jiuzhaigou/huanglong

the accident happened at about 9.00am. the ipod had time-stamped REM's 'bad day' (hah!) at 8.56am and it was about two-thirds through all saints' 'never ever,' which clocks in at 6min25s.

“Never ever”
we swerve off the road.
“have I felt so low”
the car is spinning…
“When you gonna”
and spinning…
“take me out of”
and spinning…
“this black hole”
and judders to a stop.
i take off my earphones.

the car had slammed into a barrier of bushes with its wheels wedged between loose rock. there hadn’t been time to panic and we were just lucky no one was hurt. we couldn’t even blame the driver, who was driving very slowly (too slow, i had thought) and had even chain-linked the front tires.
things to ruminate on standing by the side of the road waiting for a replacement vehicle to arrive – 80s pop songs which transcended the era’s cheesiness to emerge as classics.

missed our 10am flight out of jiuzhaigou, which, annoyingly enough, took off on time. as the other two flights were fully booked, had to wait until everyone else had checked in for the next flight. which we got seats for, which was then delayed, and was the last flight out of jiuzhaigou that day.

plans to have a good sichuan meal in chengdu were dashed. but the food at the airport was pretty good, in particular the mapo tofu, a drier, more robust version of the dish that one normally finds. even the basic tomato egg soup tasted good. guess the flavours were enhanced by the fact that we were out of jiuzhai’s chilly airport, and were safe and sound on lower ice-free ground.