Shanghai'd

I wanted to share the feeling I just had during my ride home, because everything about it reminds me of Asia, and China, and Shanghai in particular.

I bolted out of work at 5:30, after an hour of watching the skies darken, at what I figured was the last possible moment to make it home without getting dumped on. The air was thick as I rode - smog, smoke from cooking stoves, humidity, exhaust, and the excitement of a impending storm - with a smoky charcoal fragrance. The sky flashed with lightning as one of the year's first plum rain season storms was brewing. Cars and buses slowly started turning on their headlights. As I neared home, I crossed a completely jammed intersection of an 8 lane road that had at least 12 cars across. One side. I weaved in between the taxis, buses and silver minivans as they inched closer and closer to each other, honking their horns. At the final intersection, I watched a crossing guard try and exercise his "authority" (through blowing his whistle) over a man on a scooter who was heading the wrong way down the bike lane. The scooter driver, smiling, refused to heed the instruction to go around, and they settled on him just backing into place in front of all us stopped bikes and scooters. No face was lost for the authority-less crossing guard. As I turned into our complex, the first sprinkles started to fall.

So I successfully avoided getting rained on and had yet another of what will always be in my mind a quintessential Asia experience.