COMMUNIST CHINA 1991-BOB GAMBOL ON THE ROAD

I interviewed Bob Gambol before I left Yuma. His story is so interesting I can't resist printing previews of his adventures on my blog. This segment was from 1991 when China was still a Communist country.
“I was on the platform at a stop at Guan Zou on my way to Chon Quing and I hooked up with a Chinese gal who had left home. She got manhandled at the border crossing and she asked me, “Can I travel with you? I’m afraid.” So, she stuck close to me for several days until she got her confidence back. O
“In the Port city of Chon Quing I couldn’t get a ride hitching because there were few private cars. So I caught a local train to the end of the line which happened to be a restricted city closed to tourists. The officials there got a woman interpreter and she interrogated me. They thought I was some kind of spy. I told them I was just an old codger wanting to see the country. "Well, you can’t stay here" I was told. After the questioning, hell, I didn’t have anything on me but my backpack, they put me in a hotel, at no cost, but I couldn’t walk around. They told me I’d have to leave in the morning. I didn’t have to pay for meals either. They fed me and sent me back to Chon Quing.
“I took a Chinese cargo boat down river through the gorges to Wu Han. It was a triple-decker where you slept in hammocks on deck. What a fantastic view of the real China. At the end of the line, they didn’t have much in the way of accommodations for tourists and I stayed over in the Rail Road Hotel. They let me stay there, which isn’t the norm. I traveled on from there by rail to Beijing. The train that I took had open pit toilets which were just holes in the bottom of the train.
“In China, riding the rails going west, the train would run over something, including people. The engineer would just stop and they'd just drag whatever it was off the tracks and go on.
To be continued-

PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE ABOUT FIRE ALARMS

I have a friend, Richard Patton, who is a veritable crusader against the current fire alarms installed in most homes. He crusades against them because they are ineffective. He worked in the industry for years and knows of what he speaks. To condense the danger I'm repeating information from this website: www.hbsslaw.com/smokedetectors . Another is www.smokealarmdisclosure.org
Early warning is the key to surviving smoldering fires, the deadliest kind of home fire. Ionization technology to sense the presence of smoke is slow to warn, if it warns at all, especially smoldering fires which typically happen while occupants are sleeping. Most smoke detectors work on the principle of ionization. Smoke particles enter the chamber and the alarm triggers. Burning toast for instance, generates a lot of small particles and sounds the alarm. But smoke particles from a burning couch, for instance, are large and fewer in number and don't set off your alarm. Having a detector that doesn't work efficiently lulls you into a false sense of safety. And, in fact, many lives are lost each year because the industry continue to sell devices that don't do the job they were intended to do.
I'm an activist and that is a part of my personality, so message delivered.
On the personal front, Jim and I enjoyed a bike ride and picking fresh organic oranges. I also completed an interview with Bob Gambol who backpacked to 128 countries and one Sultanate in six years, in his fifties. He visited communist countries and places where tourists didn't and couldn't go. He avoided the usual European destinations. An amazing feat.