next one will be when I get back to the states).

Since it has been so cold in Shijiazhuang (石家庄) during the winter, I had stopped riding my bicycle and been almost exclusively taking taxi cabs. Taxis out here are much cheaper than in the states. I can get almost anywhere I want to go for the 5 kuai initial flat rate ($0.63), so I didn’t mind it too much, but taxi cabs can be tough to find and are always dirty. I decided that an electric bicycle would be a good investment and started shopping around. I bought a REALLY nice one from some little factory where I got it really cheap. It wound up costing me 1450 kuai ($181) but is really a lot more than a bicycle. It is most similar to a little motorcycle. It has head lights, turn signals, a horn, brake lights, two seats, an under-seat storage compartment, a rear locking storage compartment, and pedals in case you have an emergency and run out of juice. It will go about 30km (19 miles) on a battery and has 2 batteries (38 miles total distance). During that time, it will maintain a constant 30km/h (19mph) which is faster than almost every other bicycle out there. The only problem is that it is a little too fast. I have already hit two people with it (although both times it wasn’t my fault….Chinese people like to suddenly start going through red lights without even looking at the oncoming traffic). Fun stuff.

Lastly, a little while before I got sick, I took a step class with Shenqi. We went over to Baily’s and noticed there was a class about to start. I decided to give it a try and see how it was trying to follow a Chinese class. It was really funny. I couldn’t understand a single thing they were saying so I just did my own thing. Everyone thought I was really funny. The instructor kept trying to count in English and would say “1,2,3,4,5,7,6,8,” mixing up 6 and 7 every time. I guess I was the only one who caught it