I woke up unusually early due to jetlag and went to skate the miniramp in Neihu. To my knowledge, it's the only one in Taiwan. Getting there means riding the green line all the way east, and about a 20 minute skate from the station. There is a bus, but I usually skate it as a warm up. I got a coffee and two jugs of water from the seven and headed across the Rainbow Bridge. I didn't even think about the train bombing until I had already left the station, so I guess I won't have to deal with that fear when I have to go back to work.
Unless you've skated somewhere that is truly hot, it is a difficult thing to imagine, and an even more difficult thing to do. It doesn't translate well into video, which I find appealing. No one shoots a video part entirely in 40+ degree weather and 100% humidity. The reason is that skating in those conditions is crushing. Within a few minutes of pushing down the bike path, I was pouring sweat. The air was choking with acrid exhaust. Alarmingly, I could make out the mountains (only a few km away, but when the pollution is at it's worst, you can't see them at all), so I knew it could be even worse. But that was hard to believe. I spent the day coughing and spitting out grey sludge that tasted like ash and streamed out of my face relentlessly.
The park at Neihu is a park, so it's boring, but it does have a miniramp. It does not have any shade. It was like skating in a sauna under a heat lamp with three idling scooters and a bucket of burning ghost money inside. What little of my clothes weren't already soaked through with sweat were soon dripping onto my griptape. Every landed trick sprayed sweat all over my skateboard and the ground, which dried instantly. I could only do one line between breaks, retreating to the shade about 20 m away. There was no retreat from the PM2.5. I felt like I had whooping cough.
Falling on the sun fried ramp was like throwing a raw steak in a frying pan on the stove. It was so painfully hot that I was surprised it didn't sizzle. I lept up like my back was on fire, because it nearly was. I had only been on my back a split second, but the back of my shirt was completely dry. Nevermind, by the end of the next run, it was soaking wet again. My shoes are wearing out, and I'm not sure if it makes much difference, but my feet were getting burned from the heat of the ramp. I had to wait in the six inches of shade by the side of the ramp, then run up onto it and drop in immediately, to try to minimize the burning. After a run, my wheels were so hot that I couldn't touch them, like after powersliding down a long hill.
After a couple of hours, I hadn't skated much, but I had downed almost all the water, and then a Taiwan miracle happened. It clouded up. First, the shadows disappeared. Then the temperature dropped ever so slightly, and I could skate a little bit longer than before without hiding back in the shade. I could stand for a moment on the top of the ramp before dropping in.
Neihu's park is almost directly under the flight path for the airport, and during the day, jets come over every couple of minutes. They stopped. I noticed, and looked east. The sky had swallowed the mountains, and lightening was flashing. Within a few moments, the wind had picked up, mercifully cool, and thunder was echoing off the short mountains across the river. Big fat rain drops started to fall on the ramp, and I dropped in one last time. Then I skated back on the road and sidewalk, looking over my shoulder at the approaching wall of rain. I thought it would catch me, and I would have to jump in a cab, but it didn't happen until I was almost at the station. I went by a few new spots, and hastily marked them on my phone for later.
I went to the bridge, to drop off a deck I brought back from America for a friend. He couldn't get there for a while, and it was completely full of scooters and small children and wiggle boarders and basketball players walking through the middle of everything, sitting on the benches and rails, so I skated the flat bar in the back. People I suspect were thieves sat on the bench next to my bag and the deck, and everytime I looked, they were about 6 inches closer to it. Since I was soaked to the asscrack with sweat, I decided I would make a good barrier between them and my stuff, so I sat down and let my sweaty shirt press on that fat slut's arm. If she wasn't trying to creep up and steal my stuff, then I guess she was entirely justified in jumping up and making the Taiwanese 'EE-YAAAA' sound of disgust. Better safe than sorry.
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