Taiwan Expectations
This was going to be a bike post but drifted into a Taiwan post. The following paragraph is the biking content. After that, Taiwan.
Incessant pounding is what I feel like I'm doing to myself right now. Another 4:30 alarm and another hour of pre-dawn beatings. One more day of work, then we have all day tomorrow to get ready to go. It will be 7:30 before you know it tomorrow and off to the airport. At some point I'll get on some bike before we leave. I was hoping for the road but they're saying rain all day.
It's looking like I won't have any access to a bike for almost a week over there. This vacation is shaping up to be not what I hoped for at all. No bike, no day trips, no plans. All for $5000! My in-laws have bailed on flying over with us so it's now 20+ hours of flight with just the 2 of us to entertain Julia. At this point I'm absolutely sure to have a blast because my expectations are gone.
I have these extremely fond memories of our first trip to Taiwan. We had our own apartment in Taipei for 2 weeks. We had a place to stay in Lotung when we wanted. When we woke up we could walk out into the neighborhood at dawn and find all sorts of little shops making breakfast food. Breakfast is awesome there, just awesome. We had all sorts of relatives to show us all over the area. It was a perfect trip. By far that was the best vacation I had ever been on.
The trip the following year wasn't as good, for whatever reason. We had seen all the same things the year before, so none of it was new. My expectations were really high which of course hurts any experience you have because a mental construction is damn near impossible to live up to. It was still a good trip, but just not the same.
Now we've lost the apartment. We're not free to go to Lotung until the following week because Nat's parents are being weird. We'll be staying in a business-mall-type area which doesn't afford you the same ability to wake up and wander the streets at dawn. We're obviously saddled with a nap in the middle of every day which limits our mobility. And it's entirely possible I'll be sleeping on a couch for half the trip. The Salad Days have passed, for sure.
It's a lot of expectations and memories at play here. I had some minimum set of expectations and was actually getting excited about the trip but then yesterday another set of restrictions was thrown at me. So it all fell away again and I've almost given up at this point. I spent the last 12 hours wrapping my head around what we can and can't do. I haven't quite come to terms to what it practically means yet. But I have a whole sleep-deprived day at work to get there.
In the end I'm sure it will be cool, if not a bit more limited than I would like. Some of that is because of Julia and I understand that and, of course, wouldn't trade her for the world let alone a vacation of freedom. Aside from the flight there which plain and simply is going to suck, it will more than likely be fun with food and food and food. One of my main objectives is to get my food on, and my brother-in-law is a few inches shorter than me and roughly 35 pounds heavier. So he's got my back on that count. With the bike, I'm wrapping my head around taking a week off then getting some miles in down in Lotung once we get there. Not ideal, but it will have to do.
I'm sure you'll hear all about it in the coming weeks. One thing I probably won't lack is some idle time (daily naps) and a computer (this BB was probably made in Taiwan). Hopefully I can post some pics as well.
"What are you preparing? You're always preparing. Just go!" -Dark Helmet
Incessant pounding is what I feel like I'm doing to myself right now. Another 4:30 alarm and another hour of pre-dawn beatings. One more day of work, then we have all day tomorrow to get ready to go. It will be 7:30 before you know it tomorrow and off to the airport. At some point I'll get on some bike before we leave. I was hoping for the road but they're saying rain all day.
It's looking like I won't have any access to a bike for almost a week over there. This vacation is shaping up to be not what I hoped for at all. No bike, no day trips, no plans. All for $5000! My in-laws have bailed on flying over with us so it's now 20+ hours of flight with just the 2 of us to entertain Julia. At this point I'm absolutely sure to have a blast because my expectations are gone.
I have these extremely fond memories of our first trip to Taiwan. We had our own apartment in Taipei for 2 weeks. We had a place to stay in Lotung when we wanted. When we woke up we could walk out into the neighborhood at dawn and find all sorts of little shops making breakfast food. Breakfast is awesome there, just awesome. We had all sorts of relatives to show us all over the area. It was a perfect trip. By far that was the best vacation I had ever been on.
The trip the following year wasn't as good, for whatever reason. We had seen all the same things the year before, so none of it was new. My expectations were really high which of course hurts any experience you have because a mental construction is damn near impossible to live up to. It was still a good trip, but just not the same.
Now we've lost the apartment. We're not free to go to Lotung until the following week because Nat's parents are being weird. We'll be staying in a business-mall-type area which doesn't afford you the same ability to wake up and wander the streets at dawn. We're obviously saddled with a nap in the middle of every day which limits our mobility. And it's entirely possible I'll be sleeping on a couch for half the trip. The Salad Days have passed, for sure.
It's a lot of expectations and memories at play here. I had some minimum set of expectations and was actually getting excited about the trip but then yesterday another set of restrictions was thrown at me. So it all fell away again and I've almost given up at this point. I spent the last 12 hours wrapping my head around what we can and can't do. I haven't quite come to terms to what it practically means yet. But I have a whole sleep-deprived day at work to get there.
In the end I'm sure it will be cool, if not a bit more limited than I would like. Some of that is because of Julia and I understand that and, of course, wouldn't trade her for the world let alone a vacation of freedom. Aside from the flight there which plain and simply is going to suck, it will more than likely be fun with food and food and food. One of my main objectives is to get my food on, and my brother-in-law is a few inches shorter than me and roughly 35 pounds heavier. So he's got my back on that count. With the bike, I'm wrapping my head around taking a week off then getting some miles in down in Lotung once we get there. Not ideal, but it will have to do.
I'm sure you'll hear all about it in the coming weeks. One thing I probably won't lack is some idle time (daily naps) and a computer (this BB was probably made in Taiwan). Hopefully I can post some pics as well.
"What are you preparing? You're always preparing. Just go!" -Dark Helmet
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