February 27, 2022
February 27th
sunny Sunday
My legs feel slightly stiff from yesterday's long ride, but the sun is out and Debbie likes the idea of coffee in town, so as the time gets close to lunch, we wheel our cheap bikes outside and head towards the small river.
It's warm and my fleece jacket comes off at the junction with the main road. Once across, the sun is just coming onto a wall and a window I've spotted a few times. It's really the metal security grill I like, although this one has been painted with a dour russet paint. I take a snap.
The house itself is empty. Some of the glass is broken and we peer inside the ground floor room and it seems like it caught fire at some point. It's just used as a storage space by the looks of it and the owner is likely a builder or construction worker.
There are similar metal grills on other houses in the neighborhood. They were likely made by the same guy and have a triangular motif incorporated in them. There are various designs in Taiwan.
Some of the houses still have wooden doors and the tiles look original. They are like a mosaic with each being postage stamp size.
Vendors have stalls selling veg, while others just arrange what they have on the road. We briefly explore one side street that's busy and shops have more veg for sale. It's a busy little community and you sense everyone knows each other here and we get glances which say we're different.
There are stools and chairs outside houses and we pass an elderly lady sat directly outside her home with her anodized walker next to her plastic patio chair. As in most streets, there's no sidewalk (pavement). She's wearing a large bamboo hat, and a mask as required, and must be 80. I've heard people say it's mainly the elderly like her who die from Covid, as if their lives don't count for much. She seems content to watch the world go by outside her house and enjoy some warm spring sunshine. It's doubtful she gets to see very much more than this. She says Hi to Debbie.
Just along the lane is a man working from his ground floor room, which is like a garage as many are in Taiwan. The door is fully open and he's using woven bamboo sheets and allows me to take a snap and tells Debbie he's making screens that people use indoors. The music he's listening to is Buddhist chanting, which is peppered with the sound of his staple gun.
We don't go to the small river and cross over the 112, which is a main road, and ride towards town down a few narrow lanes before getting back on the main road. It drops gently towards the train station in the city and it's lined with shops of all kinds that have those all too common signs outside that tell you that this is Asia. Debbie and I used to live in the area when I first arrived in Taiwan in 1999.
After riding under the train tracks, we make our way to the main river and its bike path. We go to where there are some stepping stones and push our bikes along a gravel path to get to them, with tall pampas-like grass flanking us. We're basically downtown, but it feels like an adventure.
The river is quite high what with all the rain that's fallen recently and some of the concrete blocks that are the stepping stones are being washed over with flowing water, but thankfully they're not slippery.
I set up my small flexible tripod and take a few snaps of us both. While I do this my bike topples over and nearly falls into the water. The kickstand is crap.
We go down the northern bank to the house I salvaged some windows from expecting it to have been demolished, but it's still there. I take a snap of one of the remaining windows from inside the empty shell.
A young man is sat alone on a tree stump nearby wearing a pair of bulky VR goggles and using a small drone that we hear before we see. It's making an annoying whizzing sound as he makes it do dive-bombs over a nearby field and my guess is his avatar is a Superman-like character. It just strikes me as a sad experience.
We're ready for lunch and head into town to a place we sometimes eat at that sells a variety of dishes. My regular is a beef patty and eight steamed dumplings and that's what I have. It's around noon which is a bit early and there are not many people sat with us.
Our goal of having coffee is about to be realized and we ride around the block to a Louisa where we get a table outside. Debbie treats me to a small lemon tart that I could eat in one bite, but she gets the first one before I demolish what's left in two.
There's not much for us to do in town as we don't need much, but I do have a watch with me that needs a new battery, so we ride to one place I know that has them. It's close to the train station.
The women says she can't replace the battery and I ask Debbie to go inside and find out why, then I know another few shops nearby that might have more idea of how to change a battery and the guy there does it in a jiffy. The working watch will now be a gift to one of my grandsons. It's a chunky thing that looks quite militaristic, with a compass and a thermometer on its face.
One the way home we pass a small park and cherry blossom is out as well as a hoard of locals who want to take photos of it. We join them.
It's a frustrating experience, with people spending ages to take a simple snap of someone posing - what should take 1,000th of a second spans five minutes or more. It's a relief to finally get going.
Debbie's bike is making a noise and I know it's her front changer that's fouling the chain when she's in the middle chain-ring. We stop and I inspect it and go through the gears, but there's nothing to do without tools, so we ride home accompanied with that familiar grating noise.
Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 1,496 km (929 miles)
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