Crazy Bus Rides!

Before I came over to China I had a friend that works for the NBA ask me to describe my trip to him when I got back and describe things like the food, the basketball, the people, and the bus rides. I thought to myself…bus rides? I am assuming today is what he was talking about. We set off for our seven-hour bus ride from Dongkou to Huayuan after an early breakfast, and the journey began. We drove for about three hours winding through huge mountains and acres and acres of farmland. It was cool to see all the rice fields and seeing the local farmers out cultivating their crops. We were in the heartland of rural China and these farmers weren’t growing crops to sell, but rather to live off of. It was neat to see it first hand. The roads were flat out scary. They were only semi-paved and our bus driver was dodging potholes at what seemed like Jeff Gordon speeds. He kept passing other cars, even on sharp curves going up and down these mountain roads.

About three hours into the trip, the road conditions were a little better and we came up on a decent sized city. Robert informed that we were going to stop at the local Peak store to take some pictures and meet some sponsors. Peak is a China sports brand, similar to Nike or Adidas. They are integrating into the States and have signed a few NBA stars, Ron Artest and Jason Kidd, to shoes deals. Peak also sponsored us on this tour and gave us tons of gear. On day one Robert brought a ton of boxes to my room filled with jerseys, jump suits, polos, shoes, finger sleeves, braces of all sorts, and head bands and wrist bands. The people at the store were all very nice and they let us all pick out some more gear while we were there. We took some pictures in front of the store and then they bought us all lunch at KFC. We got the KFC to go and headed to a local Chinese restaurant that was nestled in a narrow little valley at the base of a small mountain right outside the city. There was a cool vibe at the restaurant. It looked like a little village, with straw huts and a stream running through the middle of it. The people there were all very friendly and of course all of them wanted pictures, especially two of the ‘Asian Cougar,” as one of the guys referred to them as. There was a cute little kid there that I had to get a picture with. He turned out to be my boy during this brief visit.

Now the real fun was about to begin. We made our way back through another mountain range, these were by far the biggest mountains that we’d come across. It was picturesque and I was putting my iPhone to use (the iPhone takes great pictures by the way). During my time getting lost in the picture taking, I didn’t realize that we started to head up one of the huge mountains. Please keep in mind that we were in a large charter bus this whole time. The roads were terrible by now, but there were tons of cars going up and down there same sketchy road that we were. The bus driver did a great job of winding us through the switchbacks, and dodging crazy drivers, all while not blowing out the clutch. The higher we got up the mountain, the more concerned we all become. I asked Robert if this was even safe, and he assured me that it was, and that he has been on much worse roads. He also mentioned that it was the only road that led to our next destination. Despite Robert’s assurance, I was skeptical, especially when we were on th edge on the road and nothing but hundreds of feet down were the only thing I could see. We finally made it to the top of the mountain and the views of the village below were breathtaking. It almost made the life threatening adventure worth it. The decent down wasn’t nearly as bad, except for having to dodge the locals and their oxen and work cattle that were walking down the same road.

The city of Huayuan seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was happy to finally get there. Oh yeah, the seven-hour drive ended up being a twelve-hour escapade. I would like to thank Chali 2na and Passion Pit for getting me through the last hour of that drive. Upon our arrival, we headed straight to the city square to sign a few basketballs and have the local paparazzi have there way with us. There were about 3,000 hyped up people waiting for us. It was insane. There was a line of security guards that lead us through the masses to the stage that they had prepared for us. We signed a bunch of balls in an assembly line like fashion. There were two Chinese players from the other team sign stuff as well. They started to throw out the balls to the crowd and people were absolutely going crazy for the balls. A group of about 20 charged the stage and tried to grab stuff off the table. I was positive that a riot was about to erupt but the police owned everybody that charged the stage and we all quickly made an escape back to the bus. After such a long day, I was just ready to be at the hotel. Goodnight.