August 8th

August 8, 2021

the street market with g

In Chinese 'eight' is pronounced 'ba' and August 8th 'ba ba' - which sounds a little like 'papa' - so today is Fathers' Day here. It's irrelevant to me.

The past few days have seen me at home keeping dry. You get the idea from the colorful screenshot below.

The southwest of Taiwan has seen the worst flooding, but the rain has been heavy here in the North, too, and it was pouring down when I went to bed last night. Consequently it was a surprise to see the sky cloudless and blue this morning, with the summer heat back with a vengeance.

Not being able to ride, I spent one afternoon carefully plotting a nice route out to the east coast on Google Maps. It's hard to stay off the main routes but there are now a bunch of screenshots on my computer that need to be edited. They only take me past the halfway mark, so there's more planning to do.

After teaching online till gone 11:00 AM, the plan is to ride into town to meet g for a look around the Sunday market and a nearby secondhand shop, and - of course - get a coffee.

Apart from trying to capture a woman riding her bike at speed the wrong way down the 114 while holding an umbrella, the ride into town is an uneventful 15 minutes. I find g waiting outside Starbucks as agreed, but we walk a block to a Louisa and find we're the only two customers.

There are laminated A4 notices saying each table is to have just one person, but we share, as the perspex screen between them isn't going to make a lot of difference. However, one of the staff comes over after 15 minutes to say that one of us must move seats. It's less than a foot away, but my guess is the shop could be fined for not strictly following Covid regulations.

My bike stays locked outside and we walk a couple of blocks to the street market that mainly has cheap clothing. We try and keep in the shade because it's really hot and my shirt starts to stick to my body after only a minute.

The Sunday market is usually full of young migrant workers from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, but most of them are currently confined to their work dormitories and the street has very few people.

We spend a few minutes looking through a rack of second-hand shorts before crossing over to look at some more and we both end up with a pair. In fact g buys two pairs. They're only US$5 each.

There's a second-hand shop on the other side of the railway tracks that g wants to check out. It sells all sorts, but no clothing.

Thankfully the two-storey shop has air conditioning blasting away. When I've been before it's not been switched on and looking through the stuff is hard work and my shirt has damp patches in no time.

It's clown costumes that g wants (I didn't ask), but there's nothing like that. I just buy a Nylon shoe bag with the Tiger Beer logo on for eight Taiwanese dollars - 25 cents - thinking it'll come in handy when touring.

We go back across the railway via an elevator and footbridge and walk in the heat to Louisa and say so long.

Maybe I'll ride out to where g lives again soon, perhaps after cycling out to the coast. I could get a train back, like I usually do. We'll just have to see what the weather's like during the next few days. It'll be hot, that's for sure.

Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 628 km (390 miles)

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