Oh Busdriver where are you now?

Yes, off to an early morning start -was woken at 5.30 to have a leisurely cup of tea with an American guy I met in Beijing who seems to be following my path. He arrived at the guest house as I was leaving. My first experience with the Chinese bus service wasn't as pleasurable as my train experience. The bus doesn't actually pull into Pin Yao - old preserved town, so I'm bundled into a cab and driven to the freeway where I am to wait for the bus and then flag it down. The freeway also seems to be a morning hot spot for the Chinese to exercise. This proved entertaining as I had 1 guy jumping up and down continuously whilst focusing on a small bush?! Yes, that's what I thought. As the traffic is quite sporadic at this time of the morning, some of them even walk whilst stretching on the actual freeway. Anyway, the bus arrives, pulls over and I clamber on board. Simple so far. Suddenly it seems that the door won't shut so the next 20 mins is spent with the bus driver and co banging at the mechanisms with hammers and tightening screws etc. Once they are satisfied that they've fixed the problem we head off. The scenery is quite incredible. I view this through the 2 big cracks in the windscreen. We pass miles and miles fields and scatterings of cave dwellings. Kind of like Goreme in Turkey. Suddenly, our bus passes a broken down bus on the other side of the freeway from the same transport company. What eventuates is that all the passengers on my bus (all 4 of us) are kicked off the bus with our luggage whilst the bus drives away to find a turn off to get on the other side to pick up the passengers from the other bus. Phew! Anyway, so here I am sitting on the side of the road waiting for another bus that is heading to Xian to stop for us. Many buses pass but they don't seem to be heading to our destination. Finally after about an hour into waiting, like a mirage, a blue shit heap appears in the horizon. The bus pulls over and there is some communication with the driver and the conductor of our bus. Money is exchanged and I'm once again bundled onto a bus. This bus is full to the brim. People are actually standing in the aisle. Great! The trip will take about another 4 hours from this point. Not to worry, I am escorted to the dodgey seat next to the driver so I have a birdseye view of the traffic he is about to crash into and I get the horn right in my ear for the remainder of the journey. Anyway, I made it...