China – Our Next Adventure

The trip that has been in the making for a few years has finally come! It all started in October 2010, when Tom and I were on our European adventure when we walked by the end of a half/full marathon in Paris. At that time, I thought it would be super cool to travel to do a race. I discussed this with my racing, and much faster more competitive co-worker Leah, and she was on board. A few years had gone by when she mentioned that she would like to do a tri-athalon in Japan. My response, was why Japan and how are you going to get your bike there? Perhaps you should find a marathon where all you need to pack is your shoes. Hence the hunt for an international race began and she found the Great Wall Marathon. By this time I had gotten out of running long distances and said I would be happy to go with her and I would watch the race. I came home and told Tom that I was going to China with Leah and asked if he wanted to come along. He said of course! As time got closer to the opening of the race registration for 2016, Leah had talked me into doing the half. So here we are in China, touring and racing on the Great Wall!

Our travel to China started early with a bus departure out of Milwaukee at 7:00a.m. to O’Hare for a 10:40a.m. flight to Toronto. I think we were all a bit excited to go, since we were all ready to head out the door before our designated meeting time at 6:15a.m. We got to the bus stop way early and had to wait about a half-hour for the bus. I think it was only 45 or so degrees and felt quite chilly. Once we got to O’Hare the bus driver dropped us off at Terminal 1 for United International Flights. Our first flight was an Air Canada flight operated by United. We go to the kiosk to get our boarding pass where the kiosk told us they couldn’t find our flight. A United rep helped us and told us we actually had to check in with Air Canada in Terminal 2. Terminal 2 was a short walk so we were at the Air Canada desk in no-time and thankfully there was not really a line. At the Air Canada desk they also had a hard time finding our reservation and told us we needed to check-in with United, but United in Terminal 2. Again they were only one counter over and thankfully they didn’t really have a line either. Once at the United kiosk our reservation wasn’t immediately found again. I was starting to get a little nervous, but the United rep came over and told us we needed to put Toronto in for our destination and not Beijing. Low and behold that worked!! The rep left us to help some other folks, but before we got too far he had to come back to check our passports and visas. He took Leah’s passport first and really took his time studying her picture and her. He made some comment that they were trained to really look at people’s eys and smiles and all the time was really looking into her eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I would say he was hitting on her because when he took Tom’s and my passport he barely looked at our picture and didn’t look into our eyes. It was funny and something Tom has re-enacted more than once. When we finally got done at the kiosk we were thrilled to have TSA Pre-Check because the regular security line was a mile long and TSA-Pre-Check was practically walk right up and through. We got to our gate with plenty of time.

Tom, Leah, and I were sitting in the very back row of the very small plane to Toronto. Tom and I had seats together and Leah had the single seat across from us. When the flight attendant came down the aisle to do his check he asked the two kids in the seat in front of us how old they were and then he got to Leah and asked how old she was. She was like “I’m 32”. I think he was slightly embarassed because I think he thought she was a minor. It may have had something to do with the fact that she does look young and was holding a stuffed pineapple. None-the-less a funny comment that we said “someone write that down” that has to go in the blog.

Once to Toronto we found ourselves with just enough time to make it through their immigration and down to our connecting gate. There was enough time to use the restroom, grab a sandwich to take on the plane, and hear our boarding announcement. The plane we were on was a relatively newer plane and we enjoyed the touch screen entertainment and the placement of our seats. We made the right choice of picking seats right by the bathroom and not having anyone behind us. It gave us a little extra room and didn’t have to worry about reclining into someone’s lap. I was happy that I remembered to grab the files from the shows that we recorded earlier in the week. Nice to spend some of the 13 hours on the ride catching up on Scandal, Survivor and Amazing Race. I love technology. We really had no complaints from the flight at all.

We got through Chinese immigration with no problems (oh and JoAnne will love this – saw someone in the immigration line wearing a David Gruber t-shirt) and began searching for our tour company who was picking us up. We didn’t see a sign for them, but as we were standing around looking lost, the tour guide found us. Shortly there after he found the other family that he was waiting on. We thought we would soon be on a bus to our hotel, but we were waiting for one other person to arrive. They thought she was only 20 minutes out, but 20 minutes turned into almost 2 hours of waiting. Eventually she was found and we arrived to the hotel at about 8:30p.m. China time. We were so tired that we didn’t want to eat dinner and went straight up to our room and went to bed. It was a long day, but overall we had nothing to really complain about. We’re in China!