Climbing the wall of my own limitations

I meant to sit down and write about the Great Wall, and some of its history but I'm thinking at this moment of the group of people with whom I shared this wet day. I am not a big fan of tour groups, for reasons such as how the day started, and because I'm not so good at playing well with others sometimes. I very much like to be able to decide what I want to do, and then do that very thing, and when in the company of others, especially a group of any size, deciding to move from point A to B takes almost as much effort as a joint resolution of Congress.

You arrange to be picked up- for me the instructions were to go to the McDonalds at Meishi and Dashilan Streets at 6:30 am. I have no problem with the early hour- it would seem to indicate an early arrival as well. Alas, the benefit of being picked up so early is much like being at the beginning of the school bus route- you get your pick of the seats. The rest is just a long bus ride. We drove hither and yon picking up others, meeting another bus to trade passengers, and arrived at the entrance at around 10 am. Yes, three and a half hours of fun bus riding. It was raining, and the windows fogged over, so there I sat, being about as patient as I usually am, which is really very little.

The guide we had seemed inexperienced, and it took him nearly an hour to get the tickets and get us herded into yet another bus to go to the actual starting point. Then at last, we were free to climb/walk the wall between ten guard towers, and it was quite amazing. By the time we started climbing I had been talking with Katarina, who is much younger and in better shape than I am.

There was a lot of this kind of 'walking' and I gave her plenty of opportunity to carry on without me, but she was kind, and I staggered, lurched, and gasped my way upward.

It was worth it. And in the process I learned more about Katarina, and we met others from our group of 12 at various points in the walk as well. There are 3 men from the UK, a woman from Jerusalem who is originally from Moscow, two women from Holland, two men from Cologne, Germany and a couple from Columbia. We shared a meal after the hike, and did the shorthand introduction that seems to be the way of travelers: Where you hail from, where you've just been, and where you are going from here. 

I'll probably never see any of them again, and while I exchanged contact info with a couple  of them, who knows what may come of that. It was really just today, and that was enough. Decent human beings in all kinds of packages, sharing the space of an experience that we'd all come to intentionally, and feeling that it all has added to the tapestry of my own life- that is a good day.