Midweek Marathon

I swore I wasn't going to skate at the skatepark anymore and I broke that oath. But this time, I won't complain about the spot, at least not much. Only a handful of people were there when I got there around 14:00. momoney showed up, and so did sethstch, who I hadn't seen in forever. momoney is a shining beckon for the german education system, and we talked about a catholic assortment of topics between runs. The surface is still slick, but as the afternoon wore on, I started to enjoy myself (we had planned to go street skating in the area, but ended up staying til dark. The lights came on, and I decided I had had enough.  I sat down to let the sweat dry before getting on the MRT, and suddenly there was a full on ambush explosion of screaming mandarin. It was a lady of the three treasures, and her target was sethstch, which is pretty funny, since I'm pretty sure he doesn't speak a ton of mandarin, but I guess she was blaming him because she thought he couldn't say anything back. A furious but silent and obviously grumpy bumbling old man was with her, and aggressively tried to take photos of us all, and also of the clock across the street, which read 5:53. Mandarin speakers rushed over to sethstsch's aid, and although I was exhausted, I rolled in just to show my support. This sent them into another conniption fit. As far as I can understand, an unauthorized person turned on the lights before 6 pm, and everyone knows the rule that the lights can't be turned on before 6:00pm, no matter that it's totally dark, because, well, that's the rule. German beurocracy annoys germans, but makes society function. Taiwanese beurocracy serves no purpose at all and makes everything worse. I skated around til the official lights on, just to stir up the hornet's nest some more. It is sad to think that  a presumably functioning human being honestly expects us to stop skating for 45 minutes until the official "lights on" moment.

After that, I went to eat by the bridge. There is a huge alley with about 50 restaurants and stalls. Naturally, I took it to the bridge to watch whatever was going on. It looked like a fun sesssion, so I chatted with friends and joined in, but mostly kept it low key. More and more people I know showed up, and then someone asked, would I like to go street skate? I said no, because I could barely walk, but a couple of hours later, I was cruising down the bus lane with a dozen others. We went to mainstation and found the bums still hadn't come back (they sleep all over the ledges and banks, but apparently got blown back across the Strait by the typhoon). Giddy from tricks and the pure joy of skating in a group, I followed them to seven, where we all beered up, and then to a park, where we skated flatground in front of a temple, and a pair of secret police in all black watched at a distance, but did nothing. They kept going, but I went home early, twelve hours after I started.

Tonight I put on some new trucks, since the baseplate of my bindy's broke. Trux is a brand I've never had, so I look forward to trying them, but I think I got them too wide for the deck. I want to go roll around, but I have to let them marinate over night. Hopefully, zewei can skate banciao tomorrow evening. I'll try them then.