#339 Dude Ranch

I spent the day Saturday with my workgroup on a teambuilding outing. We set out at 9:00 AM with a busload of Cat employees for the 90 minute drive to the "Cowboy Style Country Club" near Taihu Lake. This place was a lot of fun with horseback riding, dragon boat racing, go-karting, laser tag, rock climbing, and other teambuilding games.

We had a full agenda of activities and like every Chinese tour group you see, we had a a leader a megaphone. Daniel (pictured above) was our megaphone-wielding colleague and team leader. The day started out with a very good barbecue lunch and birthday cake for the people with birthdays in October. Next we split into four teams for dragonboat racing. Next was a half hour of free time which I used to take a horseback ride. It was hilarious that the dude ranch required a personal flotation device as safety gear to ride a horse. I liked the horseback riding, though it was a pretty short ride. The next group activity was lasergun combat.

At 4:00 we left the Cowboy Club and went to a nearby orange grove where we got to sample delcious oranges right off the trees, then had dinner in the grove's own restaurant. Among the local favorites are the "three whites" - white shrimp, whitefish, and silverfish. I asked why the third white is silver, but no one knew the answer. The final dish was the famoush hairy crab, which in my judgement requires more work than the small yield of crab meat is worth. But this hairy crab is a tradition and an autumn obsession in the Suzhou and Wuxi area.