Laying low in Inner Mongolia...

I'm sporting a nasty flu...but thought I'd upload a couple photos anyway...

Through the ringer...

Oh man. What a last couple of days. It's been nuts. I'll start off with this morning--- Pete and I had to go ice diving. That consisted of me doing a cannonball off a couple of blocks of ice into the incredibly polluted Songhuajiang River. I was freezing my cohonies off. It hurt. We've been dealing with outside temperatures well into the minuses...and the water today was enough to bring on some serious hypothermia. The ice pool was carved out of 3 feet of ice, and I've never swam so fast in my life. Actually ended up swimming so fast from one end of the pool to the other we had to do it a second time to get a bit more coverage. Brutal.

But two nights ago was really brutal. We ended up doing a scene on Russian vodka in an ice bar in the center of town. Pete and I basically put away a fifth and half of vodka between the two of us in a much shorter time than advisable--- encouraged by our crew to get a bit smashed to make the scene a bit funnier. There are some pretty huge gaps in my memory from that night, and both he and I were down for the count. Such pain I didn't crawl out of bed until 6 pm the next day. All in the name of Nat. Geo... I'll spare you the disgusting details. The most bizarre and coolest thing from that night though was when our dad (Pete and I were already a few shots in) showed up as a total surprise. I couldn't stop laughing-- the grain alcohol, cold, and unexpected shock of our dad showing up out of nowhere was absolutely mind-boggling. It really was fantastic though. So much fun to see him up in Harbin with us--- the same place that we all lived in 1981-82 together, back in the day when everyone wore Mao suits and brushed off coal dust. It really meant a lot to both Pete and I. He was in Asia on a business trip and arranged the whole thing with our producer who kept us in the dark. Absolutely the highlight of this shoot! Unfortunately he could only stay for basically that night and part of the next day, but I hope he knows what a cool thing it was for him to do...love you pops.

Up north...

Harsh winters. Grit. Harbin.

Brrrrrrrrr...

-18 degrees. That's what weather.com is telling me the temperature feels like outside in Harbin, northeast China. Parts of my face that were exposed walking around today will protest that it's much colder. I managed to knock off a few frames before my fingers froze.

Cabin fever...

A cool blue is slipping under the cracked window shade.  It's pulled down to maintain the impression of night in our cabin somewhere over the North Pole at cruising altitude.

I slept the first six hours of fourteen courtesy of a sleeping pill.  Watched a documentary on the Apollo astronauts and read 147 pages of non-fiction on China.  

People are stumbling up and down the aisles, stretching limbs, dazed by the blended blur of time, space and flight.  Housed in a metal skin, static at 600 mph.  I'm glad there's some vibration in the cabin to keep things real.

Now I'm bored.  And sporting a ridiculous headache from the scent tsunami drowning me from the row ahead.  The guy one seat in front of me decided to slather on an entire bottle of cologne mid-flight.  Thanks dude.

Morning's blue creeps under the airplane window shade...

Flight path into Beijing...