I think god is moving its tongue

Let me think (about what?) about money, and new clothes (and what else?) thirty nights of violence and sugar to hold

It's silly, but I was stressed about bailing out of a contract, even thought I hadnt signed it. Then I got a message from teh victim saying obviously it was inconvenient but not to worry much. 

Free from shame, I went to an excellent coffee shop with a vicious tiny cat to prep some work and then off to the bridge for a day shift skate. It was pouring rain again. I walked in flipflops and it was mostly empty when I got there, but IS arrived shortly thereafter. Then a trickle of people came in for hours, until it was a hootenany of a riproaring good time. 

Since I'm accustomed to skating the bridge, I forgot how weird of a spot it is. At the moment, the central box is there, between the pillars of the six lanes above, and a pyramid and some hubbas and the old rail in the back and a manny pad. It's all going to be torn down in a few days because of some city plumbing project. I hope they dont obliterate the entire place. I might go see if I can get a brick from our beloved box, just in case, or even get the rails or wahtever metal we can salve from the place. It's going to be a real kick in the gut if the whole place goes. People show hate for the spot, but it is the beating heart of Taipei and nothing else even comes close. I think construction begins on Saturday, so maybe I can be there to watch the execution. 

This session was a weird sort of trial. I didn't skate all that well, but I got my 39 and some ** ****es on the box and a ***** ******** on the lil rail in the back, after the kpop filming ended. At this piont, I dont really remember the order of arrival, but BB was there, *** ****** and **-**ing the hubbas and some some kind of bboy *** to ***** to **_** on the lil rail. I felt guilty for speaking to him in english only, but I'm pretty sure hes from malaysia, so I guess it works out. 

As a trial, the bridge should be judged more for its social impact than the actual boxes, ramps, and rails. For example, I met a guy from my neck of the woods who's just passing through for a couple of weeks and found the place. I'll call him LV. Sawty was competent with hte *******s, and had ***** ***s giong on the boxes. A shy kid was trying ot say hello but I shot out of a ********* on the death rail and stumbled up beside another pair of foreigners from the Brasil. I'll call them JJ and P. They're high school kids fresh in the country on a year old exchange. My jealousy is overbrimming that these skaters, young enough to by my children, can come here and skate and study and develop their lives. It's a cheap and clean and safe city (nevermind that weirdo behind you in the golden sneakers) I've never had a serious security problem here and 

two minutes later, they came up because someone had stolen JJ's wallet and security card from home. I said I thought it was the golden shoe dude, but didn't really expect much to come from it. Turns out, they chased him down and got their shit back. That's manly shit. Don't fuck with brasilian skaters, even if they're still in high school. 

After that I talked to a taiwanese kid who was just getting started. Turns out, he's from the big T'yuan and swims for the college here. I asked about Panic, because I they treated me right a few years ago, and he had the shop sticker on his board. Small world. 

It was dark for a while, but eventually the lights came on. I couldn't keep going for too long after that. There's another homey I've seen there, getting started in teh back, with the tattooed arm. He was trying **** *****s so I tried to help, but I'm afraid it just came off as a dickmove. 

IS and I went for the beefnoodle bowl, and the beer on teh sidewalk with conversation and stares from the pedestrians. It was still pouring rain. 

Wear your insides, on the outside,
Show your enemy, what you look like

From the inside

Shedding your skin,
Showing your texture.
Time to let everything inside show.
You're cutting all ties
Now and forever, time to let
Everything outside you
Shed your casing, show your lines
And shapes

This is
Your chance revolt, resist!
Open your chest, look down, reach in.

Sun is hot and rain is hard

We haven't had a good typhoon this year, but it's been rainy for a long while. This time, it was pouring rain when I got the message that a meeting tonight was cancelled, so I was unusually at 18:30. In the driving rain, the only place to go was the bridge. I wasn't the only one with that idea. It was a ramroaring smashabout of a session, with probably three dozen skaters and wet edges around the outside. I spent most of it on the flatbar in teh back with IS and JofF, who I met for the first time. 38 and done.

The humidity was catastrophic. JofF stuck on some ********s and slammed hard more than once. IS nailed a pair ******s with that loud hissing scrape that the trucks make on a rail when you get it at a good speed. I got a couple of ** *****s, which wasn't new, but it had been a while.

Some asshole turned out the lights on us and hour early, so I talked shit even though I was grateful for hte excuse to post up and drink beer while the newly arrived college kids skated the mobile flatbar. It was a clinic and I left buzzed and impressed - many Taiwanese skaters refuse to skate in the dark, especially rails. IS and I cruised up a station or two and posted up in the yellow jacket rail park.

I got home and checked my phone and got no message about interview round 2. I hope I dont get one early in the morning.

Skate Detectives

Prologue: We took some friends and clients to eat extremely expensive hotpot. There was pork, steak, chicken, and duck. There was a massive square yard of seafood, including abalones, clams, scallops, six types of shrimp, two types of languines, and a pair of gigantic spined lobsters that I spiked my finger with while eating. There was another 10 lbs of parrotfish, and the regular assortment of duck blood, greens, corn, mountain medicine, and so on. I tried to eat all of it, but failed. In fact, our friends finished theirs about an hour before we did. Taiwanese people have a talent for eating massive amounts of food.

I had planned some skating with IS but as an unreliable person, I didn't show up on time at the appointed spot. But I eventually showed up, at main station, and the first spot was a no go due to hobo. Also, they (not hobos) had erected a massive tent complex around the spot, so I kickturned on it and we left.

RegentP was the next spot. It's another classic but it was covered in little hand grenades that had fallen down from the trees. If you hit one at even a slightly reasonable speed, you went down on your leading shoulder. IS did, but it was far from his last.

Even several hours into it, I was so full that I couldnt stand trying my 37 ********s. We tried a third spot, the tiny hubba on Zhongshan Bei. Security were milling around some scooters, inexplicably, so we were forced to beer up and wait for them to leave. We downed the beers and they kept standing there staring at us and the scooters. So we pushed north.

I had grinded out some *******s, but at this piont the session got a lot better. We went by the old stoop and skated flat in front of the family until a security came out and we left because he kept coughing at us. We visited a fantasy spot from years ago, only, it had been waxed and skated.

At yuanshan, we skated a curb and then IS announced his intention to ***** **** ***** the bank to marble ledge. He slammed on the hip and again on the arm and upper body, but left with it in the pocket. I've never seen it attempted there.

Two skaters passed us giong the other way through the park, but they were too cool to say hello. Call it generational differences.

We skreeeched through the club area at triangle and ended up with more beers by the green stairs. Then we started skating again. IS got locked into a battle. We had had too many beers and he had had too many slams, but he kept coming at it; hoes and more and more hoes pouring out of hte club like spilled honey, stumbling, talking on their phones, voicing joy about what we were doing. Well, what IS was doing. I was drinking and watching by that point. Of course, he made it. There was never any question.

We parted ways, in the rain, and I skated through the taxi lanes. The sun came up quick. It had started in the sky as we split up, and by the time I turned east, a few blocks south, the purple clouds had been lit up from beneath with gold. I tried to film it as I skated home. Filming things sucks, because it kills the real memories.

Skateboards Make Great Chairs, So Don't Sit on the Ground If You Have a Skateboard

In the middle of the week, a flower of a session grew. I'm pretty sure I could have managed to have a good time alone at WestDoor Plaza, but each friend magnified it by an order of magnitude. RMJ ran into me in the MRT and we started warming up on the smooth, slippery pink curbs and ledges and flatground. Then IS and MSCS rolled across the three acre plaza, and we got into with some slappies and so on. I worked through my *********s with MSCS giving me pointers, and goddam if that boy caint magically coach a skate session.

Security came to tell us that we had to leave at 10:00pm, but none of us had a watch, so we kept going and he walked off across the acres of marble. We might have gone over time; I'm not sure. Four people actively skating the spot makes it pretty frantic and in all the excitement, I lost track of time. I got most of my 35, so I was ready when it was time to leave.

The four of us spread out across the wide sidewalks and went north, making a racket. Tourists scrambled out of the way, and I finished by 35 on the way.

There is a strange ubiquotous wedding cake tiered kind of spot on this route. It's extrasmooth mirrored marble square planters around little trees, dozens in a row. They're curb height, but they're scalloped so that you have to lock in just right to avoid going face first into the soil and bushes, which I did first try. IS got a **-** ** *****, so cleanly, and we pushed on up the road.

I doubt that the west gate is actually as old as the internet says that it is, but I'm glad it's been saved from the relentless destruction that passes for development in Taipei. It's a massive red cube with a ... Taiwanese shaped roof. There's probably a word for that. Long long ago, I spent some quality time on the ancient rough stone under the arch trying to land a stationary ********. Nowadays, it's a top notch spot. It's a plaza in it's own right, for starters. It isn't the 3 acres of marble by the MRT, but it's probably half an acre total. It's a glorified roundabout, so traffic is pretty heavy. The surface is like skating on the top of a neutron star. There is a pit, from upper flat to 150 ft of lower, that makes a sizable three stair, with plenty of grass in between each stair. It's possible to skate laps arond the monument, but you have ot manny the two knee high mannypads to finish the lap. The pit is surrounded by marble curbs, with annoyingly bright futuristic underlighting.

The crowning glory of the spot is a pair of Taiwan's finest black granite ledges. They're low, but less than arm's length from the monument's fearsomely rough walls. I got an extra shitty ** **** after too much effort, but a french couple came up to ask us for directions and when we sent them on their way, the session had melted and devolved and transformed and been reborn as an entirely different creature.

MSCS is a skate crazy. Some how he got into his head to * ***** the entirity of one of those ledges. Wax went on, adn the effort started. To put into context, this dude skates everyday. Infact, I'm not sure he does much else. I assume he eats sometimes, but I can't recall seeing it happen. I'm not sure if he bathes, but that's besides the point. He's a skateboarding maniac, and I don't think anyone in Taipei is more devoted to the practice of this sect of foreigner. On this day, he ripped out a toenail because it was ingrown and "annoying [him]." Then he skated the whole session, sober, as always. Then he got into this trick battle, and cops came. We let them pass; they signed their documents, and left us to get on with it. By that I mean, watchign mscs try at precisely the speed he could still run it out if it stuck, which it did a few times. Of course, he made it. You don't tear your toenails off and skate all night to throw yourself at wall of fleshshredding destruction and not get it.

We split up and rmj and I went to beer up. Main Station a nasty nasty massive building with hudnreds of hobos pissing and shitty everywhere. This is foreshadowing, but I'd like to remind everyone to use your skateboard as a chair when in a nasty ass fucking shithole like that.

We talked about all the stuff you talk about in that sort of post skate late night in the city on a weeknight state of mind. A gibbering hobo came up and upgobbled words at us that I kind of understood, so I thanked him and asked him whatever questions I could think of, and finally told him I couldn't understand. Later, when I cracked my next beer, I realized that he had been gibbering at us not to sit on that ledge, because the legion of homeless people use it as a urinal. My palms reeked so strongly of piss that I almost vomited when I raised the beer to my mouth. As the peices of the jigsaw puzzle clipped together and I realized what had happened, there was nothign to do but slam anotehr beer. Fucking vile. One of the all time most disgusting experiences of my life, like the kiss of poseidon from a public toilet.

Because it was so sweaty, I think my hands mostly got cleaned off by skating home. I hope I didn't contract fucking hep c or something from fucking hobo piss.

Shoulda Skated

I went to the hospital again and got more liquid brown medicine. And inhalers and assorted pills. The night was finally dry for a short few hours, but I didn't sleep the night before and worked all day. A terrible sick joke was played on me and I passed out at the house at 20:00 and woke up having dreamt of a hunstman spider in my sleeping bag while camping in the smokey mountains, but I felt totally refreshed. It was 22:00. I sat around feeling creeped out and then didn't skate. I regret that. Now I'm watching Alig and stressign about new contracts.

Lest I Forgot

Breaking News is broken news, more often than not in Taiwan. The best example in a long time is sordid tale of rogue foreign sunbathers in Changhua. I swear this had nothing to do with me. Obviously, neither do any of these articles, but they will illustrate the level of ... news in Asia (since googling the first story, I found more versions in Hong Kong and Korean "news" as well).

Manhunt Launched for Sunbathing Foreigners

Police in Changhua County failed to apprehend two foreigners who were spotted sunbathing on a traffic separator outside the Changhua County Art Museum today.

At around 4:00pm, two men of Caucasian appearance were spotted sitting topless on a blanket on a painted traffic divider at the intersection of Gongyuan Road and Dongmin Street. Enthusiastic citizens took photographs of the pair and uploaded them to the Facebook Group “Changhua People’s Affairs,” urging drivers to take care when passing through the vicinity.

A member of the Facebook group speculated that the foreigners may have been drunk.

“Otherwise it is possible that they mistook Taiwan for Hawaii,” another responded.

“It’s possible that foreigners don’t know that that one cannot sunbathe on roads and parks in Taiwan,” a sympathetic citizen added.

Police at the local Lushan Police Station were eventually alerted to the situation while browsing on Facebook at around 4:40pm. However, by the time officers arrived at the scene, the semi-naked foreigners were nowhere to be seen.

Police said that if found, the suspects may be fined NT$300 (AUD13.35) for sitting, or laying on a traffic route, and hindering traffic.

Taiwanese motorists baffled by sight of foreign men sunbathing on city street

Westerners strip down to their shorts and lay beach towels on the tarmac in apparent prank.

Photographs and video footage shared online showed the two Westerners, dressed only in shorts, arranging a towel on a hatched area of the road in Changhua and sitting down.

While the stunt appeared to be a prank, some social media users failed to see the funny side and issued sombre warnings to road users.

“People riding and driving on the road should be careful as foreigners are sunbathing there,” a person wrote as an accompanying note to images posted on Facebook.

Another commenter described the men’s behaviour as “very dangerous”, while a third suggested they had mistaken the road for a beach in Hawaii.

Others were less concerned about the safety issue and suggested the pair were either drunk or had been dared into it.

“They might have done it because they lost a bet,” a person wrote.The photographs were taken about 4pm on Sunday on a road close to the city’s art museum, SET News reported. After the local police saw the images, officers were dispatched to the scene, but by the time they arrived the men had gone.

The police said that under local regulations the pair could face a fine of NT$300 (US$9.75) for dis

Two foreign bros wanted by police in Taiwan for sunbathing shirtless in the street

If caught, they could be fined $10

Apair of foreigners are wanted by police in Taiwan. Their crime? Sunbathing in the street.

On Monday afternoon, the two bros were spotted sitting shirtless on a pink blanket placed on a painted traffic divider at an intersection in the city of Changhua. Photos of the pair catching some rays were quickly posted onto a local Facebook group, warning drivers to be wary of half-naked foreigners in the street.

One Facebook user also caught video of one of the guys sitting down, preparing to soak up the sun.

Foreign men sunbathing on road baffle Taiwan motorists

Motorists in Taiwan got a surprise over the weekend when they spotted two men sunbathing on a city street, a local television station reported.

Photographs and video footage shared online showed the two Westerners, dressed only in shorts, arranging a towel on a hatched area of the road in Changhua and sitting down.
While the stunt appeared to be a prank, some social media users failed to see the funny side and issued sombre warnings to road users.
"People riding and driving on the road should be careful as foreigners are sunbathing there," a person wrote as an accompanying note to images posted on Facebook.
Another commenter described the men's behaviour as "very dangerous", while a third suggested they had mistaken the road for a beach in Hawaii.
Others were less concerned about the safety issue and suggested the pair were either drunk or had been dared into it.
"They might have done it because they lost a bet," a person wrote.
The photographs were taken about 4pm on Sunday on a road close to the city's art museum, SET News reported. After the local police saw the images, officers were dispatched to the scene, but by the time they arrived the men had gone.
The police said that under local regulations the pair could face a fine of NT$300 (US$9.75) for disturbing the traffic.

Having copied and pasted all this headline news, I've realized just how fucking lazy all these websites are. 

Now I know how Joan of Arc Felt

Magenta valentine's day started off ok - we met at laoli's bar and went to the best steak izakaya in Taipei. Then, it all went wrong when I tried to listen to the Smiths. I never saw any redeeming value in them in anyway, and especially not in Morrissey, but I drank Brown Liquid Medicine last night and dreamed about someone from undergrad who once talked down to me about the smiths and as glorious bitter vengeance, I started running throuhg their shitty back catalogue of blandness and uninspired hootenany false wit. Then I found a song that I kind of liked. It's kind of tolerable, and the riffs that sound like a sighing guitar were I suppose pretty definitive for the late 80s and early 90s pop that I hated as a child. We eventually stomped off on other sides of the sidewalk because one of us can't handle other opinions and the other can't handle criticism. It's really hard to imagine how people can stay tolerate 70 years of one another, but it's harder how anyone can really, truly be unironically into hte smiths.

I don't understand longboarding

I forgot taht I had to work today but i went and did that. Then I went up to yuanshan and skated flatground with IS because it rained. I pretty much just went three hours with minimal beer breaks to land 33 **** ****s and ***** the orange cones a lot and ********** the bench. Towards the end, the cones were too much and my back trucks got caught up a few times. Towards the middle, a herd of longboarders flooded into the spot and longboarded around in circles like mad cow disaese. They kept going around and around, with the cheif longboarder shouting into a microphone to tell the other ones to keep making circles. We also met K, a regular skateboarder. Then we bombed the little hill back to get a beer and talk. I skated home from minquan. I saw a dozen germans on the stoop by the house, but I was too tired ot be sociable. When I got back home, Lzyk had made steak.

Why I'm Mad at Taiwan today

The only thing to do with skateboarding here is that I fucked up my knee last time and even if the streets were dry, I still wouldnt be skating today.

Our toilet broke a couple of months ago. It's a recessed, in-the-wall unit, and you can't access any of it without tearing out the cement wall. It was completely worthless and pointless design anyway, since it takes up more space with the wall than would have been lost by having a normal toilet, but such is "luxury" in Taiwan. The part that broke is a flimsy plastic flushing mechanism that pulls the bobber up. I disassembled it down to hte cement and started flushing the toilet by sticking my hand inside to manually pulling the bobber up. We called teh plumber. As it happens, this particular model of terrible toilet is a very luxury toilet from Italy, meaning, the mentally thick, and or lazy, plumbing crew couldn't locate the necessary part to replace. After a few weeks of hand flushing, I found them online in ten minutes, but something was lost in translation and they never ordered the parts the I found for them. After a couple of months, our landlord got a plumber to come and tie a rope to the now leaking toilet. Well, he's still here, trying to work out how to tie a nasty peice of rope to guts of the luxury toilet, so that we can pull a slimey moldy rope everyday. It looks like a tampon string hanging out of our marble wall.

While he worked, I bought breakfast at a new coffee shop across the street. This one isn't going to be around long. The coffee was good, but insanely expensive, and the sandwich was an eye watered $120. It was two peices of bread with ten peices of lettuce, and a thimble of canned chicken. Everyone is frantically trying to politely rip me off in Taipei, but at least I know that coffee shop is fucked, because there are plenty of equally expensive but actually decent quality ones around.

A man pissed in a bush and a woman rode fast on a ubike

I went to a new job and it went well. I went to skate and it went well. I went to the three stair park with mw and is and it was covered with little landmine tree pebbles taht the trees around here drop this time of year. At least they're soft right now. They won't be in a month.

We cruised up Songjiang and tried out the volcano. It's a pink tiled thing that's about as dangerous to skate as a real volcano. mw nearly fell off the top, but ran it out like a linebacker. Then we kept going, and found the nicest seven piazza in the city. I got my 32 **s at the temple, but this was outshone by the other guys. is was sliding ** ****s on the ledge that just shouldnt have slid, and mw got a perfect **** on it, as security watched. Then he ****** the stairs and ***d up the ledge, and ** ***d off it. A man pissed in a bush, not even bothing to turn his dick away from the avalanche of six lanes of traffic. A woman rode by at maximum speed for ubikes several times, ding ding dinging the whole time. The old man wantd to buy me a beer, but I insisted on water instead.

A new spot at the center of the city

The filler can be mostly skipped: 31 **'s at hte bridge. Off to ximen to meet rmj at the plaza. I wanted to see how many tricks I could get on the marble there, but after a spell, a potbellied man sat down next to my shit and I had to go get my phone and keys and wallet to keep htem from getting taken. Turns out, he just wanted to watch all the skating and had no sense of personal space. H ewas a good luck charm and I landed a new flatground trick, bolts. I arragned to eat sashimi with him on another day, adn rmj and I pushed into hte city. we hit a spot with a bank to vert, and a weird wobbly curby thing that we'd been looking at for years but never skated. At least I never had. We made it to the west gate and it had been gloroiously refinished. The surface is mirror marble, adn there are two pairs of ledges, half of which have been waxed, and curbs all around. There's also about a three stair drop, and a massive gap down the same. Across the street is the only legit manny pad in Taipei. It's made of small square tiles, but they're so expertly laid that it's really smooth. It's aslo got red curbs all around, and its all in the shade of main. We beered up and then I skated back from main, which isnt' that far, but it's still a nice and well lit 1500m, with a smooth surface. There's more to tell, like how rmj showed me the bmx-2000 spot, but I gotta watch some early simpsons and drink some brown liquid medicine and get some sleep.

Hualien Tour, As Promised

Let's get the skateboarding in Hualien part out of the way in the first paragraph; in the middle of Taroko Gorge is a "service station," and because all white soft marble hubbas were born in Taroko, there was one on each side of a four stair. 

Taroko is a pretty famous place for tourists, and this skate spot summed it all up for me. It was a weird and probably decent spot, at the bottom of a half km deep canyon, that was only about 100m wide at the top. The sun never shines at the bottom. There is an internet spot in utah or something that's really famous that is a painted rock canyon thing. It used to be on a lot of screen savers. Taroko is somehwere in the middle of that and the Grand Canyon. 

Megalophobia is the fear of big things. Taroko is not a place for the megalophobic. I was frightened most of the time I was there, but the tiers of beauty disoriented me enough that I only vomited once from fear, and that was at the top of the Death Path. 

I don't know how long the canyon is, but I'm guessing at least a few hours drive, winding up and around and into the mountains until it peters out into a regular old mountainside. In Taiwan, the regular old mountainsides are like the regular old skatespots - better than anything I've ever seen. 

The river at the bottom of the gorge is so small that at regular flow, it's probably not navigable by a raft even. 30m above the house-sized boulders is the first sign of a flood line. This was creepy in the way that finding glass in the desert after a nuclear blast is creepy; I can't imagine that energy at this spot when the event happens. The cliff sides are scoured totally clean up to that point, throughout the canyon. 

Above that, the walls stay at 89 degrees for hudnreds of meters, but shrubbery starts to appear, and at about 100m above the chalky white water, stubbly weak trees are growing. This doesn't change for hundreds of meters. The sky is only visible for about a handwidth across the sky, form the bottom of the canyon. It's not unlike another planet, or at least, it's more like another planet than it is like the earth. 

THe walls are pink and white and the material that ledges in Taipei are made out of. One day, homeies will be grinding on stone that I looked at on those canyon walls. 

The top of the moutnains look like Macchu Picchu. My brain isnt calibrated to deal with looking at ground 600m below and 1000m above at the same time, but it tried to make sense of that as I clung to the side of a cliff, ignoring warning sings about venemous snakes and dangerous bees, and shoving my fists into the shrubbery to try and grab onto life-saving earth as I tip-toed down the hell path on the side of the sheer cliff.

The japanese apparently punished the locals by making them make this path across the cliff face, about 108 years ago. We climbed up to their abandoned village, which was like a Taiwanese Tintagel. The squared off bases of what appear to have been a tiny place, high high high up in the mountains quickly dissolved back into the verdant and terrifyingly steep mountain. I can't believe anyone used to live here. Tourists used to hike up there to visit, 100 years ago. 

By that piont in the hike, I was already so afraid of the cliffs that my entire body was shaking. I'm an old man now, and I'm not afraid to say that. Twenty years ago, I was a pussy, so I would say it was rad adn awesome and I lovedit and I got a rush, and more bullshit. Not anymore. This sucked so much that after it was over, I vomited for about 30 minutes. 

Before it was over, we rounded a corner and got onto the cliff face proper. SOmetimes, there was a cable or rope to hold onto. You have to heel and toe it for a ways, because on your right is a vertical cliff, and on your left is a vertical drop. Not actually that far across the valley, is a mountainside out of film. It looked fake, like I was tripping. Maybe the fear heightened my sense of color, but that still didn't explain the sense of scale of the place. English doesn't have a word for it, but huge is the best thing that comes to mind. I could crane my neck all the way down and look at the river, and all the way up and look at the mountainside, which disappeared into a grey cloud.

My appereciation of the beauty was like the appreciation of the beauty of a ferrari when some poseur dickhead rents one in taipei and runs a redlight and lamost kills you as you skate across the intersection at 03:00. It was beautifyl, but so what? I hated this experience so much that I can't even begin to describe it. I heard Taiwanese is a poetic language; mabye if I learn it, it'll have a way to describe how I feel about that plcae. 

Anyway, we also went to the best beach and river playing placei n taiwan. I jumped off a stone thing and redeemed my manhood. We took many, many selfies. Afterall, that's what taiwanese vacations are for.

Ghost Month Comes Early

We went to the east coast for the weekend with a group of friends. I'll write that up later. It involved spotting a skate spot in Taroko Gorge at the service station, a death march on a tightrope 600m above the valley floor, selfies, group selfies, and more selfies.

When I got back, I went to meet up with IS. We hadn't met before, and when I told lzyk that he had contacted me online, she didn't like it, but I think it's because she was jealous that I'm famous now. A man after my own heart, IS skakes yuanshan frequently, and had recently put some wax on the yellow curb. We started there, after a couple of beers, and headed out down the river. "Sometimes, this place smells like death," he said. He was right. The water stinks around here.

Of all the granite blocks, a phone dude was sitting on the only waxed one (turns out it wasn't waxed anymore. We found that it had been vandalized on the way back). Hobos were sleeping all over the benches, and on the manny pad.

The ampitheater was clear, and he got a ** ***** *** ****** on it, which is a first as far as I know. It's an exhausting spot because of the pebble dash surface, and I wanted to make sure he saw the other spots, so we moved on again. We went by the banks, which had a roof now, and also have the metal beams supporting it, meaning, you can go behind them on the wall ride if you so choose. We went down to my favorite spot on the river. It's a low granite bench that's been fully waxed. It was a little sticky though. Something just seemed a little off. Tricks were done, and it was fun, and eventually I noticed he had gone over by the wall, where it's possible to start a long line from, going towards the benches. Something was on the ground there.

I cant remember what he said, or if I even heard it. He was looking down at a crumpled bunch of cloth or something on the ground. My first feeling was that it was a body, but he wasn't reacting in the way that I would have expected. It would have been a small body. I thought of that time I found a decapitated rabbit in a shoe box with maggots coming out of its neck, also in the river park.

This wasn't a body, but it was about a dozen stuffed animals, most of which I didn't recognize, blindfolded with redpaper and with their hands taped either behind their backs or across their faces. Some lay on their backs, Snoopy had his hands taped to his face with clear tape and lay on his side, facing the wall. There was a borken yellow ceramic man and an unbroken russian nesting doll, facing east.

I like to think it was an art installation or something, but it certainly had a sinister vibe. We were tired anyway, but that ended the session. I finished the rest of my 30 on the way back, and we had another beer and talked outside the seven. I send photos of the bound and gagged dolls to my sister, who said she thought it was serial killer shit, and lzyk, who yelled at me when I got home and made me delete them. I suppose it was the second creepiest thing I've seen at the river park.

Cheap Liquor

We have friends here now, and that means requisite exchange of gifts. It's like couples dating or something. We're all trouping off in a tourist team large enough to invade penghu, and I got assigned to buy the liquor. Only two of the group are going to drink a respectable amount, and one of that pair is myself. The other half is into whisky, so I walked to LinBei to a 24 hour whisky shop and got a couple of bottles. They came out to about half price of back in the states (I guess I haven't bought whisky since I came to Taiwan. I listened to Alastair Reynolds and carried my haul back across town. It would have been a good night to skate.

Heat Lightning and Regular Heat

The epoxy angels came to 板橋 and fixed the spaces between the marble where there were starting to be ever so slightly so little chunks. This is in itself is amazing, since millions of grinds have been done on this ledge. Day in, day out, it's one of the best skate spots in Taipei. Today was especially good. I met up with zw to learn some language and have some small eats. Sorry fa, this is the best food on earth. Lzyk wanted to eat again, so I had some luwei with her near main station, and then set out for hte skatespot. It's annoying to ride the train so far to get there, but that feeling always evaporates by the time I roll down the little flat section and see a dozen or so skaters lined up to have a run at the ledge. This time, sukotosan and tmfh and hm and gt and a slew of other guys whose faces I know were hard into it (I didn't get there til 10:00). RMJ showed up too. My phone said it was only 33, but I can't remember a hotter session. Everything that went down was earned in that heat, and lot got done. 

Somehow, these banciao dudes have leveled-up steeply since I used to spend time there more frequently. In particular, gt was getting long, fast, jaguar-roar-sounding *-* to ***** *** at will. I went through my 29 and some weak ledge work, but it's starting to come back. 

The happiest part of the whole evening was a trio of middle schoolers I didn't recognize, who are already respectable. They skated off into hte night together with snacks and drinks and backpacks, and I felt the jealousy that only the elderly can feel towards youth. They are so lucky to be growing up in Taipei and skating it from that age. I'm glad at that at least three of them are. 

The clouds came in and what I thought was aviation safety lights flashing on them turned out to be heat lightning. The sky was blinking regularly by the time I slouched back in the station and managed to catch the last train.