The Taxi Ride

You may remember that I said that I would tell the story of the TAXI ride. Taxi rides are sometimes a "crap shot" here, the reason I say that is there are very few of the taxi drivers that we see that seem to speak English. We have cards that have simplified Chinese symbols that give the locations of where we want to go. In this case, we started at the office and were heading to where we reside at the "Diamond Court" I gave the driver the card, he looked at it, he looked at me and nodded his head "yes". So Kurt and I jumped into the cab and thought we would be home in 20 minutes max. The driver drove around the corner on to a main drag, just far enough away where we could not jump into another cab and he pulls over to the side of the road....shakes his head and pulls out his map....he mumbles to himself in Chinese, shakes his head, motions to see the card, I had shown earlier, shakes his head again and takes off......Now Kurt and I are beginning to wonder, just what all of this means. We give each other looks like "Oh no...what is happening here" and "So, do you think we will make it home????" We are now going through areas of town that we have not seen, since we have been here. Ever like the boy scout, I take various pictures of our surroundings so that if the authorities ever find the bodies and the camera they can tell where we have been!!!! The driver continues to drive...at various times looks at the map, shakes his head, beeps his horn and drives on....he beeps his horn more at some bike, motorcycle, car or person. At virtually every stoplight, and there are a lot of them in Shanghai, he looks at the map, points, waves his hand in a fashion that would indicate that he is either unknowing or exasperated. And he continues to drive. After what seems to be an interminable amount of time, we begin to see signs and sights that look familiar, about an hour after we started this journey....we were back at the Diamond Court with another story to tell. When I say that Shanghai is an adventure...I really do mean it!!!

Hey to all of you that write comments, I want you to know that I really appreciate the weather,sport and golf scores updates. Those and the personal words are a joy to read and help me to stay in touch with all of you!!! Again thanks so much.....all for now, my next topic will be on umbrella condoms.....caught your attention??????