China works

You know how one thinks that if something goes wrong in certain places in the world your done for. I mean think of a precise tour operation spanning a month where everything if pre-booked and any kind of delay could mess up the whole schedule. Well China, one would think, is not a good place to have things go wrong but as the following shows, China works. Imagine the same thing happening to you in some other country.

Bad luck moment #1

I knew there was something wrong with our driver when he started keeling over the steering wheel, groaning and running red lights. We were on our way from Xining back to Lanzhou to catch our train to our next destination but from the looks of our driver we weren't going anywhere. Two red lights afterward he pulled over, much to the collective relief of everyone that was on our bus. He made a few calls on his cellphone and told Ming, our tour guide, that he was off to the hospital but that he had called in a substitute driver.

Only in China will you find someone to fill in on a Sunday at lunch time to fill in for you and sure enough, our replacement driver arrived within an hour. Disaster averted.

Bad Luck moment #2
We were well into our journey back to Lanzhou with our second driver at the helm, when all of a sudden a minor explosion hit the wheel well of the back wheel. Okay, explosion may be exaggerating but it was loud enough to make half the occupants of the mini bus get up off their seats. We had just had a blow out. We shuddered to a stop at the side of the highway, our driver getting off to assess the situation. Soon, he had was down to his undershirt hauling the spare wheel out and undoing the nuts one by one.

Bad Luck moment #3
At the last one nut I was just thinking "one more to go and we're home free" and that seemed to have jinxed it. He turned the tire wrench and the nut turned with it but before long it was clear something was wrong. He turned and turned and the dang thing wouldn't come off. It was a lose thread. Unphased, he bundled us all into the bus. He had had enough and we took off, limping out to a nearby exit into a small town. There we found a good old fashioned repair shop with the right tools - translated industrial strength pneumatic tools. It was amazing, this grease monkey took a pneumatic gun to the errand nut and it came off without a fight. Before we knew it, the gun bolted the spare wheel back on and without a thought the guy jumped underneath the mini bus and released the jack with the bus coming down on top of him . . almost.

Here's a quick video of the gun in action.



Good luck to the guy who needs to change the next flat.