Day 2: Charge Up The Atmosphere!

They say "A Sichuan dog will bark at the sun."

Another day, another grey sky. The humid nature of the province results in a completely cloudy sky and limited visibility every day and thus, if the sun does decide to shine down uninhibited, dogs will be quite confused.

The morning started off as the last. We piled onto the bus (this time with Sydney University) after breakfast and took off from the hotel. Our destination: the Leshan Buddha, the largest carved Buddha in the world standing at 71 meters. The 2 hour drive to Leshan was eye-opening.

Once away from ChengDu, we entered sweeping farm land covered mostly in the Chinese variety of wheat. Instead of the heavy machinery you may see in the midwest, individual farmers toil the land. Even just driving by on the adjoining highway, one can see the the effort and care they put into their work.

Before arriving in Leshan, we made a stop at a tea "museum". The museum, as it turned out, was just a fancy store with many different varieties of teas, kettles, and candies. The only reason I mention the stop is because the service was the complete opposite of anything in the States. Upon entering, one of the women working there literally followed me around the store, not to bug me to purchase something however, but to very quietly wait to get me whatever I would like. There were moments when she would literally scurry around gathering this or that for me to look at. For a moment I thought I had just found someone unique, but looking around I soon realized that all the employees truly wanted to help their customers in the same fashion.

Making the rest of our way from the tea "museum" to the Leshan Buddha, our guides decided they needed to "Charge up the atmosphere" as our translator called it, and started to have a "singing party." Jon Ford, through no choice of his own, started it off, followed by Brack with the whole team as backup, serenading our translator with "You've lost that loving feeling." (video to come) The Sydney guys got into it as well, along with our guides themselves! Nothing like some Chinese love songs to make a 2 hour bus ride go oh so much faster.

After arriving and eating lunch, we made our way to the Buddha.

The whole area was quite impressive. The Buddha is carved into the face of a mountain. "The mountain is the Buddha and the Buddha is the mountain." All along the walk ways and in the caves are very intricate smaller Buddhas and other holy Buddhist figures along with various writings. The path takes you from the opposite side of the mountain, up above his head and then down along his side via a long and narrows stair carved in the stone.

Climbing down you start to realize his sheer size and the undertaking it must have been to create him. You wind up standing at his feet, caught between his sheer size and the raging river behind you (think the current at stone bridge times during flooding conditions x 100).

It must be said that after leaving the Buddha, we were surrounded by a swarm of locals selling what one could only call chotchkies. One of the things you could purchase was time with two monkeys! Of course... I just had to. Most of us are hoping I didn't catch something. Some think it would add to the trip....

Pretty wiped from the climbing and jet-lag, our bus took us to another part of Leshan where we had a tofu dinner. Most of where we've eaten now has had "lazy susans" on the table. A pretty standard idea, however picture 3 foot wide "lazy susans" where there was so little room dishes of food had to be stacked and balanced on each other. The 27 (or there about) different varieties of tofu were all delicious! Each more interesting than the last.

Now exhausted AND stuffed, we got back on the bus to head to our hotel. Most of us passed out, only waking to driving maneuvers reserved for car chase movies. We can't seem to figure out what it takes to get a driver's license here.... Rules pertaining to "right of way" don't seem to exist and merging into oncoming traffic is often encouraged.

Back to rowing tomorrow (Thursday). Two practices. Saturday will be the racing. Two heats of four boats. Top two from each to the final. Only racing 1k. More to come. Time to sleep...

~Ed