Bad boys, bad boys . . . . What you gonna do?

M has many things he wants us to see and do while in Beijing.  One of the things, is to take a nostalgic ride in a tri-shaw.  (you know those cute three-wheeled bicycles with a seat in the back.  Many have red velvet seats and red canopies on the top.)   Very rustic.  Very cute. 

We are walking after dinner one night and decide it would be a great night to do the tri-shaw back to the hotel.  We see one on the other side of the busy street, so let the Frogger game begin and we cross the street.  M begins to talk to one of the tri-shaw drivers to see if he knows where the hotel is and also to get another tri-shaw (since they only hold 2 people each.)  M starts to talk to the driver and the driver has called over a friend with another tri-shaw.  This is going to be fun.  M said he has always wanted to do one of these and it will be fun to do with the girls.   

Within seconds of this, all of the sudden, cars pull up, flashing lights, and police (lots of them) get out and there is lots of yelling.  The drivers try to run away.  The police have seem to come out of nowhere on a busy street.  One of the drivers is caught quickly.  The other is trying to ride down the street in his tri-shaw, however one of the officers has ahold of his handle bars and is running along side of him.  There is lots of yelling and the two men clearly do not want to get into the police car so there is a lot of yelling and pushing.  OMG!  Are you kidding me?  What are we in the middle of?  The girls look shell-shocked.  At first, I don't think any of us moved an inch.  It was almost unimaginable what was happening right in front of us.  We inch our way down the crowded street.  Now we need to get a cab. 

I don't need to speak the language to know that we need to get the heck out of here.  So girls, how about a nostalgic taxi cab ride?  The girls are, to say the least, freaked out!  (no matter how many times you explain, that they probably didn't have a required permit, maybe the police had warned them the night before, etc. blah, blah, blah, it doesn't matter)  So we get back to the hotel and into our room.  Keylime tells us to sit down and she needs to talk to us (What?  Did we just enter role reversal?)  The girls ask lots of questions and inform us that they have NO intention of riding in a tri-shaw at any point here.  No way, no how.  (At that point, I think they would have traded in their parents for ones that would be sitting in front of a TV doing nothing.)  Well, that settles that! 

So, of course, since we are who we are, M and I point out every tri-shaw that we see and ask if they want to take a ride.  You can guess what the answer is each time.  So we checked nostalgic tri-shaw ride off our list (one way or another, it is off the list.)  Now as we walk the streets, we are all softly singing to each other, "Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do?  Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"  Seriously, we need to get a life, I know.

Sorry, for obvious reason, I have no pictures to share of this!