A Night Wasted Due to Disease

The filthy little first grade monsters infected me with nasal meningitis. My incontinent nose has been pouring a water-like liquid for about 12 hours now. I can't accomplish normal tasks because of the crippling volume of discharge. Having slept most of the day, I can't repeat the trick now, so I went outside to watch the 2 a.m. traffic. To add insult to injury, the streets have dried from the afternoon rain, and a crisp wind is blowing. It's too cold to sit outside on the stoop in only a t-shirt and shorts - perfect skating weather. In a week or two, it will be unbearably hot. This is a terrible waste of a night.

Resting Up

A full day of work ended with coworkers at the darts bar in 江子翠. This was followed by a japanese bar near home. Filthy children got me sick. Something like water is pouring out of my nostrils. I expect to wake up with nasal meningitis. 

Metacritique of Skatewriting

The best writing about skateboarding that I have encountered: http://lithub.com/skateboarding-in-fiction-a-brief-history-of-failure/

Pretty Hard Work for a Day Off

I woke up at the ungodly hour of 9:55 a.m. for a Chinese medicine doctor's appointment. He scanned my neck with a machine that is like a children's version of an ultrasound, and it made some happy bright lines on his computer. "Your neck is ruined," he informed me. "Also, your one leg is shorter than another leg, and you are lazy and you don't stretch enough." Then he used a sort of tiny pneumatic drill to poke on my neck. Then I went back home and slept until 15:30. 

It being another beautiful day, I went out to the bowl in 南港. The expat crew were all there, but I cut it short to come back into the city for mandarin lessons. Somehow, I spent the next eight hours under the bridge. filmerT showed up as the lights went off, and we ended up trying to film me getting a line that we already wasted another entire night on last week. Tonight was basically the same result. Technically, I did it, but it was so hideous that I can't stand looking at the footage. filmerT has a talent for making things fun, even when they don't really work out. At least we got a lot of footage of me acting like a jackass.

At around midnight, I got an email from work, regarding some editing due at 9:00 a.m. So filmerT took me back home on his scooter. I got some grainy cell phone footage of the neon kalaidescope (spelling?) that is 中山路 at 2:00 on a Tuesday night. Surprisingly, filmerT is the mellowest scooter rider in all of Taiwan. However, at one point, he pulled over and announced "I have to throw up now." I was a little startled, but it turns out he just meant he needed to spit out some bin lang. 

He dropped me off at 民權西路 station and we filmed a little bit on the marble banks out front. The run up is tilled, and we were making a somewhat disruptive level of noise, even for Taipei. I could hear a conversation between security inside of the barrier (they have drop down doors that close the bottom half of the entrance at night) but they never came outside. Usable minutes of footage for the night - zero. Fun - 10/10. I went home, and Lzyk was still awake, but didn't criticize me much. Then, I did some work, and then, I had some TB's. 

Evil Night

"Taipei is the safest city in the world, until the sketchiest shit happens" - Mike

Some Taiwanese meth addict beheaded a child at an MRT station today. Also, there was a shooting. Lzyk called me to tell me to come home, because "it isn't a peaceful night tonight." The skating was good though.

Some hours before (all day), I had been trying to get a group together. The weather was perfect, 15 degrees, sunny, and windy. I picked 台北小巨蛋 as a meet up spot, because I didn't expect anyone to show up, and I hadn't explored that area. The arena proper has some curb to waist-high marble ledges out front, but it was early and crowded, so we went around back to a peculiar circular metal rail bent into a bench. On the way, I got a shitty film of two Americans bombing the marble hill, chased by a furious man on his cell phone. We took off towards the bench to find it was under construction and blocked off by a 12 foot metal wall. 

Hours later, we found out one of the intended expedition members was on the other side of the building trying to find us, but we didn't hear his calls over the clack-clack of the tiles as we tear-assed through the panicked pedestrians on the sidewalk. Eventually, he gave up and went home. Sorry man, I owe you a beer. 

As he was looking for us, we skated a wally spot on the busiest sidewalk ever. It made me nervous, because of the volume of the pedestrian and bicycle traffic cutting across in front of us, but even more so, because of the eight lanes of Taiwanese chaos into which a board might shoot. Thankfully, filmerM landed his trick, after a heroic number of tries, and we moved on. 

On the way to the R Plaza, we stopped by a park that was the turning point of the night. What had been a stressful and shitty time so far morphed into a satisfying and pleasant one. The spot is in a little park, with a natural amphitheater. It has some marble ledges that exit into a dry tile fountain, but tonight, it had about an inch of water in it, owing from the 101 days of rain. It has an 8 kinked marble hubba, about 30 yards long. It's three stairs to flat, three stairs to flat, three stairs to flat, and then another 3 stairs to flat. No one made it to the bottom (which, judging from the wax and marks on the marble, might or might not have been done before), but seeing them try to skate a spot that I've never had the ability to try was what we needed to turn the night around. Brake, as he is known in Taiwan, has the quietly confident stature of someone much older. But then, if I had been skating Taipei with people twice my age and been better than them, I probably would have been more confident too. 

R Plaza is right around the corner. Whenever I roll up to the spot, it feels like I've never seen it before, sort of like when you wake up beside someone you love and just can't believe how beautiful she is. It's always a surprise. This time was no different. A pair of locals were there when we showed up, but they weren't skating. Several police were pacing around the periphery. As always, I thought we would get thrown out immediately. R Plaza is too good to be true: granite surface, with glassy marble 15 ft long benches, a 3 stair, a 5 stair, a 6 stair drop, a manual pad, and the fountain with the long granite bench that Brake skated in a novel way. 

It's hard to write about all this without mentioning specific tricks that were or weren't landed, but one theme I'm trying to stay true to is that skating isn't actually about that part. The point is, it's an exciting feeling to bring a new person to a spot that I've been going to for a while, and see them analyze it in a completely different way. 

The cops were milling the whole time. filmerM mentioned that it was like they couldn't see us in the pit (the spot has 3 stairs on two sides, a 6 stair on one, and a fountain on the other; it's a smallish granite pit of happiness). They were constantly on their radios, staring us down. At first, because we were skating in the courtyard of an upscale hotel, we just pushed around and did some flatground. Tentatively, filmerM tried a few little things on the glass marble benches. Neither of them could believe that we weren't getting kicked out. I don't know who it was who first really started going for it, but once we crossed that threshold, it was on (I desperately wanted to think of a better phrase to describe that moment, but I give up). We skated until we were exhausted (at least I was), with the cops pacing the whole time. In retrospect, I think maybe they had been mobilized due to the killings earlier in the day, and weren't really interested in foreigners vandalizing marble ledges. 

Eventually, we wandered back towards the bridge, and found a parking bar (round, thick metal bars at bumper level, painted yellow and black and used as parking stoppers for cars) that had been bent into a pole jam spot. It was also right beside a security hut for the creative park. There is no way the guard didn't hear us, but someone was welding a sculpture behind us, so I suppose the guard thought out click-clacking and clanging were part of the art installation. On the way out, we skated past the guard, and filmerM and Brake went into the MRT. I skated home, enjoying a few TBs on the way. 

Happy Birthday, Mike

Weekly update: skated under the bridge with a huge, friendly dude from Hawaii. He had to be 350 pounds, minimum. Easily the biggest man I've seen trying backside tails on the box under the bridge. After that,台北 was rainy the rest of the week. We went down to 彰化, where it was sunny (my second sunny day in around 100 of them) but still under 15 degrees and very windy. I went up the hill (best hill bomb in Taiwan) and skated the grey curbs. It's a curb paradise; smooth surface, with painted curbs about 150 yards long on both sides. In two years, I've waxed about 10% of it. To my knowledge, I'm the only person who has skated it in the 24 months since I started The Great Waxing. Once the locals showed up, we skated their DIY park at the basketball courts. 

A further word on the hill bomb: it is long, and it is steep, for the first quarter mile. Then it mellows, and winds down the hill, from four lanes down to one, then back to four for the bridge, then six, then back to four. It's between a five and ten minute run, start to finish. Powerslides are essential for that first quarter mile, but the last mile or two is a straight run to the bottom, minus the bridge, which is steep, and has some dividers that require little pops over. As always, Taiwanese traffic makes it a little more intense than it would otherwise be. The best time is in the dark, after 9 pm. I have yet to make it down the two miles without setting foot on the ground, owing to either traffic or cowardice, which I suppose are two of the same. 

The good spot in the area is a cascading big 3 stair, with tilely run-up that prevents those of weak disposition from ollieing the whole thing. Popping down all three is a good though, from both directions.

Begginning in the Middle

This is a bit like picking up an aimless story somewhere long after the start, without any idea how much longer it will go.

Two of us met up at 圓山站 and went out to the river park. The ground was wet, but after 90 consecutive days of rain, we were satisfied that rain wasn't actively falling. Under the bridge, we pushed some slick plastic benches together. The spot is divided by a drain grate about two feet across, with minimal pebbles and very smooth concrete plastered in pigeon shit. Having warmed up, we cruised out to the amphitheater, a pebble dashed bank to ledge. On arrival, the run up was partly blocked by an empty idling car. After about 20 minutes of us noisily pushing by, a couple got out of the backseat and drove off in frustration. Shortly afterwards, a figure in all black set off an impromptu semi-professional fireworks display. It consisted of about two dozen large roman candles, which was impressive, since the man in black was firing them into the flight path of landing airliners. He didn't manage to shoot down any planes, but sprinted away anyways, a solitary shadow flitting along the levee for as far as I could see him.

Later, we cruised to 大橋頭 for goat stew on rice, with a side of spicy cucumber and curly spicy green vine. For desert, we skated the granite bank in front of the police station, then I went home for some TB.