August 6

I leave for Beijing in two days. I got the last of my shots yesterday. You need hepatitis A and B, yellow fever and tetanus shots to go to China. I need to get a booster for the hep shots in 6 to 12 months then I’m good for life. I forgot to get the booster after I went to South America a couple years ago so I had to do it all over again.

China is such an interesting place. There are four cities with over 10 million people each. In Beijing there were whole sections of the city with traditional courtyard homes called ‘siheyuan’. Some of these family homes are centuries old and were formed by building four living spaces around a central courtyard. Rows and rows of these courtyard homes formed complex lanes and alleyways. The government knocked a whole lot of them down to build new apartments and office buildings, but now they’ve finally realized the value of the historic and culture and have been preserving and restoring them. I’m hoping to take a tour of some of the restored sites.

I saw on television that some of our cycling team arrived at Beijing airport wearing pollution masks. I don’t blame them. A typhoon cleaned up the air last week but it looks like the smog as set in again. I’m thinking about taking a mask myself in case it gets too bad.

The weather is supposed to be hot and humid, kind of like New York in summer, so lots of us will feel right at home.

I’ve been reading about the avian flu virus. This stuff is scary! Humans have no immunity to the virus and hundreds of people around the world have died from it, mainly in Asia.

My new video camera is great! I hope to be able to post some videos of the scenes. Not too long, I promise.