Sesquipedaustralian

Change in the time of sunrise throughout the year

2012-01-04T22:56:00.001+08:00

I heard someone announce the other day that now that we are past the date of the winter solstice, the length of the days will increase by one minute every day until we get to the summer solstice. Today is the 4th of January, 2012. According to the Environment Canada Weatheroffice website, the sun rose at 8:48 a.m. So will the sun rise tomorrow roughly one minute later than it did today? The facts are available for checking as these kinds of astronomical observations are calculable and detailed lists of all kinds of related data are readily available on the internet from reputable sources. What do these sources say?

The sun rose today in Thunder Bay at 8:48 a.m. It will rise at the same time for the next three days. From the 8th until the 10th it will rise earlier, at 8:47 a.m. From the 11th to the 12th it will rise at 8:46 a.m., and so on. By January 31st the sun will be rising at 8:28 a.m. That's 20 minutes earlier than it rose today and 27 days from today. So at the moment the sun must be rising less than one minute earlier each day. If you look at a list of sunrise times for January you can see that the rate at which the sun is rising earlier is increasing. That is, the sun is rising earlier faster. While at the start of January it might take four days for the sun to rise a minute earlier, towards the end of January it is rising a minute earlier every day.

On the 1st of February the sun will rise at 8:26 a.m. while on the 29th of February it will rise at 7:39 a.m. So from the first day to the last day of February, 28 days later, the sun rises 47 minutes earlier. That is more than one minute earlier for every day of the month, on average. In January it was less than one minute earlier for every day of the month, on average. By looking at the list of sunrise times over the course of the month you can also see that the trend is one of the sun rising earlier faster. That is, at the start of the month the sun is rising roughly a minute earlier each day but by the end of the month it it rising by roughly two minutes earlier each day. When will the rate at which the sun is rising earlier stop increasing and start decreasing?

In March the sun rises earlier by two minutes almost every day. But if you find a list that also shows the length of the days, something significant happens in March. At the start of March the length of the days is increasing by 3 minutes and 30 seconds each day. By the middle of the month day-length is increasing by 3 minutes and 33 seconds. The increases in day-length have been getting larger since the winter solstice. On December 22nd of 2011 the length of the days stopped decreasing and started to increase as we passed the shortest day of the year. Sunrise and sunset times follow this trend: at around the shortest day of the year, the sunrise time stops getting later each day and begins to get earlier; the time of sunset stops getting earlier and starts to get later; the length of the day stops shrinking and starts expanding as the sunrise and sunset times move away from each other leaving a longer period of sunlight between them; the sun is in the sky for longer each day. Back to March and the rate at which the time of sunrise is getting earlier and earlier. In the middle of the month the sunrise is getting earlier and earlier by about 3 minutes and 33 seconds each day but then it starts to fall, rising 3 minutes and 32 seconds earlier each day. By the end of March the sun is rising 3 minutes and 31 seconds earlier each day.

By the end of April the sun is rising 3 minutes and 7 seconds earlier each day. Sunrise is still earlier each day. On the 30th of April the sun will rise at 5:39 a.m. (6:39 a.m. if you put your clock forward for daylight savings). The latest sunrise occurred close to the winter solstice, on the 1st of January, at 8:49 a.m. By the end of April it is more than three hours earlier. The time of sunrise will continue to get earlier but the rate at which this will happen will slow down until the middle of June when the sun will begin to rise later each day and the length of the days will start to decrease again. The summer solstice will occur on the 21st of June when we will experience the longest day of the year.

Although the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, occurred on December 22nd, the latest sunrise occurred on January 1st, only four days ago. However, the earliest sunset occurred about a week before the solstice. So while the sun was rising later and later up until a few days ago, it has been setting later for the last two weeks. The sun does not start rising earlier on the same day that it starts to set later. There is a gap of about two weeks where, in the winter, the sun is rising and setting later, and then in the summer, it will be rising and setting earlier. I don't know the reason for this but our clock is an artificial linear measurement superimposed on a natural diurnal (means daily) cycle that varies and wobbles in all sorts of complicated ways.

Sunset in Bobcaygeon, Ontario, in December 2011

Visa versions verified: Common-law conundrum capers

2011-06-07T00:04:00.000+08:00

I just made my fourth call to Canadian Citizenship and Immigration to hone my understanding of the process and in seeking confirmation of what I understand about the process and the implications of my circumstances and choices. Completely expectedly, the whole process is rather unwieldy and inscrutable, requiring many readings and re-readings of guides and documents and forms. Ultimately I must build a pyramid at the base of which are all the individual actions and results that will support my application for permanent residency, like visiting a local police station to get a record of traffic convictions and infringements, going to Western Union Offices in Toronto in a failed attempt to wire money to an invalid recipient in Taiwan as payment for a police clearance, and buying a new red folder especially for housing the guides and forms and other components of the permanent residency application as it develops. These individual actions form the base of the pyramid and support components a little higher up, for example, the receipt by me of an official police criminal record certificate that evidences my clean bill of good-citizenry health for the period that I lived in Taiwan. A little further up are the larger stages and steps, such as submitting my complete application for the permanent residence and extending my tourist visa after the regular six month period has elapsed. At the very top of the pyramid, closest to the heavens, is the penultimate event on which the entire campaign with CIC is built: the grant of a permanent residency visa for me, allowing me to come and go across Canada's borders as easily as a mosquito might cross the borders. And then, like a mosquito, I can suck Canada's blood and potentially give it malaria.

Here is a summary of what I now understand about the process.

I can apply from outside or inside Canada for my permanent residency.
Both ways have two stages but the stages vary between inside and outside application.

Inside application: stage one - assess sponsor and applicant, 9 months; stage two - medical, security, background checks of applicant, 9 months; both stages @ Mississauga CIC office.
Outside application: stage one - assess sponsor, 45 working days, Mississauga CIC office; stage two - assess applicant, 8 months, done at relevant CIC office outside Canada (in my case, Sydney).

I want to be able to get part-time work while studying but I need a work permit or visa. Outside Canada, I file an application for an open work permit with my application for PR and it should come through when my PR does. I am not sure about this. I think I can automatically work if I have a permanent visa. So it would be about months before I was able to get part-time work.

While my application for permanent residency is being assessed, I will be here on a temporary resident visa or tourist visa. This is valid for me for 6 months. It should expire before my PR is granted so I will apply for an extension and shouldn't have to leave the country or go anywhere. It would be granted because of my common-law relationship and pending PR application.

After nine months when my PR is granted, it will be available from Sydney. I would have to communicate with them about how to get it. They might be able to mail it or I might be able to get it from the relevant embassy here in Canada OR I might have to go to Australia to pick it up.

Great. Now I am more certain about what I am doing and how to do it.

Crisis in Canada: Chaos and Confusion

2011-05-31T10:28:00.000+08:00

Well, once again I am surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty and difficult choices. It's stressful and it requires some deal of education and investigation before decisions can be made and actions taken.

Andrea will be studying at Lakehead University this coming semester. She will be studying for her postgraduate teaching qualification. That's fine for her but it leaves me standing in a pool of cold dilemma. I don't have a work permit for Canada and it may take up to nine months before I get one, at the same time that the first stage of my application for permanent residency is approved. Nine months in Canada without working would be an awfully long time. Sure, I have a full-time course of study of my own to pursue but I was really looking forward to being able to work part-time so that I could earn some money to put towards our living expenses and also because my course of study is completely online and I'm going to need ways of being involved in the local community. I couldn't just study at home all the time; that would drive me crazy. What am I going to do for nine months if I go and live with Andrea in Thunder Bay while she is slogging through her education qualification? I could try to get some cash-in-hand work; I get the impression that I might be able to get a bit of that. And I could also do some volunteer work and maybe set up a language exchange too, to practice my Chinese.

I need to recapitulate the progress that I made today. I spent almost the whole day working towards making decisions about what to do about our recent change of plans and priorities. Although I am ready to take a break from this behemoth of logistical challenges that has risen up from the circumstances that surround us, I need to pull together what I have learned and accomplished from the day.

Andrea is more or less committed to doing the course at Lakehead. Wherever I am, I am going to be doing my online occupational health and safety course. I want to be with Andrea (or at least I don't want to be separated from her for a long time) so I will need to be in Thunder bay with her. I was really looking forward to getting a part-time job in Thunder Bay but it seems that I won't be able to legally work in Canada until the first stage of my application for permanent residency is approved and maybe until the second stage has also been approved. The time for processing differs markedly between an application made in Canada and one made outside Canada. There are two stages in the process of getting the spouse visa: Stage 1 involves assessment of the sponsor; Stage 2 involves assessment of the sponsored. Completion of the first stage of processing takes 37 [working] days outside Canada but 9-10 months in Canada; completion of the second stage takes 7 months outside Canada but 9 months in Canada. So in total, an application made outside Canada takes about 8-and-a-half months while making the application in Canada will take about 18 months, almost a year longer. But work is a problem. I can submit an application for a work permit with my application for permanent residence in Canada and I think it will come through when the first stage is complete.

I just realised two things while reading some of the guides. The first stage of the application outside Canada is an assessment only of the sponsor. The first stage of the application in Canada is an assessment of the sponsor and the sponsored which explains why it takes so much longer. I don't know what the implications of this are.

The other thing I realised is that there is a difference between temporary residence permit and temporary residence visa.

I also made some phone calls about getting a refund on our plane tickets if we are not returning to Australia next month. Expedia told me that because we has started to use the tickets I had to contact the relevant airline directly. I called Air Canada and found out that our tickets are non-refundable although for a fee of $50 we can change the date up until three months from the date on which we first used the tickets. So I can call them back and change the date of our return flights up to the second of August.

That's enough for today.

A run to start the day in Busselton

2011-04-23T11:05:00.000+08:00

I got up at 6:30 this morning and ran the longer route that I have started running. I tend to go for a run on every third or fourth morning. I have been wondering how long my new route is and so I mapped it on Bikemap and now I'll paste it in here as a record.

Running route 923289 - powered by Runmap

Career Prospects: consternation over courses

2011-03-28T10:45:00.000+08:00

I realised over the course of the weekend that I have more questions that need to be answered before I can go ahead and structure my expectations for the future around doing the Master of Environmental Health (MEH). Later this morning I plan to call the coordinator of the MEH course at Curtin in search of answers. But, as always, a big part of making decisions based on the best information that you have is knowing what questions to ask. Knowing which questions to ask comes from identifying gaps in your knowledge and identifying assumptions you might have made without foundation.

The first thing I might mention to the course coordinator is that the list of course coordinators for the School of Health might be incorrect or outdated. I wrote to the course coordinator for the MEH course over a week ago and waited patiently for a reply for a week before trying to call her. Even then I had to leave a message on her answering machine. I did receive a call later in the day from a different member of staff who informed me that he was the course coordinator, not the woman I had been trying to contact. Thus was a week of worry wasted.

I will ask him about career prospects. In assessing and comparing the Post-grad. dip. in Occupational Health and Safety (PDip OHS) and the MEH programs, I thought that the career prospects for the two groups were quite similar and so the MEH won my commitment because I thought the work might be more interesting. But having had the time to reflect on and process what I had read and from rereading some of the course information this morning, now I am not sure that the two courses will launch me towards a career at the same velocities. I get the impression that MEH graduates generally start off as Environmental Health Officers while some find employment as "Scientific Officers in government and a wide range of other fields including the food industry and environmental management". That sounds promising but I haven't seen any real indication anywhere of career prospects and the demand for graduates. In contrast, the PDip. OHS page includes a section headed Career Opportunities wherein graduates' career prospects are described as excellent and their salaries being above average. I need to ask the course coordinator about what this means. For the program area Health, Safety & Environment more broadly, apparently "Employment opportunities are excellent, with the majority of graduates gaining positions before graduating and over 90% employed within six months". That sounds great and it does sound like I wouldn't have trouble getting a job after I graduate (or before) but I wonder about the prospects for career progression. In addition to that last reassuring line about graduates and salaries, another page about environmental health careers proclaims that, "the only course in Western Australia recognised by the Australian Institute of Environmental Health, a member of the International Federation of Environmental Health". Later in the same page you can read that, "Employment opportunities for graduates also exist with health agencies in overseas countries". That is very reassuring for me, given that I expect to live in Canada with my Canadian partner in the future, and suggests that the Curtin qualification will be well-recognised overseas. The same page also suggests that people in this area earn between forty and ninety thousand dollars a year. That is a lot less than the salary suggested for health & safety professionals on the Health & Safety careers page - fifty-five to three-hundred and forty-five thousand dollars per year! I think I should ask the course coordinator about this too.

Another query I need to direct to the course coordinator concerns my suitability for the courses. To do the MEH I would need to complete a few bridging units before spending 18 months completing the course. In contrast to that, to qualify for the PDip. OHS you need, "A bachelor degree in an appropriate field plus at least two years’ work experience" while qualification for the Master of OHS entails, "A Bachelor of Science plus at least two years' relevant post-qualification work experience. Your work experience will be assessed on the basis of your level of seniority and responsibility, job description, work-based referee reports, publications or other written reports and short courses or conference attendance". I don't think I qualify for the Master of OHS but perhaps I could get into the PDip. OHS. I need to clarify this with the course-coordinator. If I was able to enrol in the PDip OHS, would I be paying the more expensive rate for the units, something like $1,700 per unit? Would I need to complete some bridging units in order to enter into the PDip. OHS? More questions for the course coordinator.

Another query I would like to settle regards study methods for the bridging units. Last time I spoke to the course coordinator he suggested that they are available online, i.e., over the Internet. This would be wonderful as it would allow us to live and work overseas teaching English somewhere for six more months while I study part-time. At the moment the Curtin website lists these units as being available either internally or externally (by correspondence). I need to clarify this if I can.

The last question I have concerns how well I might travel with my career, if and when we relocate, overseas.

Career prospects: Environmental Health and Safety

2011-03-17T12:33:00.000+08:00

Environment, Health and Safety. This is a nice area that sits next to - and sometimes on the laps of - Public Health and Occupational Health and Safety. The respective courses seem to share some of their units with each other.

Yesterday I talked to the course coordinator for the post-grad diploma in Environmental Health and she gave me some priceless information that has inspired me. This is the course on which I would set sail to gain a qualification in Environmental Health. I don't really have relevant experience or background in the area or in biology, microbiology, or chemistry, so the first thing I would need to do a a bridging course. This bridging course is not a self-contained course in itself but rather I would do three of the first-year units from the Bachelor of Science (Health Safety and Environment) undergraduate degree. This would take one semester and when I had successfully completed these units I would drop out of the BSc and enroll in the Master of Environmental health. I actually only want a post-graduate diploma but a comparison of course fees in the two courses leads coordinators to suggest taking the Master course and exiting when I have completed whichever intermediate award I want. So I could do all the units that would get me a post-grad dip and then leave the masters program with that qualification. The cost benefit would be significant: enrolling in the post-graduate diploma would mean paying $1700 per unit while enrolling in the masters program would cost me $900 per unit, for the same units! That's almost half of the cost.

So what is environmental health and safety about? It involves contributing to creating and maintaining environments that promote good health, and managing environmental factors that may have a negative effect on people's health. These factors could be social, physical, chemical, biological or psychological. It could involve working with problems involving waste-water, noise-pollution, light-pollution, food safety and hygiene (a big one), and the many problems arising from artificial environments.

The course at Curtin (in environmental health) streams students towards either being an Environmental Health Officer or into a research area. It occurs to me now that either way I think I would be happy and that I needn't be put off by thinking that this course would mean committing to being an environmental health officer (which in itself wouldn't be a bad thing). During my first year I would have plenty of time to make a decision about what I wanted to so with the second year and I could always study the other stream in the future. Reading graduate's stories, I think that graduating from either EHS, OHS, or from public health with a proactive bent and positive attitude will allow me to take my career places. I guess I just need to decide. All of them are good. Reading through the graduate stories, the stories that interest me the most are definitely in the field of OHS, EHS, and public health. I also get the impression from reading these stories that once you are working in the area, you can complete additional relevant units or courses that will make you more employable and improve your job prospects (and earning potential). That would be a career.

I think I can sum up my relationship to university education and work like this: interest in what I was learning - high; academic competence and achievement - medium; utilizing experience of study to acquire good employment - poor. One of the things I have realized with time and experience is that you have to make your qualifications work for you and you need to get whatever experience at applying them that you can. It is one thing to learn and another to learn how to applying that learning.

I guess I've done everything except decide on which course to pursue. It comforts me now that I see these pathways as watery rather than as a series of straight sticks. I mean that there is a lot of mixing and cross-over on the other side of graduation. I need to be a fish because A fish can swim wherever it wants as long as it has a continual stream of interconnected water-bodies and that is what lies on the other side of graduation from any of the courses I am interested in. I think I will choose environmental health and safety.

Career prospects: Public Health

2011-03-14T12:57:00.000+08:00

Right now, what do I know about public health and what do I want to know?

I think that Public Health involves perhaps working especially for government to organise and manage health services. Actually I don't know much about it. Time to find out.

The post-grad dip in public health offered through Curtin Uni requires a specialisation in either epidemiology and biostatistics or in public health. The epidemiology and biostatistics major involves learning about epidemiological methods and how to use them appropriately, learning how to apply them in investigating the determinants of health and ill-health, evaluating health care programs to see if they are worth running and how effective they are (probably with a view to financing them), making sure that I can manage all stages of a research investigation. The core units are about infectious diseases and the epidemiology of these (so the study of infectious disease, causes and vectors and interaction with public health policy, cultural practices, behavioural change, etc.), health research methods (ways in which we can study health), foundations of public health (how did the field start and how has it evolved, what is it now), biostatistics (mathematical tools for determining effects and patterns of variables interacting and for describing variables related to health), research methodology and more stats, and so on. The optional units sound pretty interesting but I don't know how they fit into the course because the core units already provide nearly 200 points which is what is required to graduate. I think there is room for one optional unit in the 200 points, or you could do some extra work I suppose.

The other stream of study, the public health major, ...

Where does this course get me? I read the short precis for environmental health and that sounded very interesting. That was about the interaction between people's health and environmental factors, biological stressors, pollutants, air pollution, water and waste management, noise, built environments, and global climate issues.

One of the problems with this course is that it seems to be designed for people already working in a health-related area who want to upgrade their skills and knowledge to a new level whereas I don't work in a health-related area and don't already have a relevant background from which I am branching out.

The best option that I can see right now for capitalising on acquiring a qualification in this area is to apply for the Department of Health's graduate recruitment program. However, this would be very competitive and I'm afraid of being stumped if I failed to gain a place.

I have started thinking that environmental health would be an awesome field in which to operate and it is closely related to both occupational health and safety and to public health. The problem is that is is much more applied science based and courses seem to require previous background in science subjects. If I could not get into this course directly maybe I could do bridging courses or enter one of the other two fields with a view to moving sideways in the future (if I still want to do that then).

That's enough for now. Something else has come up, namely a course of study that would get me into Environmental Health and Safety in 18 months (including some bridging units). Cool.

A & A cycle from Broadwater to Smith's Beach and back

2011-03-13T19:57:00.000+08:00

Andrea and I finally got around to going for a good long bicycle ride. It was a beautiful day for cycling: the sky was perfectly blue and cloudless yet the sun didn't fry us and the Aeolus didn't send his winds against us. By the end of the trip we had done about 65km and then we went for a swim, made a delicious dinner of rice noodles and fried vegetables, and then I did this while Andrea went and had a white wine with one of nice neighbours. Nice day.

The map embedded below includes several photos.

Bike route 852286 - powered by Bikemap

Career Prospects: Occupational & Environmental Health & Safety

2011-03-13T19:48:00.001+08:00

This is where I start writing and brainstorming individual pathways and careers. First cab off the rank or first close-to-the-use-by-date milk marked down for a quick sale is Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety.

I'm not even sure of the relationship between these two areas. What I want to do in this post is define the job and to investigate courses of study and qualifications, career prospects (especially overseas), and try to get right into what I might be doing day to day, hour to hour. I also want to try to get an idea of the overview of the field, the philosophy that drives the process. Let's begin then. You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear Tinkerbell ring her little bell like this: [BELL RINGING].

Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is about managing risk and minimizing damage to persons and property in the workplace, whatever kind of workplace it is. Curtin's postgrad dip. in OHS requires 12 months of study, four per semester. The curriculum comprises six core units and two optional units of study. Some of the optional units of study sound pretty interesting. Occupational diseases involves a bit of toxicology and epidemiology and an introduction to the history of occupational medicine. There is a practicum option where you do a literature review of a particular area, design a program (of data collection?) and collect data and do the analysis and report the results. There are also optional units in relevant law, risk assessment, health impact assessment, and a unit specific to mining OHS. The core units cover accident prevention, compensation, injury management, ergonomics, safety economics, hygiene and chemical safety, and safety technologies.

The prospects for health careers in OHS are very good although I don't know if that is across the field or whether all those prospects are tied up in the resources industry. The course at Curtin is all off-campus so I wonder whether that would allow us to live overseas while I did the course. Perhaps Andrea could do another year of teaching in Asia and I could do some tutoring part-time while studying. Perhaps we could move to Canada and Andrea could also get on with whatever study she wanted to do.

It is proving quite difficult to find a good web site for searching for OHS/OSH/HSE jobs across multiple countries.

That's as far as I get today.

Career Prospects: Vocational Veracity

2011-03-11T09:54:00.001+08:00

Right now I need to write. I need to think. I need to brainstorm. I need to think about jobs and the future and study. Besides thinking about what I want to do I need to think about how I want to think about it and how to go about investigating it.

These following factors are critical in deciding on a course of study or career:

Money: I want to be able to earn a decent wage doing whatever I am going to do. My days of working to make enough to cover my living expenses and sundry occasional expenses are over. I want to be able to afford to travel and buy a house and generally afford a secure future for my own family.

Prospect of living and working overseas: We really miss living and working overseas. There are plenty of occupations that would transfer to a foreign labour market. It would be awesome to be able to live somewhere like Taiwan but earn some serious money. It would be great to have the kind of employment prospects that would make me employable across the world; imagine living and working in Russia, or Singapore, or Hong Kong, or Japan, or Canada, or the Czech Republic, or in Chile. Cool.

Employment prospects: I am not in the mood to qualify in something only to have to battle to carve out a career for myself or have to exercise great patience waiting for vacancies and promotions to come up as the older members in the occupational pool reach retirement age and free up some space. I want to be involved in an area where there is a demand for the knowledge and skills I will graduate with, and where I won't have too much trouble getting a job, and then later, getting a better job or looking for promotion.

Personal interest: Whatever I do needs to offer me some kind of personal fulfillment. There are plenty of jobs that I could mange capably and do very well yet not enjoy at all. I don't want to commit to something that will be unsatisfying and not stimulating enough for me for the next 20 years. I want my job to be challenging and interesting and rewarding and dynamic. I want to have to think and create and write and help people with it somehow. I certainly don't want a job that makes people's lives worse or harms the environment. Ideally I would like to be paid to do something that I was inherently motivated to do. Inherent motivation. Something where I would start work on any day thinking that what I was doing was important; something purposeful, something that had a point to it, not just creating and moving paper around.

Length of time required to attain a qualification: This is a really important criterion. I could choose to study anything really but do I really have the luxury of spending the next four years just to complete an undergraduate course again? It might be worth it if it was something I was very passionate about but there's nothing like that for me. There are lots of things that I am interested in and that I think are important but nothing in particular that stands out for me.

I need to weigh up all these factors and perhaps other factors that I haven't thought about here or have missed in this summary. It is a very difficult time for me and a difficult decision to make. Perhaps one of the most important parts of the consideration is trying to get my head around imagining me doing the job and imagining how I would feel doing it. For that I need to know about the jobs and what they involve, from the immediate perspective and the day-to-day work, to the larger perspective and how my job fits into a wider society - what it means.

I have a lot of investigating and thinking to do.

Decision Time: Michael Buble and the rest of my life

2011-02-24T10:58:00.000+08:00

I have a lot to think about right now. I feel pretty stressed and I'm fighting off the waves of cause and effect that threaten to overwhelm me. I'm trying to make big decisions about the future and come to terms with circumstances as they are and as we want them to be. All kinds of things need to be factored into the equation: there's the fact that I have an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in Psychology. It would be a shame not to capitalise on that somehow and it might save me years on starting from scratch with an undergraduate degree in an unrelated area. And there's the consideration of the transferability of any career choice I invest in; I need to be able to uproot my career from Australia and replant it it Canada (looking towards a future where we start a family). And then there's the personal question of doing something fulfilling that challenges me and that I can enjoy doing as a career. Will Occupational/Environmental Health & Safety be challenging enough for me and give me the scope to branch out into related but more interesting areas if when I want to change tack a little later on? If I chose Public Health or EOHS would I be aiming lower than I should be? Should I ignore my circumstances and choose what I want to do, rather than opt for a choice of compromise weighted on the pull of other factors. I have to make a decision that could shape the rest of my life and my career, not to mention the effect it will have on my future family and relationship and other circumstances of living.

Today I start a temporary job: helping to set up for the Michael Buble concert at the Sandalford Winery near Margaret River. The job involves long hours of work and will be exhausting but it is only temporary and allows me the flexibility to allocate time post-completion to more important things, the rest of my life, for example. I am nervous about this first day of work, of course. But when I glance at the bundle of considerations, complications, and concerns that I have mentally shelved under "The Future and the Rest of My Life", Michael Buble becomes just another internationally famous artist coming to my part of the world.

Cycling discovery: Ambergate Nature Reserve and Emperor Hirohito

2011-02-09T19:19:00.010+08:00

Six ante meridiem. The new cellphone alarm melody that I chose upon the evening before last is unnervingly peppy. Today we had planned to go for a bigger bicycle ride; inland and away from the beach into a part of the Vasse region that I am unfamiliar with. We broke our fast on toast and jam (homemade and bought from a little old lady at the local Vasse community markets last Saturday who tried her best not complain about how the authorities had recently told her that she had to stop producing jams and caked for sale unless she met the standards of a commercial kitchen) and saddled up for the ride.

Our route kept us away from most of the early morning traffic and we discovered a new source of farm-direct eggs (four dollars for a dozen at an honesty-box roadside stall out along Kaloorup Road). The most significant discovery we made on our ride was the Ambergate Nature Reserve: 75 hectares of natural bush land, a small isolated remnant of what the whole plain used to be covered in. There is a short bush walk that winds its way through the reserve so we will go back in the future to have a better look and explore the area.

I just finished reading H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and found it to be a surprisingly good piece of science-fiction considering it was first published in 1895. I have moved on to a biography about Japan’s emperor Hirohito (b. 1901; d. 1989) who was also a marine biologist and published several papers, a lot of which seem to concern hydroids, whatever those are. I’ll read on and see how far from objective the author can lean.

Close to the ocean and almost back home again.

Bike route 816698 - powered by Bikemap

Tuesday morning bike ride

2011-02-08T14:37:00.000+08:00

Just another day in Busselton. We woke up to my cellphone alarm at six-o’clock. After letting my brain idle for five minutes and blinking at the early-morning light penetrating our bedroom window at light speed, I peeled the comfortable layers of bedding away from me and made a few basic preparations for a morning bicycle ride.

Fortified with two Satsuma (blood) plums and a mugful of water, I wheeled my lightweight road machine out of the doorway and onto the street. Quiet. Cool. Sharp sunlight. A very gentle breeze chilled me slightly and I lodged it firmly in place as my main motivation to cycle hard so that I could warm up. I headed out to the highway and crossed over it and then rode through the new housing estate to the pedestrian/cycle pathway that shadows the road to Margaret River. At the Vasse General Store I took an unfamiliar road striking out left to the west.

I passed paddocks for grazing and vineyards for picking. The road ran very straight, flanked by tall trees on either side that created a shady tunnel. A conduit to somewhere. I cycled until I saw a small old shack, dilapidated and rustic. Perfectly rustic. I took a couple of photos and then began the cycle home. Another day in the world. Another day of possibilities and perils. And breakfast.

Back to Life, Back to Reality...

2011-02-04T17:00:00.000+08:00

Like an old song from the 1990s (or maybe it was the 1980s) normality has descended upon me and I find myself sitting in Busselton in Western Australia on a Friday afternoon settling in for the next four months.

My last post on Blogger was yet another report on a cycle excursion through the back blocks of Taiwan. It has been months and months since I wrote the last post on this fine virtual journal. I couldn't possibly go on without first explaining to nobody in particular why I may as well be writing about the life of a completely different individual.

I was living and working overseas for about five years, first in South Korea and then in Taiwan. There are plenty of expatriates who have adopted these countries as their homes for the foreseeable future for reasons I can guess at; perhaps they just don't want to return to their own country; perhaps they enjoy a better standard of living in their host country; perhaps they have an ongoing relationship or have married a resident of their host nation. These are all understandable reasons and I can empathize with the sentiments behind all of them. However, in the case of Andrea and I, continuing to live and work as English teachers overseas became an unsustainable future. These days the word unsustainable immediately brings to mind ecological and environmental associations. Forests might serve as a useful metaphor for describing what I mean when I use the word unsustainable in reference to our lives overseas (then again, they might not; I haven't really thought this through). For healthy forests you need a rich foundation (the soils) and an adequate ongoing supply of all the inputs that forests need (sunlight, water, air, etc). Our roots reach into community to anchor us and keep us upright. But community was something that we lacked and had a hard time establishing and maintaining in our host countries and we were also a long way away from our families. And so our foundation was weak. As for receiving an adequate ongoing supply of prerequisite inputs, we missed easy access to nature and natural environments; we yearned for the opportunity to explore our interests by joining local clubs and making new friends; we lacked for a deeper engagement with the society in which we participated, partly due to a poor grasp of the dominant language and also partly due to cultural differences. We weren't getting a full and adequate supply of holistic nutrients that we needed to sustain us long-term. Our forests looked okay at first glance but a closer examination would reveal that there were serious deficiencies and that the forest was not as healthy as it appeared.

One other serious reason for not wanting to remain any longer in Taiwan was that we would like to be able to start a family and be able to provide good support for children. Being an English teacher might pay the bills and allow DINKs to have some fun but it's not a career move that provides a good foundation for a family.

So we finished our contracts with our respective schools and came to Australia to start the rest of our lives.

There's a lot more to say about all this but it will have to wait because I have a dinner date with destiny.

Ciao

Taiwan's Southern Cross-Island Highway: Day 1 - Tainan to Laonong

2010-09-16T09:01:00.001+08:00

Rare are the mornings in Taiwan when I do not eat breakfast at our table out on the balcony of our apartment, overlooking the few blocks between us and the harbor to the south and the coast to the west. If we are in Tainan then you can be pretty sure that I will break each night-long fast with a bowl of oatmeal at that balcony table. It is a nice table, wholly wooden, comprised of sturdy pine without any varnish or sealant. The table is flanked by two swiveling bar stools. The balcony is modest but clean and decorated with the natural greens and browns of the many potted plants which hang and sit about, doing nothing much besides photosynthesizing and softening what would otherwise be an austere and lifeless space. I sit, eat my oatmeal, admire the views of the harbor, the ocean in the distance and the sky above us, the sounds of the birds flitting about on errands to which I am not privy, and the cars and people crawling about on the ground ten floors below.

The horizon to the east usually vanishes in a haze of unknown composition - pollution, humidity, and dust are all prime suspects. But just occasionally the air will be clear in the morning and when I gaze out from our balcony to the eastern horizon I see the mountains - quite a distance away but imposing and compelling. I don't know why but I am drawn to them. When I see the mountains dominating the skyline, they make the sprawling city of Tainan seem diminutive by comparison and I want to throw everything else away and be off, moving towards those valleys, peaks, gorges, inclines, and declines. But inevitably I prepare for another day of work and head instead to my school where life is lived not so much as an adventure as a mundane ordeal of noise and attention.

This terrible situation could not be allowed to go on forever, my yearning to be amidst the mountains stymied by the exigencies of day-to-day life. And so during my one-week long vacation at the end of April (2010) I was finally able to pursue the distant but persistent quest that had grown from a seed of an ethereal vision to a real plan built on intent. I intended to take the Southern Cross-Island Highway over the central mountain ranges of Taiwan to the eastern coast.

Andrea rode with me on the first day of the journey. Here we are about to begin cycling from outside our apartment block.

Bathroom and orientation break at a gas station north-east of Tainan.

The much anticipated first ice-tea shop stop on the journey. This one is one instance of a franchise called Tea and Magic Hand. That might sound a little strange on its own but the title sits comfortably among other tea-shop franchises in Taiwan with names like Jack Boy, Tropical Fish, Three Tea House, Ah-Z, Black and White Drink, Lingo, Red Sun and so on.

No matter what length, thickness, diameter, or variety of bamboo you are after, you'll find it at Uncle Chou's Bamboo Shop somewhere on Country Road no. 178. And that's all they sell - bamboo poles. I don't think I will ever see a store like this one back in Australia.

On a lonely stretch of Expressway 84 between the townships of DaNei and YuJing, you can find an awesome shaved-ice shop. They only do two flavors - strawberry and mango. But it is some of the best shaved-ice you will get in Tainan County. The shop is connected to the greenhouse where they grow the strawberries themselves and for all I know they also grow the mangoes themselves somewhere nearby. As the next photo taken just down the road demonstrates, YuJing is Mango's Hometown. Apparently. The shaved ice and the ice-cream are both awesome anyway and after riding for a couple of hours in the sun they are even better.

YuJing - Mango's Hometown. It's official. Mango has certainly done well for herself since she moved to the city.

At a small park just before the intersection of the Expressway (84) and Provincial Highway 20 we ate all of a small watermelon we had bought at a fruit shop earlier in the day. And then it was time for us to go our separate ways - Andrea back to Tainan to prepare for work the following day, and me onwards along route number twenty towards the central mountain range. No sooner had I embarked upon my solo tour than a light rain began to fall and I donned my cheap plastic raincoat and pedaled on.

Provincial Highway no.20 is an amazing road. From an unassuming beginning at the Nanmen Rd/Gongyuan Rd traffic circle in downtown Tainan it runs all the way across southern Taiwan: eastwards across the western plains of southern Taiwan, over the central mountain ranges, passing through the Maolin National Scenic Area, Yushan National Park, and the East Rift Valley National Scenic Area, and then joins Provincial Highway no.9 near the west coast for the last stretch to the city of Taidong. From now on I will be calling the no.20 the Southern Cross-Island Highway (SCIH).

A little further along the SCIH this old collapsed bridge prompted me to wonder about what lingering typhoon damage I might encounter crossing the mountains. It had been eight months since Typhoon Morakot hit the island and Tainan City seemed to have largely forgotten about it.

The town of JiaXian and the JiaXian bridge. I don't know whether the old bridge was destroyed or damaged by Typhoon Morakot but I know that they were working on this construction project for a long time*.

A panoramic view of the under-construction JiaXian bridge over the CiShan River.

After a meal of fried rice and soup in JiaXian I continued along the SCIH to the town of LaoNong. In Laonong I found the local elementary school and set about finding someone to ask for permission to pitch my tent on the school green space. After poking around empty classrooms I found some teenagers who gave me the go-ahead I needed. As I began to empty bits of tent and bedding from various bags I was approached by two of the teenagers I had met earlier and another young woman. It turned out that they were all teachers at the school and the friend had been brought along to meet the foreigner because her English was held to be better than any of the others. During the course of the conversation I asked about the condition of the SCIH and was told that it was closed, prompting in me a sense of panic and uncertainty, a sinking feeling that this endeavour was going to be over before it had begun. After our exchange of pleasantries was over I finished pitching the tent and headed across the road to the local 7-eleven. Sitting at the bench next to the window, eating my cold noodles with vegetables, I attracted a small horde of local kids who put my Chinese language skills to the test, not to mention my capacity for dining under intense scrutiny while being interrogated. Eventually a 7-eleven employee shooed them away and I was left to contemplate my plans for the following day.

Lying alone in my tent that was barely long enough for me and which did not block the light from the powerful flood-lights installed around the green space, I uncomfortably found my way into sleep while the local stray dogs barked and scampered around the school.

___________________

I have mapped my entire route on the Bikemap website. I've included some photos and comments along the route. Go to www.bikemap.net/route/471071

*Writing now in July I can say that the new JiaXian bridge has been completed and finished in a stylish shade of pastel purple (the color of taro ice cream - JiaXian is Taro's Hometown after all) with a dynamic lighting scheme that can be appreciated after nightfall.

Taiwan's Southern Cross-Island Highway: Day 2 - Laonong to Tianchih

2010-09-16T08:58:00.000+08:00

On Monday morning I woke up in my tent at one end of the green-space inside the running track at LaoNong Elementary School. I could hear talking, some laughter, and a lot of clapping. While I started to pack away my things inside the tent, somebody turned on some lively modern dance music that mixed with the other sounds that I could hear. Upon emerging from my tent I saw that at the other end of the running track a morning aerobics (dare I call it 'dancercize') class was in full swing. I gave them a friendly wave to indicate that my sudden appearance didn't imply that they had woken me up. It was good to see the old folks (one man looked particularly old) beginning their day in such an energetic way.

The young teachers I had chatted with on the previous evening had told me that I should move off the green-space before the students began arriving. As I loaded up my bicycle and trundled over the highway to the local 7-Eleven I saw that there were already assorted girls and boys milling about with more students gradually trickling in from all directions. I availed myself of the store's bicycle pump to inflate my tires; it really is hard not to be drawn to 7-Elevens for the wealth of conveniences that they concentrate in one small building. I had been planning to eat some kind of breakfast food in the store as well but was thoroughly put off by the amount of attention I was already receiving from various young onlookers. Had I purchased any foodstuffs and begun to eat in front of them, I felt sure that they would have broken out into a paroxysmal frenzy fueled by intense curiosity and so I left the packet of instant oatmeal on the shelf where it slouched and headed off towards Baolai.

As I rode I tried one of the bananas I had picked up the previous evening on a stroll around LaoNong. I bought them from a stereotypical little old Taiwanese lady in a stereotypical little old Taiwanese general store. When it came time to pay for my fruit she amazed me by picking up her abacus - HER ABACUS - and doing abacus things with it to produce a price. I couldn't read the abacus, this skill having been phased out of the Western Australian educational curriculum fifty-or-so years ago, a little while before I existed, and so I had instead to rely on her interpretation. The bananas were too far from being ripe anyway and joined the other agricultural detritus on the side of the road between LaoNong and Baolai.

Arriving in Baolai, looking across the river to the town. Baolai was (and still is) yet another casualty of Typhoon Morakot.

In Baolai I found a Mei and Mei breakfast shop and helped myself to a big breakfast that would fuel my aspirations for the rest of the day: a fish burger, a tuna omelet, a soy milk, and a coffee. Not being conspicuous enough to inspire a crowd of prepubescent onlookers, it was very soon time to move on.

This is as far as I had gone before.

Less than a minute after leaving the breakfast shop in the center of "downtown" Baolai I had reached the edge of the community and where I wanted to stop to appreciate the moment. This was as far as I had been along highway 20. Last time I was here I came with friends and we went white-water rafting down the river nearby. In the sheds at the end of the highway we had been jostled by the throng of other rafters-to-be as we nabbed equipment in preparing ourselves for the excursion. The whole place had been buzzing with an orderly chaos. Now, as I looked at the sheds at the end of the highway, I could see signs of dereliction. There hadn't been any white-water rafting here for a while, probably since Morakot. Nonetheless, I was about to cycle onto an unfamiliar roadway and I felt that my adventure was only now about to begin.

My next big destination would be the Meishan Visitor Center situated just inside the boundary of Yushan National Park. I discovered that the way there had been broken by Morakot and since repaired. There were construction vehicles and construction projects and reconstruction projects underway at intervals along the highway. I rode on a lot of new road although I didn't know if it was supposed to be a permanent or temporary route.

At the Meishan Visitor Center with Formosan Black Bears (taxidermified)

I arrived at the Meishan Visitor Centre after a long ride through a landscape that felt to me like a testament to the ultimate power of natural forces over all the schemes and devices of humankind. My main priority in the visitor center was to establish exactly what kind of condition the SCIH was in. Was there still a continuous route across to the other side of the island? Was it open? Were there still sources of food and water available along the way? I had heard conflicting reports from people on my way here and I thought that the staff at the visitor center held out the best hope for an accurate assessment of the chances of success of my aim of cycling the SCIH. I was dismayed when the girl working at the counter told me that the road was closed. Closed? But what did this mean? When I pressed her for details she asked me to wait while she called for backup from somewhere upstairs. Meanwhile, I wandered around the visitor center admiring the displays, reflecting on how few people would now be coming to see them.

The girl at the counter seemed to forget about me and after some time I approached her again to prompt her to call for somebody else. This time her call for action brought a short middle-aged man trotting down the stairs, still wrangling with the buttons on his shirt. This man told also told me that the road was closed. When I seemed doubtful he took me to a free-standing noticeboard that displayed a rather official-looking notice. He interpreted the notice for me - the road is closed - and pointed out the official seal of the Government of Kaohsiung County printed (or stamped?) across one corner of the notice in a wonderfully vibrant shade of red. I was, by now, starting to think that the road was really closed. I engaged the man about the specifics of the SCIH's condition and at some point during our conversation his attitude suddenly changed from "You cannot" to "Maybe you can try" after which we discussed the finer points of my proposed undertaking.

Upon leaving the center I asked Mr Visitor Center if I might pick a couple of the peaches from the trees growing outside the center. Throwing profuse gratitudes at Mr Visitor Center and with my free fruit securely stowed in my backpack I headed up the hill into the somewhat unknown. Around the first corner I came upon a roadblock consisting of two freestanding traffic barricades, the kind with diagonal black and yellow stripes. After hesitating for fear of crossing some kind of boundary separating the legal from the illegal, I rode around them and onwards up the hill. My first intended stop was a restaurant that Mr visitor center had told me was about twenty minutes along the road. After about thirty minutes I couldn't see any signs of food or beverage provision and was beginning to suspect that Mr Visitor Center had confused 'minutes' with 'meters'. A small blue truck, only the second vehicle that I had seen on the road (the first being a policeman who looked at me as he passed on his motorcycle, inspiring in me an anxiety attack because I thought he was going to get angry at me and tell me to turn around) appeared, coming from around the next bend, and when I stopped the driver he confirmed that the restaurant was indeed about twenty minutes behind me. I cursed a bit and headed back down the hill to the restaurant twenty meters from the visitor center where I had started.

At the restaurant I ordered a big noodle soup and called Andrea to update her on my progress. I thought that I had better call now as the availability of cellphone coverage in the mountains seemed so uncertain. I bought another bottle of water before getting back on my bike and on the road.

The road was scarred and torn open in places. Some stretches of the road way had been repaired with a mixture of dirt and rocks compacted to create a hard but rough surface. My ride up into the mountains became a ride and walk up into the mountains as I hopped off my bicycle for the rough stretches and rode on the original smooth stretches. Off. Walk. On. Ride. Off. Walk. On. Ride. Off. Walk. And so it went on. There were not so many construction vehicles and no tourists at all and I couldn't help thinking that I was lucky to have the road all to myself, quiet and peaceful. At one point I had to stop and wait while a grader operator moved rocks and dirt around on the way ahead until he saw me and allowed me to pass safely. The damage here looked recent and as I trudged past the idling machine in my thin, yellow, plastic raincoat with a light rain falling everywhere around me, I wondered just how stable this landscape now was.

Somewhere between three and four o'clock in the afternoon things suddenly got foggy. The clouds seemed to have descended on the mountains and visibility became quite bad in places. The moment had taken on a surreal quality and I swam through the misty silence along the highway. And then the silence withdrew as the air was filled with the sounds of a large truck and some other large vehicle and I pulled into the public carpark and restrooms at JhongJhihGuan. It quickly became apparent that the construction workers were leaving, that the carpark no longer saw a lot of tourists, and that the restrooms were no longer connected to a water supply or power supply. A signboard told me I was now at an elevation of 1,930 meters. After a brief stop during which I considered the current state of things along highway 20 and let myself worry a bit about what I would find (or not find) up ahead, I pressed on, hoping to find a suitable place to put up my tent for the night.

I finally reached the police station at Tianchi and was relieved to find it open and occupied. I was really glad to know that there were still people in the area, just in case the road collapsed under me while I was cycling and I was forced to drag myself, semi-conscious, up a ravine and seek assistance. I chatted with the three policemen at the station and got some more water. One of them was munching on a cob of corn and, now sure that I wasn't going to find any restaurants or shops open, I tried not to think about dinner. The friendliest one of the bunch told me that the temperature would drop suddenly at nightfall. He checked the thermometer inside the station and returned to tell me that it was currently 14 degrees centigrade. I wondered what these men spent most of their time doing now that the highway was closed and they only had construction workers and monkeys to contend with. When I asked them if I could pitch my tent next to the station they suggested that I try what I assumed was a campground about fifty meters down the road. I expressed my gratitude for their warmth and welcome and moved on, my body temperature having dropped enough so that I had begun to shiver.

At an elevation of 2,280 meters I reached my home for the night: the abandoned public restrooms and carpark at the Tianchi trailhead. A pair of symmetrical stairways flanked by white railings climbed from the highway upwards and out of sight somewhere above. On the other side of the road a small building housed the public restrooms, now abandoned, lacking electricity or running water. The clouds wafted in and out of the area and promised rain soon. I decided to set up my tent in the restrooms.

Abandoned public restrooms at the Tianchi trailhead.

Everything set up for a very quiet night.

I managed to anchor my tent pegs by directing them through the metal grates and into the wall of the ditch below the floor of the bathroom. Before getting into my sleeping bag I walked back up the ramp to the carpark (at highway level) and tried one of the two peaches I had picked from the trees outside the visitor center. I had no other food and only limited water. I was a little disappointed to discover that the peach was only really ripe on one side and I was forced to throw away half of it. It had begun to rain in a light yet drenching way and the sky was darkening. As I lay in my sleeping bag inside the tent the silence was a little disquieting when combined with the thought that, in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, I was all by myself on an abandoned highway with only an unripe peach to look forward to for breakfast and I couldn't be sure that the road I was following would carry me over the mountains. I was not going to sleep well.

___________________

I have mapped my entire route on the Bikemap website. I've included some photos and comments along the route. Go to www.bikemap.net/route/471071

Taiwan's Southern Cross-Island Highway: Day 3 - Tianchih to Taidong

2010-09-16T08:32:00.000+08:00

On Tuesday morning I awoke to a still and silent world, the sun not yet having broken the night. I immediately began packing my belongings away, keen to make the most of the day but also having little to do and not wanting to hang around for long at Jhongjhihguan with only the wind and the spiders and slugs for company. Breakfast consisted of my only food stuff - the other equally unripe peach - and equal to its predecessor, it was similarly bitter on one side and after eating as much of it as I could I found a new and final resting place for it somewhere at the bottom of the gorge. My water was quite cold but as much as I dislike drinking very cold water I drank half of what remained, leaving a few mouthfuls to get me over the mountain. When everything was ready I rolled my bicycle out of the bathrooms and up the ramp and back onto the Southern Cross-Island Highway (SCIH).

The tipping point of the SCIH is the Yakou Tunnel. It is the highest point of the journey and if you can get that far then the rest is downhill - except for the uphill bits. Generally, any speed demon will get a thrill out of coming down from the Yakou Tunnel. But it still lay eleven kilometers ahead of me and so I put one foot in front of the other and made my gear wheels turn and, slowly, I began to move up along the road.

The stretch of the SCIH between Jhongjhihguan and Yakou proved to be the hardest part of the journey, for reasons apart from the incline: I hadn’t eaten a proper dinner or breakfast; I was running out of water; I was feeling the fatigue brought on by the previous day’s cycle; and I was also rather cold and alone. The road was in a terrible condition in places: broken, torn, pock-marked, or just plain absent. In most of the places where the road had been washed away by heavy run-off, construction workers had filled in the gap with dirt and rocks to form a rough and ready surface. It was still too rough for me on my bicycle with thin tires however, and just like on the previous day, my progress consisted of a series of episodes of walking alongside my bicycle while pushing it uphill, punctuated by very short stints riding it on level roadway (but almost never any more declining roadway).

My best photo of a monkey. They're quite skittish.

On a couple of occasions I rounded a bend and caught monkeys disappearing into the jungle. Sometimes I would hear them scampering around in the trees up on the cliffs above the highway. I was hoping that they hadn’t learned to throw things at people.

The concrete shoulder of the road is still in place, marking the level of where the road used to be. The temporary road of rubble and soil is not a good surface for bicycles with thin tires.

The falling water looks nice but you can see the broken road at the bottom of the photo. I think the course of this runoff was changed by typhoon damage and now it runs onto the road.

The lack of food and water, the cold, the hard sleep I had had, and the weight of all the small uncertainties gathering at the back of my mind all took their toll and I began to feel quite vague and not quite my normal self. I began to hope that the Yakou Tunnel was just around every next bend and was consequently frequently disappointed. But more than anything I just kept going. There was nothing over on the left side of the road but clean mountain air filling the void above the valley far below. On the right, cliffs and mountain sides loomed over me, jutting out and receding as I traced the highway up into the sky.

Lichens and mosses.

A particularly bad landslide. This one must be very recent. The road had been made passable after earlier damage and then further land slippage has made it impassable again. Note the black and yellow concrete barrier in the distant bottom-left of the photo. I had to pass it so I took the rack and panniers off my bicycle and carried them across to the other side. Then I returned to carry my bicycle across. On the other side I put them together again and plodded on.

The western mouth of the Yakou Tunnel.

At last I wearily turned a tight corner of the road to see the black mouth of the tunnel gaping at me from under the top of the mountain. I approached and paused before the portal. It was pitch black inside and I couldn’t see the other end. The electricity for the lights inside had either been turned off or cut off and what remained was a permanent black void where people no longer came. It may as well have been a black hole. Of course, turning back was not an option and so, after completing the pause to gather my thoughts, I took the first few tentative steps into the darkness and uncertainty, suffused with the keen sense that all of the journey that had come before had been merely preparing me for this leap of faith.

I stared into black nothing. Small, strange noises echoed around inside. Water dripping, trickling from somewhere to somewhere. After a short while I remembered that I had lights with me and I turned on both my LED head lamp and my front bicycle light but they made a negligible improvement. I adjusted the bicycle light to point at the ground directly in front of my bicycle, hoping to see and avoid walking into a pool of nasty black water. The ground felt uneven in places and I walked on rubble. Would animals take shelter in a quiet, abandoned tunnel. How long had it been since human feet had left their mark on this pavement? The darkness continued on and I passed through an eternity, lost to the world outside.

The end of the top: the eastern mouth of the Yakou Tunnel.

When the end came it blinded me a little at first. And as the world outside was revealed I saw... piles of rubble. But no road! I froze and looked about me. Behind me, the mountain-side above the tunnel mouth was naked, stripped of its greenery but wearing a mist into which it receded out of sight. The scene was post-apocalyptic, nothing but rocks, rubble, boulders, and dirt, all cast in a grey light. As I moved forward I saw a cleft between two walls of rubble and there I found my road. I was hugely relieved to know that it too had not been swept away in some landslide.

Downhill now. It didn’t take long for me to see that that the SCIH on this side of the mountain was generally in better condition than on the other side. I saw my first human being for the day, a man in a hard hat moving large pipes about a broken section of the road way. Suddenly I knew that I would be okay. I let myself go a little and sped down the mountain-side faster than I should have. It was cold but I didn’t want to stop. The road went on and on and I was braking a lot. Sometimes I saw the rents in the roadway with only enough time left to skid to a halt on their edge or even over the edge onto the gravel and dirt.

I enter the East Rift Valley National Scenic Area. It says so on the big marble thing behind me.

It was at either Lidao or Liyuan that I came upon my first opportunity to buy food or water. Across the road from expansive fields of tea there was a roof covering some large tables; the kind of place that people go to eat and drink mainly for the sake of eating and drinking after a hard day’s work; definitely not fine dining. I looked in the refrigerator longing for something hot, trying not to shiver. A woman was preparing some green leafy vegetables in the corner. I turned to her as I gathered a question together but she beat me to it. She asked me (in Chinese), “Do you want something hot?”. I left her with no doubt that I did and agreed on a bowl of hot soup. She warmed up some Winter Melon Soup and I have to say that that bowl of hot Winter Melon Soup was the best soup I can remember having in Taiwan. I was blissfully happy.

The SCIH goes through a couple of tunnels in the Wulu Gorge area.

It was still quite cold but very slowly warming up as I descended the mountain. As I passed through Wulu I saw someone cooking something and stopped to order some Chao Fan (fried rice) which I thoroughly enjoyed. Before leaving I purchased some milk-tea and cookies for the road. The road was busier now and punctuated with construction projects, teams of men and women in hard hats busily sculpting the landscape. I passed through Wulu Gorge and wished I had more time to stop and enjoy it. Place names came and went - Chulai, Haiduan, Guanshan (where I bought some fruit), and onwards to Taidong. By this time I had abandoned my plans to travel north and then westwards over the Central Cross-Island Highway. I had done enough for now.

Back on a flat landscape again.

At about ten kilometers before Taidong I suffered a flat tire. Upon inspecting my tires I was a little shocked to realise how badly scraped up and damaged they were. I attempted to fit a new inner tube myself but had problems getting my air pump to work. It occurred to me then that I had come close to disaster in the mountains: if my tire had blown on top of the mountain without a working air pump and without anyone around to help me, it could have been a very long and hungry walk to the nearest human beings. I asked a man in some kind of mechanical workshop if he could help me but he didn’t seem to recognise or understand the high-pressure valve on my tube. I walked my bicycle down the road until I saw a police station where I borrowed a pump and inflated my tire. Something wasn’t quite right and after a few kilometers, at the edge of Taidong, my tire popped with a hiss and I limped the rest of the way into town, dragging my forlorn bike along beside me.

Hotel, hot shower, tuna-sub-sandwich for dinner, laundry in the bathroom sink, and finally, the ultimate in post-trauma therapy, a comfortable warm bed.

___________________

I have mapped my entire route on the Bikemap website. I've included some photos and comments along the route. Go to www.bikemap.net/route/471071

Taiwan's Southern Cross-Island Highway: Days 4 and 5 - Taidong to Tainan

2010-09-16T08:21:00.000+08:00

Breakfast in Taidong.

Days four and five were spent cycling from Taidong to Danlu and then from Danlu back to Tainan. I took the South-Link Highway back across the island. After the drama of crossing the central mountain ranges of Taiwan, my return journey makes for a rather anticlimactic tale. I woke up, packed up and prepared myself as usual, breakfasted in a small breakfast shop downstairs, and headed off along the main highway out of Taidong.

The start of lesser road number 199 is a good landmark on the South-Link Highway.

Things only really got interesting when I stopped in the aboriginal township of Danlu for the night. If travelling westwards across the South-Link Highway, Danlu can be found about two-thirds of the way to the western coast.

I asked my way to the township's elementary school and then set about finding someone to ask for permission to pitch my tent for the night. I found the music teacher in the middle of some kind of special class and she took time out from eating cake to talk to me. She was extremely welcoming (no surprise in Taiwan) and tried to dissuade me from camping on the school grass and make use of the school hallway instead. But I was resolute and, despite the palpable threat of rain, I set my tent up on the grass to the amusement of a group of local children. Everybody, including a random elderly lady walking down the street by the school, had some kind of snake-related warning for me. The school oval ran right into the side of the jungled hills and so I had no doubt about the prospect of snakes joining me during the night. There was also something about the way that they told me about the snakes, a kind of flat by-the-way-ness, that left me in no doubt that they sometimes had snakes come down to the school.

Camping on the school grounds of Danlu Elementary School.

While setting up for the night, I made friends with the local kids and when I asked them where I could find a restaurant they told me to follow them. We walked up the street a couple of blocks from the school and then turned left and stopped at a very nondescript building. It didn't show any signs of being the kind of place where dinner could be gotten but when I stepped inside my perceptions changed. Half of the small room was occupied by a cluttered kitchen while the other half contained a few tables and chairs. Various aboriginal knick-knacks decorated the walls. To my great relief and delight there was a menu hung up on the wall above the kitchen space, confirming that this was indeed a restaurant. A middle-aged woman was busying herself in the kitchen and I bothered her to ask about dinner. It turned out that she was closing up for the day so that she could make an appearance at the local church. With the help of the kids translating for me, we established that she would be happy to make up some kind of noodle dinner for me before closing. That sounded wonderful and so, after a short wait, I was presented with a plastic container full of noodles with meat and vegetables; a hearty meal at the end of a long day. The kids took me to what must have been their parent's or relative's shop and sat me down outside it so that I could eat my dinner. I was getting along quite well with them and my Chinese was really getting a workout. The two boys went away and returned suddenly with their Nintendo Gameboys and kept me company with their beeping, shooting, racing, and exploding. I kept up a conversation with a young girl of about seven years, doing my best to keep up my end of the conversation through a mouthful of noodles. She wasn't a great conversationalist and everything suddenly began to wear on me. The kids had to go home and I was left to finish my dinner and then return to my own home, temporary though it was. I read for a while before going to sleep, infused with a sense of satisfaction from adventures had and challenges overcome. It had been a good day.

I found this monster bug in the school bathrooms. It was about eight centimeters long from the end of its tail to its mandibles.

The new light of the following day threw the zeitgeist of the previous evening into a skew. Things became very ordinary and a little disappointing. I packed up and started on my way to the restaurant I had been to for dinner. I hadn't gotten very far when I was caught by a woman from the shop I had eaten outside the night before and encouraged in for a drink. I shared a drink with a middle-aged woman and her aunt. From what I could gather through a haze of half-understood Chinese, the aunt seemed to be keen on having children with me and attempted to charm me with her vision of how beautiful they would look with our combined features. I wasn't really in the mood for fostering an illegitimate love-child in a small aboriginal village in Taiwan and as things got progressively more awkward I made my excuses and left to find breakfast.

While at the restaurant on the previous night I had learned that she would be open again for breakfast and I intended to return in the morning to patronise her fine establishment. I also wanted to spend some money, having received my dinner for free. But things were different in the morning. She was busy and preoccupied with several other people who seemed to be sitting around more because they wanted to socialise and less because they needed to eat. I felt like a chore. I had some toast and some ice-tea, paid up, thanked her, and departed to the bemusement of the other patrons.

Upon leaving Danlu, I decided that it was a great place to visit but that I probably wouldn't want to live there.

On the west coast I headed inland and along the foothills up the 185.

In the middle of nowhere I came upon a gambling machine and video game graveyard.

Sega Rally was big in 1995. I remember seeing it in the arcades. Now it sits forlorn in the wilderness, slowly decomposing, like so many other memories from my childhood.

We may be impressed with a lot of what modern technology makes possible but when everything is finished it will all be swallowed up again by the forests.

The rest of my journey home was straightforward; a series of highways and roads that took me up along the foothills and then westwards back to Tainan. I suffered from a badly-worn tire and another puncture which slowed my progress considerably. Andrea rode her bicycle out to meet me and we rode the last leg home together.

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In hindsight I have come to see my journey over the mountains as something more significant than a simple bicycle tour. For me it was a personal challenge in which my supports were removed and then, at the end, I was forced to make a leap of faith into darkness and uncertainty without being able to see where I was going. Mountains come very naturally as a metaphor for challenges, be they personal, logistical, financial, spiritual, or otherwise. I will finish this post with an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend not long after I finished this journey across the Southern Cross-Island Highway:

I have realised in hindsight that it all felt like a big metaphor. Andrea was there to support me at the start but the real work (climbing the mountain) was something I had to do by myself. There's just something about mountains and getting to the top. It's such a common metaphor for any kind of big challenge. You know, I guess it was like Heart of Darkness, wherein the journey took me further and further into the wilderness and away from humanity and civilization; the road was closed and after a while I didn't even see any construction workers. It was just me and the broken road. And I got focused on getting to the Yakou Tunnel at the top. I knew that I just had to get up there and through the tunnel and then I would be okay because it was all downhill from there on. The road got pretty bad. At one point I had to take the rack off my bike and carry it across a recent landslide and then come back and carry my bike as well (too many big rocks). I saw monkeys up there. And it's funny how circumstances conspired to take away so much. Although the road exists on maps, maps tell me nothing about the state or condition of the road and different people told me different things about it. Some said it was open and some said it was closed so I was really heading into uncertainty. And (partially) because of that I had to put my tent up in a bathroom near the top on the mountain when the clouds descended and visibility was severely reduced as night closed in and I hadn't brought any more food so I missed out on dinner and breakfast. So it was funny the way that so many important things were stripped away from me so that if I was going to get over the mountains it was going to be with minimal support - no companions, no food, no way of knowing whether I would be able to go all the way over, no idea what lay ahead, no fresh water, no electricity, no phone reception. And when I did finally make it to the Yakou Tunnel I was faced with one last challenge before being free of my predicament - the tunnel was unlit and pitch black and I realised that it was not being used because the road was closed and even the construction workers had no reason to go there. I couldn't go back and so, like all good adventures, getting through to the other side required a leap of faith into the darkness without being able to see the other end. I had a light on my bike and a head light but they didn't help much and there were all sorts of strange sounds being made by water inside the tunnel. Of course, I did make it through and from then on the rest of the journey was just logistical, getting back to Tainan via the South-Link Highway down by Kending. In hindsight I had been drawn to do what I did and I'm glad I did it. It was just something I felt I had to do and it all has a strange sense of something intangible and special about it.

POST SCRIPT: At the time of completing this series of posts the Southern Cross-Island Highway appears to be closed indefinitely although I have seen something on the net about it possibly re-opening next year.

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I have mapped my entire route on the Bikemap website. I've included some photos and comments along the route. Go to www.bikemap.net/route/471071

Two-day cycle: Tainan to Chiayi and back

2010-07-21T18:42:00.005+08:00

Just a quick one - and no photos for a change. Andrea finished up at Sharefun English school last Friday and left early the following morning for Vietnam. There she will meet up with a friend and they will experience the experiences of experiential Vietnam. I, on the other hand, will not finish at my school until the 14th of August; these are private schools and they schedule their academic calendars differently from one another. And so I will have the next three weeks all to myself.

The van arrived to pick Andrea up at 5am on Saturday morning. I arose around 7am, breakfasted while poring over a map of Southern Taiwan, packed up, and headed out for two days on the road. I felt I really needed to get out of Tainan and to go exploring. I chose to cycle to Chiayi because the distance suited me for a two-day tour and because starting off from Chiayi on Sunday morning would allow me to return to Tainan via the foothill roads through the hot-spring mecca of Guanziling and southwards behind Wushantou Reservoir.

For some reason (perhaps related to the she'll-be-right,-mate attitude I inherited as an Australian by birth) I neglected to apply any sunblock to my surfaces, believing that my tan made me immune to the effects of prolonged exposure to ultra-violet radiation. Despite making amends by applying some sunscreen several hours into the journey, I could feel that I was sunburned by the time I arrived in Chiayi and I still had a return journey to make! This presented me with a tough choice on Sunday morning: catch the train back to Tainan to avoid further burning; or do my best to minimize any more skin damage and cycle back to Tainan as planned. I decided to cycle back and accept some level of skin damage. However, I used all the strategies available to me to protect myself including: buying some strong (SPF50+) sunblock cream and applying liberally; riding on the wrong side of the road (in places where there was shade on the other side); alternating between walking in the shade and cycling in the sunny stretches (I only did this in the hills to avoid having to walk up any inclines in the sun), timing my rests in the shade to coincide with full sun; cycling anytime there was any cloud shadow; altering the position of my hands and arms on the handlebars to spread out the sun's effect; and when I got back to Tainan, I steered a course through the city to keep me in the shade of large buildings. It all seemed to have worked and I suffered no noticeable additional burning.

Altogether I covered just over 200km in the two days and arrived back in Tainan weary but satisfied with my effort. Finally, here is a map of the route compiled on the Bikemap website.

Bike route 599966 - powered by Bikemap

Cycling around Taiwan: Prologue

2010-06-15T07:47:00.000+08:00

Taiwan is an island. So is Australia. One day I'd like to ride all the way around Australia but right now I don't have the essential luxuries I need to attempt that. However, Taiwan is much smaller and cycling all the way around it is much cheaper and won't take six months. In fact, depending on how fast you are able to cycle (which in turn depends on things like your physical condition, the weather, what kind of bicycle you have and how much gear you need to take with you) you could cycle around Taiwan in as few as four days. You might be able to do it in fewer days but I don't know what the record is. However, most average people attempting this feat will probably take around 7-14 days.

It would be a terrible shame for someone who loves riding their bicycle (i.e., me) to have lived in Taiwan and not spent a long week just traveling around the country only as fast as their two legs carried them on two wheels. The island really does offer a diverse landscape of different terrains, climates, local specialty foods, cultures, and random encounters with its inhabitants. My desire became a reality in February and March of this year when I cycled with my two friends, John and Andrea, around the country. Our big break came with the Chinese New Year vacation of 2010. We were all freed from our employment obligations for two weeks; Good time in which to make the most of brakes, chains, gear levers, handlebars, pedals, spokes, tires, and saddles. We started out from our home base in the city of Tainan on the south-western coast on the 9th of February and started cycling anti-clockwise around the island. Unfortunately a series of three cold fronts was on the way and it was only a matter of time before their paths crossed with ours. After three days of wind and rain we were forced to abort our peregrination in Hsinchu, within one or two days of Tainan. We were despondent.

Almost one month later we were in Hsinchu again, setting off to complete our circumnavigation of Taiwan. We rode all through the night and into the morning until once again we were standing outside our apartment building having our photo taken by one of the security guards: A 'finished' photo to mate with our 'before' photo. The photo showed the three of us looking more or less the same as we had over five weeks earlier. What it failed to capture was how we had been enriched by our experiences: the people we had met, the time we friends had spent together, and all the beauty of this remarkable place that we had been steeped in.

This series of thirteen posts and the accompanying map at Bikemap.com describe our journey. We hope that it may inspire other ordinary people wanting to experience something extraordinary.

My friends on this journey:

The beautiful and very capable Andrea.

The dashing and charismatic John.

Me. That was a stupid idea.

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Links

John has also blogged this trip although he has included edited video sequences on his page here.
I have retraced our route and left remarks and photos on the Bikemap website here.
I have written up some useful advice for anybody touring around Taiwan by bicycle. You can find that information on my page about cycling in Taiwan.

On the eve of the first day of the big ride, I do some last-minute packing in our living area.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 1: Tainan to Chaojhou

2010-06-15T07:46:00.001+08:00

Start of Day 1: February 9.

Location: An-ping district (安平區), Tainan City (台南市).

Andrea prepares one of the essential stays of our expedition: 'gorp' or trail mix; a great form of slow-release energy food; nice and easy on the stomach and bowels and a guard against the potential for gastrointestinal complications caused by the sometimes caustic mix of eating a lot of questionable food and long-distance cycling. By the way, a lot of people believe that the term 'gorp' originates as an acronym for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts but this may not be true according to Michael Quinion.

The requisite before photo, expected to be matched up later with an after photo. We began pedaling at about 8:25 in the morning. It was a foggy, hazy morning and the sun was only a warm glow in the sky. The roads were quite busy. It felt good to finally be starting out on an adventure we'd been talking about for months.

A stop in Kaohsiung for lunch: hearty beef noodles and fruit teas with a lot of pulp.

A major intersection in Kaohsiung with cool architectural features. John always says that Kaohsiung is so cool. Obviously.

Down the road from Kaohsiung we stopped at a 7-11 for a rest and refreshment stop. Sitting out in front of the convenience store, we admired the local architecture adorning this provincial highway.

Sitting outside the 7-eleven. From left to right: A bag of gorp; me; Open-Chan!, the 7-eleven mascot.

Sitting outside the 7-eleven.

Further down the road, I noticed how strangely beautiful is the blending of this river fringed by aquatic flora and southern Kaohsiung's heavy industry.

Heading south, the central mountain range looms far ahead through the haze.

After cycling through the town of Linyuan down the No.17 Highway we discover that the bridge over the Gaoping river is closed due to maintenance and repair and so we must find another way across. We re-route up the No.21 and onto the No.88 which will take us across the river.

One of the many, many bathroom stops of the journey. John seems particularly pleased with this one. With exposure you build up a collection of expectations about what bathrooms are like in gas stations and conveniences stores and it is nice when you are pleasantly surprised. Some gas-station bathrooms even exhibit potted plants and perpetually smell of flowers.

Reconnoitering in the township of Chaojhou in search of dinner.

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End of day 1: February 9. Location: Chaojhou (潮州鄉), Pingdong county (屏東縣). Distance on my electronic odometer: 100km. Accommodation: cheap hotel close to the downtown area. Remarks: didn't sleep well due to fireworks, nasty diarrhoea (those afflicted will remain anonymous to save embarrassment), and mid-sleep leg cramps causing the victim/s to suddenly leap out of bed (anonymous again).

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 2: Chaojhou to Kenting

2010-06-15T07:45:00.000+08:00

Start day 2: February 10. Location: Chaojhou Township (潮州鄉), Pingdong county (屏東縣). Remarks: Woke up at 7:10am. Ate a breakfast consisting of our trail mix and a few things from 7-11.

The sun rising over the central mountain range as viewed from atop our hotel in Chaojhou.

We breakfasted at a local establishment called 7-Eleven. This photo illustrates a typical breakfast on our cycling trip: fresh local fruit purchased the previous evening, yoghurt, our gorp or trail mix, and some milk into which the gorp can be added. The carrot in the photo is a bit random and was something I brought with me from home. I intended to munch as we rode down the highway but unfortunately [I think] I sat it on my bike rack from where it promptly fell off as soon as we started cycling. Poor carrot.

Getting closer to Pingdong. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky from where the sun beat down mercilessly upon us. It was a relief to find this shelter overlooking a beautiful little cove where we sat and consolidated some of our stamina.

We rolled into Kenting Township and were stopped at a set of traffic lights when a woman approached us to solicit our patronage at her establishment, some kind of hotel or homestay. Doubtfully, we followed her back to the hotel. We were a little taken aback to discover that what she was offering us was actually a lot nicer than what we would have considered probable. Clean, airy, and stylish, the place definitely had a touch of the Mediterranean about it. It only cost us NT$400 per person for the night and they even did our laundry for free. What you cannot see in the photo is the water machine, the refrigerator, the bathroom, or the huge flat-screen TV.

Kenting nightlife along the main street through town.

At night the place really comes alive and the main street is lined with little stalls selling all kinds of things or offering all kinds of services like massages and games.

Out in front of a seafood restaurant, this man knows how to make a dead fish look good. He uses skewers to prop up their fins. He's obviously had a lot of practice at this. However, his mastery with the skewer wasn't enough to entice us inside and instead we ate at a Thai restaurant on the main street after which we slept soundly.

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End of day 2: February 10. Location: Kenting Township (崁頂鄉), Pingdong County (屏東縣). Distance on my electronic odometer: 177km. Accommodation: cheap but very nice hotel down a little alleyway off the main road of Kenting Township; NT$400 pp. Remarks: We slept well after a feast at the Thai restaurant on the main street.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 3: Kenting to Dawu

2010-06-15T07:44:00.000+08:00

Start day 3: February 11. Location: Kenting Township (崁頂鄉), Pingdong County (屏東縣). Remarks: Woke up at 5:00am. We were out on the street and ready to ride at 6:25, just as the sun was coming up. The street was quiet and deserted, lined with empty carts and stalls; quite a contrast from the party atmosphere of the night before. A fresh breeze and a few small clouds in the sky saw us on our way.

Out on the main street of Kenting Township at daybreak. After a short ride we would be getting close to the southernmost point of Taiwan.

And here it is: a map of the southernmost point showing both of the southern capes of Kenting National Park. This map can be found on the monument marking the You Are Here area in the photo above.

John and Andrea at the beginning of the pathway from the main road down to the southernmost monument. It was still very early in the morning when we arrived and the early morning light is quite pale.

We arrived at the monument to find that several other people were already there admiring the new day from the bottom of Taiwan. As soon as we walked out along the short boardwalk they seemed to disappear, leaving us alone with an almost invisible armada of small black insects that just wouldn't go away.

A bit of logistical flimdiggery by John allowed us to get a good group shot.

And what can you see from the monument that stands at the southernmost point of Taiwan? If you are a big fan of algae, rocks, and beach sand then you're in for a treat. If bars, amusement parks, and coffee shops are more your thing then you probably wouldn't hang around here for very long.

As you cycle back up to the main road you pass this place. It twigged some vague sense of familiarity when I saw it but it wasn't until much later, after we returned home, that I saw it on the Central Weather Bureau web site up in the top-left corner. It's some kind of weather station. That big green thing also makes land-marking much easier on Google Earth.

Just around the corner on the main road is this cemetery from where the top of the Eluanbi Lighthouse may be seen.

Around the cape along the main road you come to Longpan Park. There's not a lot here apart from some stunning views and beautiful scenery. And that's enough...

Rocks, grass, dirt, and opportunities for taking some great photos. Damn, that is a great photo.

More stunning seaside scenery. A small settlement in the distance stands out whitely and brightly in the clear light.

At about 8:45 we arrived at the small town of Manjhou where we sat ourselves down at the local Beautiful Breakfast eatery and completed stage two of our morning repast, fueling us for the long day of cycling that still lay ahead.

A wonderful shot that epitomizes small-town-Taiwan takeaway breakfast.

A panorama of one side of a valley the no.200 enters after Manjhou.

We detoured off the 200 intending to follow the road that would take us through the Jiupeng Desert. After passing through what seemed like a very quiet stretch of narrow road, anxiously avoiding the oxen grazing untethered on and next to the road, we discovered that the road no longer runs to the Jiupeng Desert, having been cut off by a water-course. However, if you examine the area on Google Maps, you can see the shadow of the road as it used to be, continuing on the other side of the washout.

At about 2:30 in the afternoon we came upon the small village of Syuhai and discovered that some enterprising people had set up a cafe with a menu containing lots of the kind of food that we like to eat. We stuffed ourselves and then relaxed, taking in the laid back charm of Taiwanese rural life while some local men killed a huge pig trussed up on a pole. The pig did not go quietly. We did.

Local fauna on the 199.

On the 199 in the mid-afternoon sun. We posed for a group shot.

At the junction of county road no.199 and provincial highway no.9 at the border of Taidong County. For some reason people regard this junction as rather significant; it was covered all over with the signatures and scrawls of many a passerby. I guess it is the official start of the 199 that runs from here at Shouka to Checheng on the west coast.

Very close by the junction there is a wall that begs for posers. Luckily we brought a couple along.

More local fauna; this time, some kind of moth. We found them clinging to the pole under the distance marker.

A fine feast in Dawu.

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End of day 3: February 11. Location: Dawu Township (大武鄉), Taidong County (台東縣). Distance on my electronic odometer: 284km. Accommodation: a homestay (more like a hotel) next to the 7-11 on the main highway running through town; NT$400 pp. Remarks: We arrived in Dawu (and the coast) after flying downhill from Shouka, covering about 10km very quickly. Tried to find a place to set up our tents but to no avail.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 4: Dawu to Taidong

2010-06-15T07:43:00.002+08:00

Start day 4: February 12. Location: Dawu Township (大武鄉), Taidong County (台東縣). Remarks: In the morning we looked outside to discover that the blue skies had been replaced with heavy cloud-cover. We started cycling at about 8am. A kilometre from the homestay I put on my cheap plastic raincoat but it turned me into a sail and slowed me to a crawl. With some difficulty I took it off again and we persevered into the headwind.

Overcast skies, a big road, and a beach made of grey rocks lined with rows of tetrapod concrete wavebreakers. Not a great example of the beauty of the east coast. Still, that blue ocean and those adjacent mountains offer a lot of promise.

This water course is covered with a swathe of material deposited by Typhoon Morakot in August of 2009.

A view from the same spot, looking in the other direction towards the ocean. Note that the house seems to have been ripped from its base and the top half with torn walls ended up in this spot. That truck in the photo seems to have been involved in some of the construction and repair work going on in the area.

Down the road we stopped in the little town of Jinlan for our second-breakfast consisting of bananas, apples, 7-Eleven coffees and dan-bings (omelets). Although John ordered the two dan-bings at the same time we soon received one dan bing and one toasted egg sandwich. The mind boggles. Anytime you order more than one of anything at the same time your chances of not getting what you asked for increase exponentially. Actually the increase is not exponential but I threw the word in there because it sounds good.

We were greeting and being greeted by a lot of other cyclists who we saw on the road and generally getting into the spirit of cycle-touring. Some guy in a black sedan passed by us, swerved off the road in front of us, stopped his car, wound down his window, and pumped his fist in the air shouting, "Go go go!" as we passed by. He was certainly getting into the groove. We were sometimes getting shouts of encouragement from other motorists but the sudden loud noises coming from cars passing close by us tended to startle us more than encourage us.

Further down the road we stopped in a small town to sample the delights of the local specialty: the sweet sop (or sugar apple or Annona Squamosa). Andrea and I had never tried them before despite having had plenty of opportunity. And when we did try them here we wondered why we never had before.

It's really good.

After investing a substantial amount of time in resetting the balance of his digestive system in a gas-station bathroom John caught up with us for the ride into Taidong. Actually getting to Taidong City seemed to drag on and on while the wind blew hard against us and blew a light rain into our faces. The day seemed more grey and dull than when we had started out in the morning and so did the road. When we finally, inevitably made it to the city we plonked ourselves down on a bench at a 7-Eleven, a little dispirited, and rested while we decided what to do next. We ended up moving a short way down the street to the Madina Indian Restaurant where our spirits were buoyed by some rich cuisine while several Indian men tried to wrestle a large industrial refrigerator through a doorway at the rear of the premises. The doorway proved to be only very slightly too small and they set about removing the frame and the door itself.

Downtown Taidong. We checked into a hotel we had used before on our east coast trip and then spent a while recovering. In the evening we went for a walk and a meal.

A beautiful photo of Andrea transacting with a fruit vendor on Taidong's famous Fruit Street.

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End of day 4: February 12. Location: Taidong City (台東市), Taidong County (台東縣). Distance on my electronic odometer: 344km. Accommodation: a cheap hotel on the edge of the downtown core of Taidong. Remarks: The wind blew hard against us as we pedalled along the seemingly endless, dull road into Taidong. For the first time on the trip it rained on us, albeit, very lightly. Got into town and plopped down outside a 7-11 at about 2pm. After lunch at an Indian restaurant we cycled to a hotel we had stayed in on a previous trip down the east coast. Later that evening we enjoyed a walk along 'fruit street'.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 5: Taidong to Guangfu

2010-06-15T07:42:00.000+08:00

Start day 5: February 13. Location: Taidong City (台東市), Taidong County (台東縣). Remarks: Awoke at 4:45; had breakfast in hotel room including fruit that we picked up on our walk along fruit street the night before; started cycling just after 6am. We were blessed with a beautiful clear blue sky and crisp clean air without any noticeable breeze. However, it was very cold and after leaving the hotel in only my light cycling shirt, I was soon forced to wear my second shirt over the top. Slightly further down the road I pulled on my fleecy top and wore my towel around my neck to keep it warm.

Coming around this corner we thought for a moment that we were looking at a cloud bank in the distance. The sight of these mountains suspended in the clouds reminds me of legends of special places that exist in the clouds; a nephological kingdom in the sky.

A panorama of the same phenomenon without the trees to frame the sight.

The effect is hard to capture in a photograph but we tried. A lot.

There were a lot of corn/sugar-cane stalls by the side of this particular stretch of highway and so we decided to try some. The corn we got (common in Taiwan) is pale yellow, not "sweet" corn, and cooked by boiling in water with a little salt added. It's quite good. The sugar cane is expertly stripped of its grassy skin leaving you, the consumer, with a crispy, fibrous stick of sweet, sticky fibrousness. You bite a piece off, chew the goodness out of it, and then spit out the fibrous residue.

We got our corn and cane from this stall but when we pulled up it was being manned by a Vietnamese lady who gave us each a stick of cane for free when we bought the corn. As soon as our transaction was over she disappeared, leaving her diminutive son on watch.

East Rift Valley panorama.

Fields of flowers in the East Rift Valley. Heavy clouds struggle to pull themselves up over the hills.

Sowing a rice paddy the modern way.

One of our many gas-station bathroom stops. This one was situated in isolation surrounded by some nice scenery. I will use it to illustrate the difference that a nice vista makes to a restroom stop:

The female toilet cubicles: dark, claustrophobic, and poorly ventilated.

The male urinals: light, airy, and offering a window on a pleasant scene of farmlands, mountains, and clouds, enhancing the act of evacuation and making urination while standing a positive tourism experience.

More rice paddies, mountains, and clouds.

At one of the many great police station rest stops along the way, these three gentlemen obliged us by posing for a photo.

A very quick stop for a photo op at the Tropic of Cancer Marker on the no.9 highway in the East Coast Rift Valley.

Somewhere between Fuyuan and Guangfu we stopped at another police station to ask about cheap accommodation or a camp site. We were informed that ten minutes back down the road we had just come up we could stay at the local fire station for $300 per person but that we might have our sleep disturbed if there was some kind of call-out. The sun had already set and John was experiencing severe gastro-intestinal discomfort (those two statements are in no way related) and just needed to get to a hotel. We decided against going back and chose to continue instead to the town or Guangfu where we were sure to find a cheap hotel. When we did get to Guangfu, the first couple of hotels we investigated were definitely not cheap. It was Chinese New Year's eve after all and hotel rooms all around the country were, by now, renting at premium rates. We managed to find a cheaper hotel around the corner and John monopolized the bathroom as soon as we were booked in.

Later on, Andrea and I went for a walk to get a few provisions for our hotel room breakfast in the morning. Along the way we saw families and friends shutting up shop, getting their barbecues out and their fireworks ready, preparing to celebrate the arrival of the new year. In the local bakery some very excited children showed us their Hong-Baos (red envelopes) containing their gift-money. The new year would be the year of the tiger. However, for us tonight would be the night of the bear: we hibernated, exhausted, as the magical nocturnal season of whizzing, banging, and cracking fireworks passed by overnight.

__________________________________________

End of day 5: February 13. Location: Guangfu Township (光復鄉), Hualien County (光復縣). Distance on my electronic odometer: 474km. Accommodation: a cheap homestay/hotel on the southern edge of Guangfu. Remarks: After a beautiful day spent riding through the beautiful scenery of the east coast inlands on the no.9 provincial highway we were still going after dark. Somewhere between Fuyuan and Guangfu we stopped at a police station to enquire about camping. They told us that we could stay at the Fire Station in Fuyuan for NT$300 pp. However that was some way behind us and John was experiencing intense gastrointestinal discomfort so we made for the closer township of Guangfu which lay ahead. After rejecting a couple of hotels for being too expensive we chose a homestay with rooms above a breakfast restaurant/convenience store. We were so tired we slept through most of the Chinese New Year fireworks.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 6: Guangfu to Nan-ao

2010-06-15T07:41:00.007+08:00

Start day 6: February 14. Location: Guangfu Township (光復鄉), Hualien County (光復縣). Remarks: First day of the new Chinese year. Started riding at 6:45. Light breeze behind us, a few small clouds, a temperature of 15 degrees and, in front of us as we rode out of town, big mountains lit up by the first rays of the morning sun. Beautiful.

Preparing for the day of riding ahead of us; packing our bags and bikes, something that was becoming routine by now.

The road out of Guangfu ran straight towards the mountain range, lit up as it was by the first golden rays of the sun. The sky was clear and blue and the air was crisp and carried a chill. A gentle breeze blew from behind us. It was a perfect start to the day.

Just down the same road on the outskirts of town, the rising sun begins to light up the fields and farms, plants and animals. The morning sky was reflected in the rice paddies.

It was really, really nice to be cycling this morning.

It may look like I am about to do something technically illegal. A lot of people in Taiwan are constantly breaking road rules and regulations. My excuse for breaking this one is that I cannot understand the sign because I cannot read Chinese.

We stopped only briefly in Hualien at 10am for some bathrooms, baked goods, and water. Not long after our stop there, the volume of traffic on the road seemed to increase dramatically and there was a seemingly endless stream of traffic moving southwards. However, our side of the road was almost empty; the northbound lane of the highway was being used as often by southbound motorists overtaking as it was by motorists actually heading north. The reason for the change in traffic flows can be partially explained by the convergence of several roads near Hualien. Traveling south from Hualien you can choose from one of three different roads: Provincial Highway no.9; Provincial Highway no.11; or County Road no.193. However, if you are traveling north then you only have one option for most of the rest of the journey up the east coast and that is the no.9 and then the no.2. So all the traffic on the coast gets funneled into one pipe.

At a lookout close to the southern end of the Cingshui Cliffs. As the piece of interpretive signage below explains, this geological masterpiece dominates the character of the coast for about twenty kilometers between Chongde and Heping. You are guaranteed some impressive vistas and views which must be paid for in the currency of mountainous cycling: sweat and aching legs.

Beautiful. Note the tiny entrance to a traffic tunnel on the side of the mountain. With so much traffic on the road and with a few too many drivers willing to take risks to get to where they are going a little bit faster, riding through this series of traffic tunnels tested out nerves. We heard of at least one cyclist who was clipped by a car and knocked into the concrete side-wall.

At about 2:15 in the afternoon we stopped in the village of Heping for lunch. I'm sorry to say that this little place did not make a good impression on us. We were a little late to be looking for lunch and our options were limited. We decided upon a dining-hall-type restaurant decorated very plainly. There were two kids sitting in the front of the establishment annoying an elderly woman who was probably their grandmother; they were acting pretty strangely and making cat noises and the woman would occasionally growl at them. While waiting for our order to arrive we decided that the kids were drunk. When our noodles did arrive John and I both found long hair in ours. As soon as we were finished we paid up and left town, sure that our stop in Heping was not going to be one of the highlights of the trip.

Close to the town of Nanou it began to rain heavily. On the long, steep descent to the coast Andrea almost came off her bicycle. We arrived in Nanou at dusk and after scouting out a few potential accommodations we decided upon a lovely little minsu (or homestay) on the main street. The minsu had a Japanese feel about it; our room consisted of a nice big clean open space with wooden floors and walls; the beds were tatami-style mats which we laid out on the floor. After cleaning up we dined in style at a local box-food place down the street. Not fancy food but great to have in your stomach after a long day's cycle.

_______________________________

End of day 6: February 14.

Location: Nan-ao Township (南澳鄉), Yilan County (宜蘭縣).

Distance on my electronic odometer: 597km.

Accommodation: a beautiful little Minsu (a kind of homestay) on the main street of little Nanou; NT$600 pp.

Remarks: It started raining on us and John and Andrea both came close to injury as their bike tires slipped across the wet rail lines that cut into the road at an angle in Heping. The rain made the ride down the mountains into Nanou quite dangerous and a little scary with Andrea almost fish-tailing to disaster on the white lines marking the edge of the traffic lane. In the very small town of Nanou we found a beautiful little minsu (a homestay) on the main street that smelled like Japan where we spent the night.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 7: Nan-ao to Fulong

2010-06-15T07:40:00.000+08:00

Start day 7: February 15.

Location: Nan-ao Township (南澳鄉), Yilan County (宜蘭縣).

Remarks: Awoke at 5:30am. After packing up and making the routine preparations we sat down in the restaurant of the guesthouse to receive the complimentary "western style" breakfast we had been promised the night before. I would describe our reaction to breakfast as bemusement: 1 fried egg, 2 pieces of sliced brown bread, one 7-11 coffee, and 1 tiny pudding dessert. The owner didn't know where his wife had put the new jam they had just bought so we used our remaining bananas to make banana sandwiches. Started cycling at 7:15am.

A quick stop for refreshments in a small town.

More beautiful east coast vistas.

Before getting to Su-ao we had to overcome a particularly big hill referred to by someone else as the "six-kilometer hill". The wind blew against us as we fought our way up and around the road that clung to the side of the ascent and every time we reached a bend in the road that allowed us to see the lay of the road ahead we saw it continuing to climb. By the time we reached the top we were well up above the coast down below. Andrea and John had pulled ahead of me out of sight at some point so that when I saw two trucks parked in a carpark by the side of the road selling hot drinks I took the opportunity to revitalize myself with a strong hot chocolate.

By the time we got to Su-ao we were ready for lunch and found a nice breakfast shop. After lunch we left town by way of the no.2 highway which kept us close to the coast.

Long days of toil in the rain and sun take their toll and the effort of the journey starts to play tricks on the mind. We were all stunned momentarily by this apparition, a yellow specter that appeared and then disappeared as quickly. Spooky mountains. Spooky wind.

Something strange happened shortly after we left Su-ao. We had stopped for some reason and then Andrea and I rode on ahead of John. The last thing we heard him say was that he was just going to put his jacket on. Andrea and I sped off down the road and pedaled for a while before pausing to wait for John to catch up. Our wait for John dragged on and on and we became increasingly concerned. Inevitably we returned to where we had last seen him and, not finding him there, racked our brains thinking of the best course of action. We thought that perhaps he had taken the special no.2 road which diverged from highway no.2 and then rejoined it later on, effectively bypassing the spot where we had been waiting the first time we waited for him. We began to reproach ourselves for not planning for this kind of problem and for not having a plan B. Ultimately we decided to cycle on in the hope that we would bump into each other along the way.

By the time Andrea and I reached the town of Toucheng we had been riding without John for a couple of hours. Our anxiety had been increasing slowly as our inquiries at police stations along the way produced no news of a tall foreigner on a bicycle. We had decided to give up the search temporarily; we both badly needed a rest. I went off to a pharmacy to buy some medication for my sinus troubles, agreeing to meet Andrea at the 7-Eleven down the road. I procured my salve and as I approached the 7-Eleven I saw... John sitting down with Andrea. My relief was incredible. I had been through all sorts of disaster scenarios in my head in the last two hours: John attacked by stray dogs and dragged off the highway into a ditch where he lay bleeding, dying alone; John abducted by desperate people who needed money and thought that John was rich because he could afford such a nice bicycle; and other such horror-fantasies. Over refreshments John told us that he had been cycling up and down the main road of Toucheng hoping to bump into us and was just about to give up and take a rest at the 7-Eleven when he found Andrea already there. We couldn't work out how we had failed to meet up along the way and how John had managed to cycle ahead of us without us seeing him. After a good rest and a meal in a cardboard box, we all got on our bicycles again and set off once more.

Guishan Island or Turtle Island. Andrea was getting a bit cold at this point which explains the less-than-thrilled expression on her face.

She warmed up as John donned his space-beast suit. He really reminds me of something or someone else in that raincoat.

We were wet and close to the village of Dali when we stopped at a promising-looking viewing area/coffee shop for information and a hot drink. John and Andrea were talking to the staff in the coffee shop for a couple of minutes. I was hanging around outside letting the water drip from my raincoat. All of a sudden John and Andrea were back ranting about a tunnel that would take us under the mountains on the north-east cape and save us from cycling a good number of kilometers but this tunnel was closing in about ten minutes and the entrance was somewhere just back down the road we had come along and so we had to get on our bikes quickly and find the entrance to the tunnel before the gates were shut because we didn't want to be trapped in the tunnel if both sets of gates were closed and we would have to spend the night in there but we couldn't see any signs indicating any kind of tunnel and it was supposed to be some kind of old rail tunnel and we didn't really know what to look for but it must be reasonably big so it couldn't be the sealed-up hole in the mountain-side I saw and we rode our bikes down a steep little road off the main road and John hurriedly tried to ask some random people if they knew of the tunnel but they didn't and now it was getting late and what if the tunnel was about to close and we didn't have enough time to get through or, worse, got locked in overnight and we desperately looked for another road and saw one and followed it down and saw what had to be THE ENTRANCE TO THE TUNNEL but if we entered then we had to get through quickly before the other end was shut and I heard Andrea say that we needed to cycle as fast as we could and I thought that I would cycle super-fast and get to the other end of the tunnel to prevent the gate-man from locking us in and the tunnel was really nice and there was pleasant music playing inside but I couldn't focus on that because I was pedaling as fast as I could despite being tired and having ridden my bicycle all day and then... I was out and breathing heavily but knowing that if anyone showed up to lock the gate for the night then I could tell them that my friends were still inside and please don't close the door yet!?!

As it turned out we were absolutely fine and Andrea couldn't stop laughing at me for killing myself cycling as fast as I could through the tunnel.

Here's a map of the Caoling Tunnel as it appears on one of the interpretive signboards at the northern end. You can see that it really does cut the cape out of the journey.

We cycled into the town of Fulong to which the Caoling Tunnel had delivered us. We checked in to a damp hotel close to the train station. The door of the shower turned out to be a bit transparent and if the hotel-room light was turned off the bathroom light showed quite a lot through the transparent door. After cleaning ourselves up we dined at a seafood place on the main street: fish soup, squid, big clams, and rice. And then we went back to the hotel and slept with fervor.

Lanterns in the local park brightened up the dark wet night.

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End of day 7: February 15.

Location: Fulong Township (福隆鄉), Taipei County (台北縣).

Distance on my electronic odometer: 689km.

Accommodation: a very damp hotel a block away from the train station.

Remarks: After an intense ride through the Old Caoling Rail Tunnel from Dali to Fulong (very cool) we found a cheap hotel close to the train station. It had rained during the day and we were quite damp and dirty. We rejoiced in being able to have hot showers although we discovered that the glass door was a little transparent. After a rest we dined at a seafood restaurant on the main street. It was a great hearty meal of squid, big clams, vegetables, fish soup, and rice that made us feel alright.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 8: Fulong to Keelung

2010-06-15T07:39:00.000+08:00

Start day 8: February 16.

Location: Fulong Township (福隆鄉), Taipei County (台北縣).

Remarks: Awoke at 5:30am. It was still raining lightly. There was a lot of condensation on the walls of our room; Some clothes that we had left by the window were quite damp. The complimentary hair dryer was used extensively to attempt to dry our essentials.

We ate a two-stage broken breakfast, first at 7-11 and then at the breakfast restaurant: oatmeal, milk, yogurt, dan-bings (omelets), and dou-jiang (soy milk). When we asked the lady at the breakfast restaurant if we could buy some fruit from her she told us that the fruit we were interested in had been used in religious observance the day before and proceeded to give it to us for free; bananas, jujubes, and tangerines. It was raining as we got away onto the 102, unaware of the mountain assault we would be making later that day.

We had decided that we would cycle to Keelung via the inland roads rather than continuing along the coast. County Road no.102 looked like being the best road to take. It would take us on a not-overly meandrous route from Fulong to Keelung while still offering the promise of a break from the sights and sounds of the coastal highway. On our map of Taiwan the no.102 passed through places called Gongliao, Shuangsi, Jioufen, and Rueifang. It sounded interesting. Our map didn't give us any indication of elevation.

Despite the light rain we admired the beautiful countryside as we passed through small communities and slowly ascended. When we stopped to check the map under a convenient awning we saw that the town of Jioufen lay on our route and this name jogged John's memory, something about it being an old gold-mining area. He also thought that this was a place he had been once before but remembered it being very, very high up. I remember he even recalled making the joke about being able to see his house from up there.

The road got progressively more serpentine and less developed so that eventually there were no more buildings and very few cars. The countryside was indeed beautiful; we saw Cherry Blossoms by the roadside in full bloom. And around every bend was another incline and another bend. Eventually it began to get misty and cloudy and we turned our bicycle lights on. By now we felt that we were very high up and the wind and rain had really turned against us. We were getting quite cold and having to walk up a lot of the way. At a brief rest stop under the slight rain-shade of a large stone sign, we discussed turning back and taking the coastal road instead. We decided to persevere.

On a reasonably level piece of roadway we stopped and commented on how the visibility had been reduced to the point where we couldn't see each other cycling ahead and about how cold it now was. We began to worry about how long it would be before we would get to someplace out of the wind and rain and cold. Andrea used some chemical warming pads we had brought with us to stave off the cold. We weren't really prepared for these conditions: sandals, light shirts, pullovers, and cycling shorts. We began cycling again, less content with our ride than before. Suddenly, looming out of the mist and cloud upon the hill-side in front of us we saw a wooden pagoda and our hopes of being warm flared up again. This pagoda was the first sign of urbanization we had seen for quite a while. A little bit further down the road we saw a sign reading "Rueifang Township" and we knew that our deliverance was imminent.

We pedaled on towards Rueifang and the incidence of signs of urbanization increased exponentially until, quite suddenly, we were turning onto a street packed with tour buses and pedestrians and people trying to evade the rain which continued to fall. As it turned out, today was a special day on the Chinese calendar (coming soon after the turn of the new year) and Rueifang was bustling with hordes of temple-goers from Taipei who had come to visit certain famous sites and temples in the area. For us it was surreal transitioning so quickly from being lost in the clouds to rubbing shoulders with the horde. We slipped into a 7-Eleven on the main street seeking warmth and warming. Andrea and John both bought socks for their hands and Andrea also got some for her feet. We purchased hot coffees and had the staff heat up some bread for us to eat. The staff were very busy but dealing superbly with the influx of visitors to town and with us, the foreigners who didn't know where socks were supposed to be worn.

Once we had recovered from the chilling inflicted by the mountain, we got back in our saddles and headed for Keelung where we intended to stop for the rest of the day: it was finished as far as we were concerned. We booked into a cheap hotel close to the central bus station, indulged our keen interest in hot showers, and generally recovered by doing a lot of nothing much. I was thinking of cycling on to the northernmost point of Taiwan by myself that afternoon but John and Andrea convinced me to wait until the next day when they would be ready to cycle to the northernmost point as a group.

Keelung lived up to its reputation as The Rainy City: it didn't stop raining for the duration of our stay. We couldn't help but wonder why people chose to live in such a wet, damp place.

After cleansing ourselves in the shower and relaxing for a while we ate a late lunch at a teppanyaki restaurant not far from the hotel. It was really, really good.

In the evening John and I hit the street looking to rustle up some provisions for breakfast. Umbrellas are a sure-sell commodity in this place. We took barely a few photos the whole day because it was just too cold, wet, or windy to bother taking our cameras out.

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End of day 8: February 16.

Location: Keelung City (基隆市), Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area (台北基隆都會區).

Distance on my electronic odometer: 730km.

Accommodation: a hotel close to the harbor.

Remarks: The 102 took us up some big mountains into some wet, windy, even foggy conditions and we had considered turning back at one point. However, we persevered and suddenly found ourselves among throngs of religious devotees at the top of the town of Jioufen where tour buses were delivering and collecting hordes of people making their short pilgrimage to the famous temples there. After warming up in the 7-11 we cycled to Keelung and found ourselves a hotel not far from the downtown core. It was about midday when we checked into our hotel and took our grimy bikes upstairs into our room.

Cycling around Taiwan: Day 9: Keelung to Hsinchu

2010-06-15T07:38:00.002+08:00

Start day 9: February 17.

Location: Keelung City (基隆市), Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area (台北基隆都會區).

Remarks: Awoke at 5am. Breakfasted in hotel room on provisions gathered the night before. It had been raining since we were up in the mountains yesterday and only let up, fortuitously, at the same time as we made ready to leave the hotel. We followed the signs to the number 2 road which would take us to the top of Taiwan, happy to put up with the wind for as long as it was delivered without rain.

The rain began when we were about half-way along Provincial Highway no.2 between Keelung and the northernmost points of Taiwan. The downpour was no surprise when it happened. We continued on in the rain which relented a little but never really stopped while the wind continued to tear at our cheap plastic rain coats. We weren't exactly sure where the northernmost point of mainland Taiwan was. I had tried to find out by making a pedestrian journey from our hotel room to the tourist information centre in Keelung the day before but I had trouble communicating what it was I wanted to know and they had trouble describing it to me (once they had agreed on where it was).

Eventually we stopped at a place that looked significant. It featured a stone archway that led out onto a small outcrop of rock. It looked "northernmost" and so we took a few photos to prove that we'd been there before getting back on our bicycles and pedaling again to stay warm. Standing still in rain and wind can drain your body heat quite quickly. Either of those elements - wind or water - alone is tolerable but together they can make any outdoor experience in the lower centigrades pretty discomforting.

Cold, wet, windy.

While we started to shiver and made comments about how we were starting to shiver these two fishermen looked right at home in the conditions.

Even the bright gaudy colors of this temple, close by where we stopped, struggle against being washed out by the greyness of the day.

A little further around the coast we came upon a small cape sporting a lighthouse and realized that this was the official northernmost point of Taiwan. I guess I should have inferred as much from the whole-of-Taiwan map we were using: while the scale of the map made determining and locating the northernmost point of mainland Taiwan tricky, the cape with the lighthouse was named on the map (as Fugueijiao) and in hindsight it seems intuitively sensible that this cape was significant enough to have a lighthouse and a name because it was the northernmost point of mainland Taiwan. But we were too cold and wet to bother stopping again.

As we traced the arc of the North Coast and Guanyinshan National Scenic Area and our bearing gradually shifted to the south-west, the wind that had so often been blowing rain in our faces for the last four days was placed more and more firmly behind us so that it now became an aid in our progress. That was a very nice change and well-received by us.

Somewhere close to the township of Sanjhih we stopped to rest and recover at a 7-Eleven and adjacent breakfast shop where we took stock of our injuries, aches, and discomforts.

Our sandals are soaked and the skin on our feet is water-logged.

John wrings out his wet socks.

We cycled on southwards along the no.2, skirting the city of Danshui, aiming for the first bridge that would take us across the mighty Danshui River. We crossed the GuanDu Bridge, comprising a series of attractive red arches, and in doing so, left Provincial Highway no.2 behind and joined the way of Provincial Highway no.15 which took us back up to the coast and then westwards while slowly veering towards the south.

The rain-showers continued. While we stopped at a Hi-Lite convenience store, the sky opened and dumped rivers of water on the landscape around us, creating pools that grew faster than the drains could drain them. We enjoyed hot Milos and other such comforting foods while admiring the deluge. And as we made our preparations to leave, the torrential rain reduced to a trickle, allowing for an easy getaway.

The rain continued, varying in intensity. By two o'clock we still hadn't eaten a proper lunch and were feeling a little miserable. We decided to leave the no.15 (and probably the day's cycling) to look for food and shelter. Despite having ended up in an industrial area we found a nice duck-soup-noodle place in which we enjoyed a good hot meal. We also obtained directions to a nearby love hotel.

We checked in to Valentine's Hotel (NT$1880 for the three of us) and tried to settle in. The airconditioning was unresponsive and continued to keep the room temperature at a point where it chilled us. The free condoms and lubricant, porn on demand, and coffee and tea did little to cheer us up. When we unpacked our panniers we discovered that water had infiltrated them and soaked some of our belongings. We had no really dry clothes to wear.

After checking the weather report on TV and discussing our situation we decided to catch the train back to Tainan the next day and return to Hsinchu to complete our journey some time in the future. The decision was an agonizing one and once it was made we consoled ourselves with the pizza we had had delivered to our room; we had ordered a vegetarian pizza and a chicken pizza with a side-serving of onion rings; of course we received a ham pizza and a vegetarian pizza with a side-serving of onion rings and another of chicken drumsticks. Indiana Jones and his friends watched as Mola Ram pulled a man's heart out of his chest and we watched them watching as we tore the tender, deep-fried chicken flesh from the bones.

The bed was very comfortable but as I wandered off into sleepyville I couldn't help but feel depressed that we were giving up so close to home.

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End of day 9: February 17.

Location: Hsinchu City (新竹市).

Distance on my electronic odometer: 864km.

Accommodation: a love hotel called Valentine's on the south-eastern edge of the city; NT$1880/night for a double bed plus additional bed on the floor.

Remarks: After touching the northernmost rim of Taiwan we cycled around the coast to Danshui, crossed over the huge red arches of the first bridge, and onto the number 15 which took us around the coast. As the road veered towards the south we were fighting the wind less and less. We still hadn't eaten at about 2pm when we decided to leave the 15 and look for a hotel. Party morale was rather low: the elements had taken their toll on our resolve. We ate at a duck restaurant and received directions to a love hotel. Our room was cold, all of our belongings were damp, even the clothes in our panniers. We eventually made the agonizing decision to put our adventure on hold and planned to return to finish the journey on another weekend.

Cycling around Taiwan: An undesirable logistical outcome

2010-06-15T07:37:00.000+08:00

Journey pause and return to Tainan: February 17.

Location: Hsinchu City (新竹市).

We awoke at about 8am knowing that we were going to be back at home by the end of the day. All of our possessions, scattered around our room at Valentine's Hotel, were still slightly damp. We ate our complimentary breakfasts (mine was a chicken burger) then packed and prepared much as we had done every morning for the last nine days. While getting ourselves ready we noticed that it was not raining outside and that the ground was even dry in places. I had begun to wonder if we shouldn't press ahead on our bicycles.

John does his best to dry out some of his clothes with the hairdryer supplied in our room. One wonders to what other uses a love-hotel hairdryer might have been put.

We did ride our bicycles again, not to Tainan but to the Hsinchu train station. Riding northwards to the train station placed the wind against us and we realized that if we had continued to Tainan the wind would have been behind us, helping us home.

At the train station ticket counter we purchased tickets for a first-class (fast) train only to be stopped by the man at the gate who told us we couldn't take our bikes on the train that way. After negotiations between all parties concerned (and then with some other parties who weren't really concerned) we checked our bicycles in as luggage at the luggage office in an adjoining section of the building and were told that they would be returned to us when we reached our destination.

It never did rain during the ride home although we desperately wished that it would. The heavier the rain, the more justified we would be in ending our journey prematurely. We all sat quietly on the train, despondent at not being able to triumphantly ride back into Tainan on our bicycles at the end of making a perfect circuit of the island.

Suggestions were made about returning to Hsinchu the next day to continue our ride, packing minimal provisions and equipment besides what would be necessary for one long ride from Hsinchu to Tainan. Suddenly we were excited again, turning over our prospects and possibilities. However, in the end nothing came of these plans. When we woke up early the next morning it was raining heavily again and plans for an immediate return to Hsinchu were shelved until further notice. My electronic odometer was unmoved on 864km and we didn't know when that number was going to change again.

Cycling around Taiwan: Days 10-11: Hsinchu to Tainan

2010-06-15T07:36:00.000+08:00

Start day 10: March 20.

Location: Hsinchu City (新竹市).

Remarks: It had been almost a month since we stopped in Hsinchu. We woke up very early at home in Tainan and got ourselves ready and off to the train station. We caught the tze-chiang train at 6:54am and took our bikes with us onto the train. After a Subway lunch close to the central station in Hsinchu we started heading south on Provincial Highway no.1 at about 11:40am.

Early morning An-ping: We got up early and were out on the street outside our apartment buildings before the sun made a formal appearance in the sky.

Although the online train schedule showed a bicycle icon next to the 6:54am train, it wasn't until we attempted to purchase tickets at Tainan Station that we discovered that only folding bicycles and bicycles in bags were allowed on the train. We had hoped to be able to pay a bit more to check our bikes in as luggage on the train we intended to travel on but were told that that service wasn't available on all trains and that we could wait a few hours for another train that did offer luggage service. We knew what we had to do because we had done it before: go to the 7-Eleven near the station, purchase a roll of large black garbage bags, take our bikes apart, and bag them up. And in the photo above you can see Andrea waiting on the platform in the morning sun with our three incognito bicycles.

On the 06:54 tze-chiang-class train to Hsinchu, eta 10:01. We are hanging out with our bicycles in the nice dining car attached to the rear of the train. Whenever we purchase tickets to travel with bicycles we seem to be allocated seats in car 12 which places us close by whatever other car has been attached to serve as a luggage storage area. Our tickets from Tainan to Hsinchu cost us NT$561 per person and we were able to carry our bicycles aboard for free (because they were in bags).

Having arrived in Hsinchu we put our bicycles back together (which always takes a while) and rode them a short distance across the street from the station and then around the corner to a Subway sandwich shop where we had lunch before commencing our marathon ride.

Ah Hsinchu, how I love thee, let me count the ways: excessive noise, air pollution, congested streets, and people who delight in attempting to catch unwary cyclists as they open their car door out towards the street. I've probably just painted Hsinchu with a palette tinted heavily with ignorance but I'm the one doing the writing.

We traveled southwards down Provincial Highway no.1 and then transferred onto the no.13. By the coast we saw these giant wind turbines symbolizing Taiwan's commitment to harnessing natural sources of clean energy to serve the power needs of the nation. Shame about the haze and air pollution that makes seeing the turbines more difficult. To be fair, sometimes the sky in Taiwan is just naturally hazy. With regard to air-movement in general, it had been moving against us since we started out from Hsinchu; the wind continued to blow against us until much later in the evening when it seemed to fade away entirely.

Andrea looks fairly unimpressed after suffering a puncture on the coastal freeway (no.61) near YuanLi. We employed her spare tube, replaced the damaged one, and then got off the expressway, returning to Provincial Highway no.1, an altogether more cycle-friendly road than the monster expressway.

At abut 10pm we stopped in Changhua for a break, finding this great little shaved-ice place. We shared a wonderful bowl of shaved frozen milk, honey, condensed milk, and fruit. I remember thinking at the time that it was the highlight of the trip. I love shaved ice and fruit. Leaving Changhua we shifted onto Provincial Highway no.19.

John and Andrea take the opportunity to do some stretching on the forecourt of a gas station somewhere on a forgotten stretch of the no.19. By the time we stopped at this gas-station for a break we had been cycling for more than twelve hours. Exhaustion and fatigue slowly crept up on us throughout the long night as we made our way, one kilometer after another, down the west coast towards Tainan. Just like John in the photo, some things shifted in and out of focus as we tried to stay awake.

Stopping at a roadside temple to let our legs recover, John struggles not to succumb to the biological imperative to sleep. When you are this tired, lying down sits you squarely down on the slippery slope to the dreamy kingdom of many 'z's.

Finally the sun did appear above the horizon, but only dim and revealing a drab and dreary world. Still, we were happy to have any kind of dawn to wash away the tiredness of the long night.

A legacy of our cycle through the night: my own personal collection of flying insects arranged artfully about my scalp.

Our first big stop of the new day: Yanshui, home of the Beehive Rocket Festival. Our arrival in Yanshui was also significant in that it signalled our arrival back in our own Tainan County.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) our arrival in Yanshui did not coincide with the famous rocket festival so we had to content ourselves with breakfast at this nice, clean breakfast shop.

Yet another stop at another police station to use the bathrooms and refill our water bottles; unremarkable but for one significant factor: this would be the last police station stop of our circumnavigation of Taiwan. I think the smile on my face has more to do with fatigue-induced delirium than joy at nearing the end of our journey.

The obligatory "after" photo, taken outside our apartment building in Tainan City in celebration of the completion of our ride around Taiwan. This photo gives very little indication of the exhaustion and fatigue that we were feeling at this moment. We were also feeling jubilant at finishing our journey of over a thousand kilometers. However, I think the thing we felt most strongly was a desire to shower.

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End of day 10: March 21.

Location: An-ping district (安平區), Tainan City (台南市).

Total journey distance: 1135km

Accommodation: Home.

Remarks: From Hsinchu we cycled all day and through the night towards home. Things got a bit strange in the liminal hour of the morning before sunrise as we tried to stay awake and, at one point, found ourselves riding through a fog lurking in some quiet farmland. We arrived back in An-ping at 10:45 in the morning with thoughts only of hot showers and sleep, well-deserved after circumnavigating Taiwan by bicycle.

Cycling around Taiwan: Epilogue

2010-06-15T07:35:00.001+08:00

I've added this epilogue because I need a venue in which to talk (waffle on) about the trip: its effect on us; its significance; its legacy; and several other random thoughts.

It has now been almost three months since we completed our circumnavigation of Taiwan and returned to Tainan. Little did I know that my odyssey had only just begun and that it would take me this long to recreate the journey as a map and as a series of blogs. I can honestly say now that I am glad that this project is over and that I can remove it from my mental list of things to do. As I became aware of the amount of work involved in this project it acquired a weight in my mind, a weight that became a burden as the weeks passed by and I trudged on down the digital page leaving arial-font footprints.

I have always owned a bicycle and been a casual cyclist but only since living here in Taiwan has my casual involvement evolved into something more serious. My bicycle had now become a vehicle for escape from home for a weekend getaway, capable of carrying camping equipment and all the essentials for a prolonged absence from the conveniences of home. It has also become more of an expression of ethics; I ride a bike because it is quiet, produces no air pollution (arguably), and symbolizes freedom from dependence on energy from elsewhere. Cycling has also become closely associated with fitness in my own mind and riding my bicycle to work almost every day, it easily constitutes my staple unit of exercise.

This tour around Taiwan is the most significant bicycle journey I have ever made. (Andrea and John would say the same.) It is also one of the greatest adventures I have ever had. Thankfully, Taiwan is small enough to make possible its circumnavigation within the span of the longest vacation available to us (Chinese New Year). So now that I have cycled around Taiwan I cannot help but set my sights higher and I have begun to cultivate aspirations to other grand cycle tours. I would love to be able to cycle around Australia and now that I have had my Taiwanese experience the gap between desire and reality is all the shorter.

You need good friends for a trip like this. John, Andrea, and I had our disagreements and arguments. I think that Andrea and I are fortunate that John is exceptionally easy-going and rarely gets annoyed at us for anything. He was probably as good company for eleven days as we could have hoped for. I can't think of anyone else we know in Taiwan with whom we could have integrated so smoothly. Andrea and I had our own arguments with each other along the way and I wouldn't have expected things to be otherwise. But we are better and stronger for it and we have probably covered some issues that won't need to be revisited again in the future, being either resolved or redundant through changes in our behavior or our thinking.

More than anything else, perhaps, our journey around Taiwan looms so large in my own imagination. It was a grand undertaking, my first really big challenge in a way, and hopefully the precursor to greater challenges and accomplishments.

We didn't pick up any souvenirs in which we can imbue the spirit of our journey and which will forever mark the accomplishment for us. Instead, we have a collection of photos taken on the trip and our own memories of the experience. Hopefully this blog will remain intact for some time to come as a digital memorial to our accomplishment.

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This journey required an investment of our time but we received dividends of time in return:

Time to think.

Time to reflect.

Time to admire and appreciate the world around us.

Time to be.

Our Canadian Christmas: epilogue

2010-02-08T07:10:00.003+08:00

.All good things must come to an end and like all those other good things, peanuts roasted in their shells for example, our time in Canada inevitably drew to a close. And suddenly I realised, looking through the viewfinder of my camera, that it would be some long while before Andrea stood in this spot again. I don't know if the ground will be covered in snow or grass and I don't know if she will be making the trip here on her own or whether I'll be able to go with her. But it made me quite sad to have to live in that moment of departing from a place where I really enjoyed being and where I was connected to so many great people. I felt that I had not wasted my time and yet two weeks was not long enough for me to get to know the people living in this other world on the other side of the globe - Andrea's world.

There is no substitute for time spent in the same place as the people you love. I remember hearing in a podcast about a contemporary immigrant family living in America who had set up video conferencing in their kitchen, including a projector that displayed the incoming streaming video onto a large screen on the wall, and every morning the family would sit down and have breakfast with a grandmother who lived in Italy, combining the two dining tables across the world with only a magical transparent wall separating them. I guess that's about as far as you could go with contemporary technology. By the way, I'm not suggesting that we need to have breakfast with Andrea's parents every morning.

There will be other christmases in the future. We'll probably all be sitting at the same table again and it will be laid with cracker bonbons and there will be a lot of what people do at christmas time; laughing and talking and discovering new things about the people they already know so well. People enjoying being with other people. Friends and relatives getting together to share old times and create new ones.

My memories of this christmas seem quite vivid. How could they not be? This was a christmas unlike any other that I have had. The color of the memories in my mind are very different from the usual colors of my christmases. It was all so cold and so warm at the same time; so happy and so sad. I'm already looking forward to my next Canadian christmas.

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Daybreak over Sturgeon Lake. The frozen surface of the lake is textured by the blanket of snow that has fallen on top of the ice. The clouds swim in a puddle of oranges, pinks, blues, and whites behind the filigree of branches. This is Canadian winter.

Our Canadian Christmas: a walk on the lake

2010-02-07T07:09:00.001+08:00

One day, sometime after christmas, Lynn, Andrea, and I took a walk along the edge of the lake by which they live. When I say "along the edge of the lake" I mean on the frozen surface of the lake itself but remaining, all the while, close to the shore. While we had seen ski-doos (snowmobiles) racing across the lake for at least a week, local wisdom said that when walking on frozen lakes you should stay near the edge just to be safe. In a landscape full of holes full of water that freeze over in winter it is no surprise that local lore is rich in tales of those who didn't make it all the way across but drowned in the icy water beneath the hard crust. During my stay in Canada I heard many stories of people ending up under the ice, either as a result of ignorance, stupidity, plain bad luck, or things just not being what they appeared to be. I think I became a bit paranoid about the ice breaking up under my feet and me falling into an icy-cold bath and being paralysed by the cold shock and unable to react to save myself. However, we never strayed very far from the lake shore and so I was always reminding myself that if I did go through the ice, I would probably be able to stand on the lake bed.

On this particular day the sun was shining down from out of a deep blue sky. I don't think there was anyone else at home that day and so the three of us went out for a walk with the two dogs, Mila and Nabi. On one hand it was just a walk on the lake, something that people who live in these places can take for granted having grown up with such things as frozen water in (seasonal) abundance. But for me there was something about this particular walk that, in hindsight, seemed to catalyze the foundation of a real relationship between me and this foreign landscape. I think that it was after this walk that this landscape, so different from the place where I come from, finally started to feel like a home.

Ready to start walking: Mila, Andrea, and Lynn. Nabi has already run off somewhere. Notice the edge of the frozen crust just behind and to the right of Lynn. It has cracked and the pieces have been forced upwards, exposing the rocky lake bed underneath. Apparently after the lake had begun to freeze, the authorities lowered the water level in the lake although I can't remember why. The crust of ice also moves and cracks over time and so you get some interesting features showing up along the edge of the lake and on the surface. One of the most interesting things I learned about the frozen lake was that the lake will groan, or sound like it is groaning, as the ice moves and I did get to hear this during my time here.

A beautiful image. The distant lake shore divides the lake and the clouds.

This tall tree provides a perfect platform for an eyrie. In seasons gone by a family of large birds lived atop this tree. Now all that is left is the nest.

Between the lake and the hills, strange shapes can be seen.

This was once the home of a colony of paper wasps, now departed. [Wikipedia on Paper Wasps]

I'm really not sure how the snow and ice get into these amazing shapes and forms.

Lynn on the government dock.

Contrasts.

Up close at the edge of the ice under the trees. Perfect fragile slender icicles stand straight and tall. This is a microworld of wonders.

The forest looks particularly wild and forbidding as Lynn and Andrea gaze in.

Back to where we started by the wooden dock outside the family home. I knelt down on the ice and tried to take a good photo that would capture something of the hidden landscape under the ice. During the other seasons this rocky lake bed is under water and even in winter it is usually hidden but the weird movements of the ice sheet have allowed me a glimpse of what lies beneath. You might say that it's just a bunch of rocks after all but there's something timeless about the bed of rocks that lie sleeping forever under the water. There's something timeless about the lake and the ice and the change of the forest from green to brown and gray to green again. In this place the changing of the seasons is stark and vivid. In a few months everything will be water and green again. We'll have to wait until next winter to hear the lake groaning in the still night.

Our Canadian Christmas: The [inexact quantity] days of Christmas

2010-02-06T07:06:00.003+08:00

Christmas came to us on a variety of days, in a variety of locations, and varied in content with each rendition. The photos in this post aren't in chronological order and don't really form a narrative. For me, Christmas actually encompassed a lot of what we did in the entire two weeks that I was in Canada and covered everything from the eating and drinking to visiting friends and relatives, and witnessing and participating in christmas traditions. Christmas in Australia is a bit different from a cold christmas in the northern hemisphere and a lot of the cultural baggage that comes with the idea of christmas actually makes sense in a place like Canada: snow, snowflakes, making snowmen, deer, sleighs, very warm clothing, big hot meals, stockings, and the tradition of going out to get a tree to put inside the house. It was wonderful to experience my first white christmas knowing that all over the country people dressed as Santa Claus ringing their bells were warm and comfortable rather than sweating themselves into a puddle as they might back home in Australia.

You've got to have a christmas tree. This one was grown in a plantation of some sort and bought at the garden department of the local supermarket. It has been laded with an array of shiny baubles, ribbons, and ornaments, and of course there's an angel perched upon the very top. If I appear more stylish or chic than usual in this photo, it's probably because I am wearing my new Pierre Cardin pyjama pants.

Lynn and Jim check the state of the turkey while I meander around aimlessly with a glass of wine in my hand. For a good christmas you need food and lots of it; special food and lots of good drink. I have to say that I probably used the word "feast" and it's variants more during these two weeks than at any other time in my life. A typical usage might have been something like, "Ah, more feasting. Again.". There really was a good deal of feasting.

Another christmas tradition, the wee drop o' drink and cookies for Santa Claus. These were duly left on the mantle above the fireplace and had disappeared when I woke up the next morning. I suspect that they were consumed by representatives of yuletide tradition, be they Santa Claus or otherwhose.

More important feasting: Andrea and her grandmother, Pody, enjoy a hot drink topped with whipped cream and a couple of home-made cookies (or biscuits, depending on where you come from). Home-made cookies usually taste a lot better than what you can buy in the supermarket.

Fireplaces are also very important at christmas time, especially in Canada and other cold places. This one even has stockings hung upon it.

And more of that critical element, feasting, this time at a proper dinner table. This table is laid with a big white tablecloth, special golden platters, and cracker bonbons - very festive.

I really like this picture despite it being a little bit blurry. Three generations blow out the candles on uncle Dan's birthday cake. One of the many christmases was held to coincide with the celebration of Dan's birthday. This shot is post-cracker-bonbon-pull and Andrea is wearing the party hat from one of the crackers. Birthday cake counts as food and so this shot counts as one more photo included here to celebrate the feasting aspect of christmas.

You've got to have gift-giving too, of course. Andrea tells Jeremy about her gift to him: a sake set from Taiwan.

Dan admires the wonderful geisha costume worn by the puppy. Andrea's family runs an annual Secret Santa/Kris Kringle/Chris Kindle wherein everybody's name goes into a christmas lottery and everyone is allocated one family member for whom they should buy a christmas gift. I think that's a great idea as it deters Christmas gift-giving mania, allowing the focus to remain on other aspects of christmas (such as feasting). This year I drew Joey for whom I bought a puppy costume and an ice-block tray that produces ice-blocks in the shapes of the Titanic and icebergs; great idea but a pretty lame gift.

More gift-giving, this time from Andrea's father Roger. Some things are universal and translate from one side of the globe to the other without impairment. I could replace Canada with Australia and USA with New Zealand and I might as well be having christmas back at home.

Andrea and her grandmother Pody. Another critical element in a goodly christmas is visiting friends and relatives. If you're lucky the visit coincides with a feast and you can experience more of the feasting that I so enjoyed at christmas time.

Andrea's other grandmother Ruth. I was glad to be able to spend some time with both of Andrea's grandmothers while we were in Canada. They are very special to Andrea and I'm glad to know them.

Christmas wouldn't be complete without a compelling reason to stay indoors and the winter cold and snow gets pretty compelling if you stay out in it for very long. This is Roger and Bernie's house and I have always known what I wanted to say about this photo when the time came to write a comment about it: look at the size of that tree! That is a two-storey house.

More visiting (feasting not included in this photo although it was had and enjoyed). Andrea and I stand between Roger and Bernie in their dining room. Roger doesn't always look like that; he had just received this survival suit from Dustin and now they're ready to go ice-fishing together.

Dustin, Andrea's brother; I want to go fishing with him sometime when I get the chance. Perhaps not in winter. I think he's just come back from feasting elsewhere. I only just managed to keep the angel on the tree in the frame of this shot.

More visiting, this time at the Burns' residence. Erin and Andrea catch up with their cousin David. The glass in Erin's hand hints at the feast that was had.

And of the last image of this post is devoted to... feasting. Ahh - christmas.

Our Canadian Christmas: cross-country skiing

2010-02-05T07:08:00.002+08:00

According to that digital doyen of internet information, Wikipedia, cross-country skiing evolved in Fennoscandian countries in prehistoric times and was used to hunt deer, elk, and the like. The sport was apotheosised in 1924 when it became an Olympic event. I don't think I'm Olympic material. I don't think I'm even go-fast-downhill-on-skis material. However, these crushing realities didn't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying myself when given my first opportunity to try cross-country skiing. I would have tried it sooner but we don't have an awful lot of snow where I come from in Australia. In fact, my first experience of snow on the ground was as recently as 2007. [This guy has put together a comprehensive summary of all things snow in Western Australia, just in case you were interested]

I would have started this next paragraph with, "One fine December day in Bobcaygeon..." but, that day being well into the Canadian winter, your evaluation of a December day anywhere in Canada depends a lot on what you are used to and what your reference for comparison is. Therefore, going on my personal experience, I will have to begin differently: One freezing, chilling, toe-numbing December day in Bobcaygeon Andrea and I went to see her friends Paul and Val with big plans to do some cross-country skiing so that the non-native (me) could have the experience and also, of course, because it's fun and people like an excuse to have to leave their houses and do something. Paul and Val are very nice people and lent me some special skis, shoes, and ski poles. Andrea, being a local, had brought her own from home after extracting them from the garage in a fit of rummaging.

I'm sure I was trying to look charming and sophisticated here but I somehow come across as looking a bit drunk and clueless (but warm nonetheless and that is the important thing). This is me standing in the living room of Paul and Val's parents' house. And that's not a glass of alcohol although I don't know what it is. The beanie (or "tuque"), snow pants, and heavy jacket are all borrowed from Andrea's home base. At this stage I had consolidated my expectations about cross-country skiing under the banner Expect to Fall Down a Lot (but falling down a lot is okay).

Paul and Val. Nice couple at the start of a very promising life together and living in what seems to be a beautiful part of the world. We're at the start of our skiing trek here. I'm being generous with the word "trek". For everyone else it was a walk (or ski) in the park but for me I guess it was a gruelling trial by fire where I could only expect to get burned. Ouch! Okay, it was actually not bad at all. In fact, it was a great experience but more on that later in the wrap-up.

Val helps me lock my shoes into the skis. These skis are not smooth all the way along the underside: in the middle there is a section of tread which provides traction when pushed down against the snow and ice.

It's another beautiful day in Ontario as Paul tutors me on some of the basic principles of cross-country skiing.

Summer's crop has been harvested leaving the dead stalks standing in rows in the sleeping field. The frozen lake beyond remains frozen under the winter sun. And under that cold sunny sky we made our way through the landscape on pieces of fibreglass. As I was saying before, too early in the piece, I guess it was a gruelling trial by fire where I could only expect to get burned. Ouch! Okay, it was actually not bad at all. In fact, I really enjoyed having the opportunity to try skiing; it was fun and I barely fell down at all. Why? Because it was too late in the year for a fall. [that's a joke]

Our Canadian Christmas: prologue

2010-01-23T07:02:00.000+08:00

At the start of December Andrea left Taiwan and flew to Canada to begin a month-long stay with her friends and relatives. It was winter, of course, and while the wind was occasionally nipping at our heels in Taiwan it was biting off whole limbs in Canada. It wasn't long before Andrea was telling me about how cold it was back in Canada and that they had received the first snowfall of winter.

North America; Ontario province in Canada

I began my own preparations for the trip to Canada. Andrea would be there for five weeks before returning to Taiwan while I had the lesser luxury of only a two-week vacation. That meant three weeks apart; three weeks for me to do whatever I wanted to do. What did I do? I cleaned the place up and moved things around and generally kept myself busy until it was time to leave. I bought a new vacuum cleaner which has made the job of cleaning our apartment so much more satisfying. Before I left I wanted our apartment to be perfectly clean, much better than it usually was. However, even then I had a feeling that the effect would be lost on Andrea when we arrived back in Taiwan after spending close to twenty-four hours on planes and buses just to get back here; I knew that as soon as we walked into our apartment we would be dumping our luggage and well-travelled belongings on our couches and on our floor and then we would be detonating them in our search for the things we needed, buried deep at the bottom of our bags under sundry items of clothing and christmas gifts, leaving my clean apartment buried under the debris of a successfully completed vacation.

Bobcaygeon is located in the Kawartha Lakes area of southern Ontario (look for the red dot)

We arrived back in Taiwan at about 10pm on Sunday night (the 3rd of January) and faced the prospect of passing through the airport checkpoints before having to find a bus that would take us back to Tainan; we were arriving slightly too late to be able to catch the high-speed train. After a short wait in the airport bus station we were directed outside where we waited with a couple of other passengers for the shuttle van to another bus station. At that other bus station we boarded a large intercity coach bus which took us to central Tainan from where we caught a taxi home to our apartment in An-ping. By the time we walked into our apartment it was about 3:30pm and we were both hungry. We also knew that we were starting work before 9am that same morning. The chance of a freak typhoon causing the cancellation of all schooling was abysmally low so we hunkered down under the covers to make the most of the precious little time we would spend sleeping before a rude reawakening to our Taiwanese reality.

The City of Kawartha Lakes rubs shoulders with the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)

I had been to Canada only once before, in the spring of 2007 (northern hemisphere spring time). Andrea and I were working in South Korea in those days and I think our substantial trip to Canada was made possible by the large gap between semesters in the Gyeongsang University English Zone program. We spent five weeks in southern Ontario and Quebec although most of that time was spent close to Andrea's home base in Bobcaygeon. For me the trip gave me the chance to introduce myself into Andrea's world and to be introduced to all the people and places in it. The only thing in Canada that was familiar to me was Andrea and so I guess I was wholly out of place without a rock to fall back on, save Andrea (who would probably be a nice piece of basalt if she were a rock).

An interesting map showing the Kawartha Lakes area water sheds or catchments for the different lakes.

This two-week christmas trip was very different; almost everything was familiar and I had informed expectations and knew what I could look forward to. I actually had a great time in that I was able to let go and immerse myself in the environment and events around me. I was happy to be involved in almost anything that was happening and I really enjoyed being able to spend time getting to know Andrea's friends and relatives and family better. It's not always easy to be content and enthusiastic about being involved in whatever is happening and letting others do all the driving, so to speak, but I feel very happy about how I managed it this time; I might have done much worse in the past. I had a really wonderful time with Andrea's people and I feel quite close to them. I also established a relationship with the 'other side' of Andrea's country, that freezing cold, white winter world that Canada sometimes is, and I'm glad to say that this relationship is healthy and very positive albeit being much a one-way relationship (the Canadian winter probably wouldn't care if I was devoured by wolves in its snow).

Of course, it was all too short. In some ways after five weeks it was time for us to get back to our lives in Taiwan and resume living out our own, self-structured mandates, but I can see so much potential in Canada; there are so many things we didn't do and so many places we didn't go and so many people we didn't meet. I'm already looking forward to our next visit. And after having experienced the snow and freezing cold and learned about how people can manage in such an environment, I can say that I would even be content to visit again in the freezing winter.

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Daybreak over Sturgeon Lake. The frozen surface of the lake is textured by the blanket of snow that has fallen on top of the ice. Under the low angle of the light in the early morning a great rippled sea of subtle hills and troughs are revealed.

This wayward blog: why I need to change my MO

2010-01-15T06:55:00.002+08:00

This blog was originally intended to serve several aims. First and foremost it was initiated as a log of what was going on in our lives so that anybody who was interested in what we were doing could just check here. It was meant to save me time that otherwise would have been spent writing the same thing several times to several individuals about what we were doing. So the main purpose of this blog was to serve as the answer to the question, "What have you been up to lately?". Well, at first glance it seems to have done that but I now feel that the scope of the enterprise has become quite narrow in a way. The only events that get recorded here these days are travel events of which I managed to take photos. While the posts I construct for the blog are entertaining enough for anyone else, their format has become pretty predictable and restricted in some ways. These days a post begins when I have photos of an event and I write a frame of exposition around them; it no longer begins when I feel that I want to write something or that I think that I have something to write about. And this is where my blog has slowly and subtly left the main line and headed off down a lesser track to destinations predictable. The important point here is that my other big reason for having a blog in the first place was to serve as an outlet for my literary passions and this has been lost in the honing of this blog's MO: this blog started out as a life narrative with a lot of scope for practicing the craft of writing and has somehow shrunk to a photo-travel-narrative.

Everything I write in this blog these days is considered and thoughtful and polished because of the writer's equivalent of performance anxiety. In as much, it is rather formal and doesn't allow me to stretch much or experiment or simply practice writing in whatever form and way I want. I have only just realised that what I need to do is to begin another blog for personal expression and continue Sesquipedaustralian as a record of our time and travels. However, I want to broaden the scope of this blog to include a bit more of daily life and I also want to be able to post without having photos to anchor the trials and tribulations concerned; for example, if we experience a mini-trauma getting plane tickets and I want to write about the experience, then I am not going to have photos to illustrate what I am talking about; yet an experience like that might well be worth writing about and feature as a memorable experience, something we want to remember for better or worse.

So, outcomes...? I will begin another blog purely for personal expression where I can smear the joy of writing all over myself in an orgy of syntactical and grammatical perversion. And I will continue to post here on Sesquipedaustralian but broaden the scope of the content to include our experience of life in general. To be honest I didn't know what I was going to do or say when I started writing this post and I hadn't even thought of starting another blog. I think this post serves as a demonstration of therapy through writing. And I am happy at the prospect of being able to write about nothing in particular (in another place). Sometimes the best thing to do when you don't know what to write about is just to start writing: begin the process by writing anything at all and let your thoughts order themselves in the process. I guess it's a lot like meditation in that way.

Camping at Wushantou (again)

2010-01-07T06:55:00.001+08:00

As the year was drawing to a close and Andrea's departure from Taiwan to a Canadian christmas approached, we had time for one last peregrination out of Tainan and into the Taiwanese countryside. It was a beautiful time of year for camping; the heat and humidity had ebbed and made it comfortable enough to sleep inside our sleeping bags while the seasonal changing of the winds was not yet chilling us with hints of Siberian ice. And so we set out on a Saturday morning to cycle to Wushantou, a reservoir and park north-east of Tainan city. This journey has been covered before in this blog and so I'll take this opportunity to post the few, nicest photos that were taken.

Somewhere on the road to Wushantou, this giant gorilla begs for a refill beside a bar/restaurant. Why a giant gorilla? Perhaps the "Don't drink and drive" message was an afterthought and the gorilla was originally communicating something like Cheers! I'm a happy gorilla because I'm drinking beer! Perhaps. It makes a nice distraction for tourists regardless.

The campsite. There was no shortage of space for tent-pitching although we would like to have pitched right about where all those people are standing. There's a good patch of grass there and it's very close to the bathroom, useful for those moonlight urinal serenades.

On the Sunday morning, on our way out of the Wushantou Scenic Area, we stopped for a group shot before a field of flowers.

Just as we were getting back on our bikes we were greeted enthusiastically by this posse of pre-pubescent pedallers. I wouldn't expect anything less, in Taiwan, than enthusiastic greeting.

Just down the road, on the side of the road, corn. Road-side corn. And road-side water-caltrops (the red jester's-hat shape on the sign hanging from the red awning). And it was good corn too. A lovely spot to stop and snack while more water-caltrops where being harvested by water-caltrop farmers in the flooded field immediately to the right.

Temple roofs are a Taiwanese phenomenon worthy of being acknowledged as a tourist attraction in their own right. I'm sure you could write a book about the art, craft, form, history, cultural legacy and religious inspirations of temple roof decorations in Taiwan. This one caught my eye, the central feature occupying pride of place being a giant goldfish with flags sticking out of its back. Ah, Taiwan.

Rock-climbing near Hutoupi

2009-11-23T07:08:00.001+08:00

It has become a tradition for us that Thursday night is rock-climbing night. I teach an extra class in the evening after my regular teaching is over on Thursdays and as soon as I am able I race home to An-ping on our scooter so that I can make the quick transition to rock-climbing mode. In fact this is not really as dramatic as it sounds; it involves me changing clothes and helping Andrea to check that we've got everything we need. Then we usually meet our friends downstairs and scoot off together towards Hutoupi.

Very close to Hutoupi is an abandoned outdoor activity centre. This is where we climb our 'rocks'. Of course, they're not real rocks but instead we climb an artificial climbing wall covered in hand holds. The objective is to make our way from one side of the climbing wall (we usually start from the left) to the other side without touching the ground, relying only on whatever nooks, crannies, or crevices we can find on the wall for our hands and feet.

This activity seems to be really good for building upper body strength. I don't think we've ever managed to get all the way from the left end of the wall to the right end. Your arms get pretty tired pretty quickly when you're using them to move the rest of your body. As I said before, we usually go rock-climbing on Thursday nights and this means that we need to take our own lighting; the facility is abandoned and the only other lighting we get is from the moon or from street lights outside the facility. The photos in this post were taken on a weekend when we happened to be going to Hutoupi Lake (close by) and thought to make the most of being in the area and go for a climb.

In a scene reminiscent of Stallone's Cliffhanger John successfully negotiates a difficult corner and outsmarts John Lithgow (not shown in photo).

In this short movie I make it most of the way around the wall only to stop because a particular foothold became quite painful with most of my weight concentrated on it through a very small area of my foot.

John stretching after climbing.

This is me recovering after hurting my lower back. I hung by my hands for about thirty seconds thinking it would be good for my back, stretching it out and freeing up the vertebrae but, instead, as soon as I tried to put my weight back on it I experienced terrible pain as if nerves in my spinal column were being pinched between the edges of vertebrae. It was awful but not the first time in my life that I have hurt myself after trying to stretch my back. Perhaps I'm better off just leaving a consistent weight on it. I really hope that I don't suffer serious back problems when I get older.

River Tracing: Liangshan Waterfall near Majia Township

2009-11-11T07:22:00.003+08:00

What is river tracing? It basically involves following the course of a river, travelling upstream by walking, swimming, clambering over and up rocks and rocky outcrops and the occasional use of ropes to assist in ascending and descending where required. River-tracing is called other things in other countries and it is very closely related to canyoning/canyoneering (Wikipedia reference).

Back in July while Andrea's sister Erin was here we joined a river-tracing expedition upstream along part of a river in the vicinity of Majia township. The expedition had actually been initiated and arranged by somebody/somebodies at a school John used to work at and I think it was meant to be one of those extracurricular, getting-to-know-your-fellow-employees events. I think everyone involved (apart from the two guides) were employees of, or otherwise connected in some way to John's former school. And then there was us: Andrea, Erin, John, and me.

We, the four random tag-along foreigners, met up in our neighbourhood and then drove our scooters to the school. After a wait of some twenty minutes everyone piled into the two buses parked in front of the school and we all headed off to Majia township in Pingtung county, south-east of Tainan.

We arrived in Majia and stopped in the carpark next to the Majia Visitor Centre, adjacent to the dirty canal that constitutes a (lower) part of the water-course that we would be tracing. The next step involved getting suitably outfitted for scrambling over rocks and through water. We all picked out a life-vest, helmet, and pair of gloves. Our guides also got themselves ready and kitted-out. Somehow we looked slightly ridiculous while our guides looked completely natural and professional. Perhaps that was because they were wearing yellow.

The pre-river-trace group shot. Everyone is excited, anticipating the imminent adventure and potential hazards. I seem to be the only one without a helmet. Oops.

A baptism of water; cold, cold water. This is the first area of open water you come to after you walk from the carpark towards the falls. We look unashamedly hopeless. Hapless even.

A second baptism of water. This time we were lowered, one at a time, by one of our guides into this narrow gully of which the water shoots out. The point of this is that you get to ride the white water as it carries you away into the pool in the foreground. The reality is that there are large rocks under the surface that you hit your lower-back and tailbone on, injuries that remain painful for weeks after the fact. After this experience I became immediately cynical about the whole expedition and had to fight off the urge to complain incessantly about my tailbone.

Like an ill-trained troop of new-recruits we struggled to surmount small boulders lurking beneath the surface and fought to overcome uneven footing on the bottom of the riverbed. Our unprofessionalism was hard to hide and my stoic coutenance rang hollow. I was sore about my tailbone and wanted a nice hot coffee.

At this juncture, John was asked by the guide to position himself at the base of this small fall in order to help the other river-tracers surmount it and to cushion any falls or slips that might occur. Practically, this involved John applying an upwards force to the body attempting the surmounting and I can still remember him doing his best not to touch anyone's bum.

This was our rock, an island in a stream of turbulence, a solid foundation from which we could contemplate the chaotic movement of the waters rushing by in their attempt to get from up to down as efficiently as possible. This was our rock.

That was our rock.

An action shot: me making a flying leap at the water. You can feel the tension and import of the moment. It's moments like this one at which I think perhaps a career in acting and drama are not out of the question but very much a potent, unrealised certainty. There's something very 'Stallone's Cliffhanger' about this.

Two sisters enjoy being able to be in the same place and time together.

Insert caption here.

I chose the most flattering shot of Andrea I could find.

After a slow and fairly relaxed slog up-river for a couple of hours it was time for luch and I was impressed when I realised that the extra bags a few of us had been carrying actually contained everything required to make lunch for the whole group. When we had suited up back at the bus, one of the guides asked me if I could carry an extra bag on my back. The bag contained two large lightweight metal drums or bowls. I found out at lunch time that these were cooking pots and the guides prepared a kind of noodle soup in them. Being alternately wet and drying out had started to get to me and I was on the verge of beginning to shiver when we stopped for lunch; a bowl of steaming hot noodle soup was a wonderful thing to have.

Adjacent to the picnic area was a small lake through which the river ran. The water course entered the lake in a spectaular fashion, creating a waterfall on the far side. A few of us tried jumping off the rocks into the exploding water. Good fun.

The ascent to the final waterfall of our river-tracing and the highest point of the hike. I don't know exactly which waterfall is Liangshan Falls but this might as well be it.

Seasoned river-tracers all:

Made their way to Liangshan Fall,

Bumps and scrapes were no deterants

Stolidly they fought the currents

Up outcrops and over boulders

(some with pots upon their shoulders)