This has been my first Lunar New Year since lzyk kicked me to the curb. I was a little excited about the prospect of skating Taipei during the holiday though, because I had heard it would be a ghost town. This didn't turn out to be the case, and I still haven't skated so far. Instead, I bought camping gear and went for a hike with wpn to a remote spot in Chiayi near Alishan. We actually went to Alishan first, by accident, where we hung out for a while and absorbed the mountain cliffs and I accidentally mimed gun violence at an old lady, who looked shocked. Several hours later, we were in the right town.
The hike is a 200+ year old road, linking two little mountain towns together. History being the fluid and truthless material that it is in asia, the signs all told about how the glorious Qing Dynasty had rousted up the locals to improve the initial road, then "in 1931, the locals decided to improve the road again." No mention was made of who else was involved.
Anyway, on this very not Japanese engineered path, I climbed stone stairs at well past 45 degree incline for an hour. I was afraid of a cardiac event, but all went well. Then we got to the gap, where a little platform was waiting. It was roofed, but we set up the tents anyway and went for a night hike after watching the light fade out of the world in a monochrome fog. Bamboo forests are cool, especially at night. Our flashlights played through the foggy shafts that reached up 20m into the sky, mostly out of sight because of the opaque fog. We stomped around and scouted other camping sights, none of which we ended up using. Back at the basecamp in the gap, chunks of clouds were flying past only a few feet from us. They were the size of pillows.
Sleeping on the wooden floor wasn't as bad as I had expected, and in the morning, we made a fire and grilled the shit out of some steaks. The walk that day was mostly on a rideline, and we enjoyed perfect blue skies, until the afternoon, when the rain set in. The road takes you by a canyon valley, which echoes yeehaws very effectively. In fact, it was one of the longest echoes I've ever heard. We stashed the gear and ran a few klicks down the city to beer up, and camped in the middle of the path. A little up the hillside, we made a bamboo fire out of the fallen spears, and I slipped and smashed my thumb. I still can't touch anything with it and it's all bloody under the nail. Maybe it'll fall off. That would be cool.
It was a six hour journey home, first by bus, then by train. At the station, we had excellent turkey rice, with giant turkey egg yolks, and then we saw a hilarious fight between some assholes who blocked the road in their blackout german sedan, while police and security enforced on them. It bothers me that I'll never know what the fight was about. At point, a tiny girl in a red dress walked out in front of the honking bus and waved stop, like a tiny version of the Tianamen Square tank guy.
Back in Taipei, my legs don't work because of walking too much. I hope I can skate tomorrow, but I think it's going to rain.
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