It's Official

The golden handcuffs are tightly locked on my wrists and ankles. TAS gets me for one more well-paid year.

Surprising Sight

So, a few weeks ago I was biking along a road beside the bike path, when I was dumbstruck by the sight of this little piggy. There is a family of these critters who live in Tanshui, but I was miles away from there. I wonder if this little piggy lives at the horse stables and just got away?

New Fuji

Finally got out for a bike ride today on the new bike. So far I like it a lot.

New Bike November 8, 2009

Just walked my new 2009 Fuji Absolute 1.0 home in the rain. Pictures to follow another day. It feels strange to have a bike brand other than Giant, but this looks to be a very excellent bike. And James, co-owner of the bike shop with his brother, was most helpful and had much better customer service than my local Giant shop. Had I purchased this bike in the states, I'd have definitely spent much more money. Now I hope the rain goes away so I can go get it dirty with a bunch of road grime tomorrow.

November 2, 2008

Note to self...until it cools off, don't go out riding in the blazing sun at 10:30 in the morning. Had to make it a short ride because I felt every degree today. The temperature was 90 degrees, humidity 55%, so the real feel temperature was 96 freaking degrees. Dang, dang, and dang...last year at this time it was high 60's-low 70's. I did still "enjoy" being out on the bike, especially because the air was crystal clear, which made for a very pretty ride. I decided to take a few odd photos, though...mostly the undersides of a few bridges and freeways that are above the bike path.

November 1, 2008

Solo Saturday since Karen is due to take off on her Starship trip sometime this morning. The road bike decided to take me up to Four Corners via Peitou. Man, I have not done hills for a long, long time. And with God as my training partner again, it was a tough little climb for me. Going up via Peitou is about 5 miles, all a gradual to not-so-gradual uphill. I didn't stop and rest going up, although I thought about it a few times when the wind blasted me as I rounded some of the corners. It was a nice accomplishment once I arrived at Four Corners. It was also sweet, because I passed four bikers also heading up the hill. Usually I am the one getting passed.

Had a bit of a break, then went down, this time via Cherry Hill. This way has much more of an incline, plus it is a shorter distance to the bottom. I actually stopped going down to give my braking hands a break. Once I got to the bottom of the hill, I just rode around on the streets for awhile. Short ride, but a pretty good workout. Doesn't get much better than this.

October 26, 2008

Oh, what a fun morning solo ride. Wasn't sure where I wanted to go, so the newly tubed road bike led me to the bike path, over the bridge, then right toward Daijia Wharf. I just missed the end of a fun run, which was good, because there were tons of people, but not like there would have been in the middle of the run.

Got onto the smooth part of the path and over at the wharf they were setting up rental bikes and very colorful canoes. Got off to watch for awhile, realized nothing was going to happen for an hour, so I rode on. When I came back, there was just 20 minutes to wait, so I hung around. Took some pictures, chatted with a young family whose kids had not been afraid to say hello to a foreigner. Finally, the loudspeaker announced it was time for the festivities to begin. Well, I guess that's what it said.

Probably 20 people were instructed in how to use the paddles, outfitted with life vests, and proceeded to get into their canoes and paddle off down the river. Fun to watch. (especially the Fire Department guys)

October 25

Today I did the River Loop ride with Karen P. Haven't done this ride for a long time. Nice to do something different. Not so nice to change a flat back tire. Man, am I slow at that! But, got it done, so Karen and I were free to continue training with God. Headwinds made Him our training partner today. And we enjoyed it by golly!

Weather Conditions: Some fine mist, some pretty blue sky, one full rainbow, some white clouds, some gray clouds, definitely wind in all directions. Temp 84°, 70% humidity, felt like 91°. C'mon fall...I am tired of being hot here.

Today's ride was somewhere around 23 miles. Don't know for sure because my computer is still not working all the time. I've talked to the guys at the bike shop three times, each time they look at it, spin the wheel, and pronounce it good to go. Guess I need to look at it myself. And boy oh boy, do I need to clean the bikes! I just never seem to have the ambition to do that, partly because as soon as they are clean, they get mussed up again from the gunk here. And partly because I don't have a good place to clean it, although since I moved furniture around again, I may be able to use the front balcony. I think there is even a hose out there. Guess that takes care of the place issue. Now to work on the laziness issue...

October 18

Solo Saturday past the Grand to the end of the path and back. Lots of people, lots of sunshine, lots of wind. Lots of up and down emotions for me. Nearly didn't go out because it had just rained here and gray clouds kept rolling in. Changed my mind about taking the road bike and went out on the good old Freeda. Turned out to be a very good ride, even though the wind made me work. Will NOT complain about that...I'm blessed to be able to go out on two wheels. Or two feet. Not so one of my good friends who is battling cancer. She has shown some progress, though, so hopefully after the final two rounds of chemo, the one remaining tumor will have also disappeared.

Karen P., her friend Bianca, and I had a nice ride from TAS to the end of the bike path past the Grand Hotel. Had to go around a barrier to get onto the next path that just goes for a short ways. Then it was onto the road, past concrete trucks, and onto the path again. This path is definitely not my favorite because it is made of bumpy tiles instead of half-smooth blacktop.

At any rate, we took this path to the end, then came back. Thought about taking the road back into Taipei, but Bianca said it was a super busy one. I stopped at the bike shop on the way to my apartment. Got new brake shoes, a bit of adjustment, but still no satisfaction with my intermittently working computer. I'll have to play with the magnet myself and see if I can get it to work all the time.

This turned out to be a pretty nice day in which to ride, even though we had some heinous headwinds every once in awhile.

Solo Sunday

A nice sunny, solo Sunday ride this morning. Out to Dadaocheng Wharf and back. It was equal opportunity day with near misses by a car, a scooter, and a bicycle. Really close on the bicycle near miss. I don't keep count of the number of times I have to swerve to miss bikers, walkers, scooters, or dogs on the bike path. I also rarely count the number of times I have to swerve to avoid people who decide red lights don't count for them when I'm out on the streets. That's just life in Taipei.

First October Ride

Not much to say here...rather an uneventful bike ride with Karen P. out past the Grand Hotel to the end of the bike path and back. It was nice to be able to get out and not have a typhoon keeping us inside.

On another note, I just sent an email to the Larry King Live show. I started watching it when I got back this morning. There were four participants discussing the VP debate. Well, discussing is a rather loose term. Mostly there were two panelists butting in when the other two were trying to make a point, and I found it very caustic and contentious. I found it to be so annoying that I changed the channel and decided to send a letter. Sheesh, if you have people on the show, let them speak! Each of them has a voice, they should be allowed to use it. And Larry decided to just sit back and let the loudmouths speak out over the other two. But then he does that a lot of the time. I'd love to see him try to control a classroom full of enthusiastic students.

Typhoon Heading Away

Slept fairly well last night, so apparently the winds weren't bad at all. I did wake up to a good downpour, and right now we have light blowing rain. Still a good day to stay inside. I'll probably venture out this afternoon or later this morning to have a look-see, and just to get out of the apartment.

May as well add the last video

It's short as well, but the trees are blowing around more than in the other videos.

YES YES YES

No school tomorrow. Gee, what will I do with myself? Well, now that I have been given a reprieve on needing to respond to reading journals, I think I'll upload another video. See if this one will show the coverings blowing away. Yep, had I been reaching out instead of shooting the video, I think I could have grabbed the closest piece. It's funny how tame the video makes things look. I also didn't take photos when it was really pouring and blowing, it was bad enough in the doorway when it was "tame."

We should continue to get pounded by Jangmi throughout the night, and right now the rain is a torrential downpour outside. Glad I'm in a cozy place.

Super Typhoon Jangmi Continues

It is nearly 6:00 pm, and I'm waiting for the local English radio hourly typhoon update. In the past couple hours it has gotten really hairy. I don't feel threatened by any part of it, but my lights have flickered a few times, and the new coverings (that were blown off by last year's typhoon) on part of the sports complex have been ripping and blowing off. I first noticed it when I heard a loud retort, much like a gunshot. Looked across the street, and yep, there they went.

Of course, I then had to go stand in my balcony doorway to get a few snapshots. I shot a couple videos, too. I've got the clips uploaded to photobucket, but that site is running so slowly that I won't post the videos tonight. Wait, maybe I'll see if I can upload to blogger...that would be a first for me.

My day was pretty productive. Made a great pot of beef stew...so yummy and fragrant. Finished grading the math journals. Still need to respond to some reading journals, but I'll put that off for awhile. See if we have school tomorrow or not, then I'll decide when or if to respond.

Quick update from the radio station: Gusts 227 kph, wind speeds 180 kph. Waves along the coast over four stories high. Airports closed. Bus flipped on its side from strong wind. Lots of localized flooding, signs down, etc. Bridges impassable, rock slides, parts of roads washed out, etc. 86,000 households without power, according to CNN. (You know it's a bad typhoon when CNN has coverage.)

Shoot...nothing about TAS being closed. Taipei will make the decision in the next hour or so. Yeah, that's what you told me an hour ago. C'mon, we lost a second weekend due to weather, give us the day off of school tomorrow. I'm not going to sleep anyway if the winds continue to batter my windows like they are right now, so I won't be that energetic anyway.

Well, it's not the most exciting video and you can't see the coverings fly away, but you can certainly hear the noise of the wind. And you can also see that I could barely hold the camera still. Pretty shaky.

Super Typhoon Jangmi

Looks like a good day to stay in the apartment and try to get some school work done.

Taiwan tv is showing videos of flooded areas and mudslides...probably in the mountains. No idea for sure since it's all in Mandarin and I don't recognize any of the areas. I bet our bike paths will be filled with debris for awhile.

Another Weather Related No Saturday Ride

The streets are still wet after last night's downpour. That wouldn't keep us off the bikes, but the wind is howling, so we're taking a day off. Again. On a Saturday. Again. Oh yeah, and we're watching the next typhoon. Again.

Short Ride Saturday

Wow, today was a very short ride. Solo, since Karen needs a tube replaced, Gretchen's back is bad, Karen is still undergoing therapy for her wrist, and who knows what Chen Li was up to! Short ride today because it was humid as heck and I didn't feel like sweltering, plus I had had some light treatment on my face last night, and I was a bit swollen. Thought I should stay home with ice. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Typhoon Gone?

Winds howled last night for HOURS, so the tin and plastic coverings of balconies in the back of my apartment kept up a cacophony of sounds, which had me tossing and turning most of the night. Right now it's calm and the rain has stopped. From what I can tell (as best I can from the Chinese news stations) that we aren't yet finished with Typhoon Sinlaku. Some of the mountains in northern Taiwan have been pummeled with over 1,000 mm of rain. Don't know how much Taipei got, but it started raining here on Friday night and continued all day and all night Saturday. Looking at tv right now, and it looks like Taipei must have gotten over 600 mm of rain. I'm perfectly content to remain inside the rest of the day...Youtube has some decent tv shows and I've got some paperwork to do. Maybe one of the bikes will get used this week before or after school.

Well, that didn't last long. Rain is here again.