Normbrero

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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Taiwan Day 30 - Not Much

The trip is probably more or less winding down at this point. Even though we have 2 weeks left, we're at the stage where entire days go by and absolutely nothing happens. We didn't have breakfast until 11:00 today, and we did nothing of note that I can really even pass off as interesting to the reader, other than something which we saw down in Luodong which I'll mention in a little bit.

I woke up at 5:30 with intentions of going out for a 3 hour bike ride. I made coffee, ate some leftover pizza for breakfast, edited my entry from yesterday, posted the blog, then looked outside and saw it was raining sideways and it was 50 degrees. Then I went back to bed.

Eventually I woke up again at 8:30, fully dressed - just as I fell asleep. I got up, made another coffee, and sat on the couch thinking that I'd get out eventually and that I could use more sleep. As you could probably guess, I neither went back to sleep nor went for a bike ride. The big issue was that I left all my cold weather gear down in Luodong. So the thought of going in these gale-force winds with summer head cover, summer gloves, summer jersey, and summer shoes seemed like a really bad idea.

As I said earlier, breakfast was at 11:00, and it was nothing you could describe as "special":



Rest of the morning was sitting around talking family politics, which is what a lot of these Calvin trips turn into. With the new year coming up, it ramps up because of the various cash & gift requirements associated with the holiday. At this point, I should be cringing at all of this, but it's sort of like the last few days before your wedding when the knee-jerk reaction about what you're spending has been beaten out of your system. As long as I can get my bike explorations in, I'm happy.

Breakfast was so late we skipped lunch and hopped in the car and headed back south to Luodong. Getting there was a breeze, and now that I've got a reason to learn the area around Taipei I should have it down in the next 2 weeks. With my bike explorations bound to be mostly northern-based, I'm going to need to learn the area quickly.

When we got back the fire department was hanging up some banners for the new year celebration:



After a quick stop at the apartment we went out to run some errands, and came across this. Here's my first video of the trip, completely raw because I don't have the time to edit anything. Once I get home I'll have more videos from the trip but for now you get the raw footage:

Video of the day

However, it gets even more absurd at times, with strippers at funerals?

This is how funerals go in Taiwan. Nuts. After that we ran into Crash, then went to the bakery, the 7-11 for some Sam Adams, to the night market for strawberries, grabbed some pancake batter from the market down the street, then back the other way for fruit, and finally the corner store for milk. All of this was within a good half mile square, at most.

Julia dug the strawberries:



For dinner, I ate Julia's leftover pancakes and drank beer, which is a solid complement to the McDonald's and nothing I had for my first 2 meals. No pic of the day, it's in the video.

Full picture set of the day here: Flickr set or slideshow.

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