A parade of gleaming, purring Porsche motorcars, in the main, the latest and greatest models, glided up the Jinshan-Yangminshan mountain road as we neared the bottom of the hill heading the other way. We counted a dozen, then another dozen then a few more stragglers including a brand new 911 painted hot pink! Everyone here seems to have to be in some kind of club or another: if it’s not cars, it’s bikes, Harleys, BMWs, Ducatis. The gear has to be seen to be believed…we’ve taken many years to reach the point where we feel properly equipped for our bike trips: the locals here sport the very best of literally everything, straight away!
It certainly makes for some interesting viewing as we negotiate the winding road over the mountain to the beach as we did this morning at 7.30.
Yesterday, we had a pleasant lazy morning eating pancakes for brekky while reading the 1st installment of Herald clippings from Mum, which arrived mid-week. Having caught up with some Newcastle news, we watched the delayed telecast of Friday night footy and I fielded a few text and phone messages from the boys. Josh was keen to have a box after the league and so we arranged to meet in at school at 12.30. I had a pleasant surprise when I arrived to find that Wal and Shaun were joining us. We only had three sets of gloves, so we set up a little circuit on the bag, the focus pads and the speedball with someone taking the focus gloves. The air-con was not on and we were a lather of sweat very quickly. It was a great workout and we had a great laugh as well as gasping for air between the 2-minute rounds! After that, we all left feeling very proud of ourselves (especially since the previous two Saturdays had been spent recovering from the Friday night). We made plans to head to the beach the next morning if there was any action.
Cass did a much less pleasant task while I was away and headed over in the late morning heat to the Wellcome to do the grocery shopping. We were both glad to get back home to the air-conditioning and decided to head out later to an early tea at Chili’s. We had a beautiful meal as usual and were surprised by a TV station doing a “Vox-Pop” outside the cinema entrance below. Mercifully, we didn’t run into too many people we knew( a constant danger at Chili’s!) and headed home with a detour to the 101 warehouse where I bought a couple of T-shirts. I’m a complete sucker for these ‘Buy one get one free’ deals and even succumbed to the less generous ‘Buy two, get one free’ offer that was on!!
We marveled at the succulent greenery dripping across the road in the mountains as we drove through the national park this morning: it’s such a contrast to back home where the dust bowl drought areas we rode through on our recent trip stand in stark contrast. The conditions are ripe for rich and lush growth: plants seem super-sized and robust; they vary in type as you move down the slopes and amaze you with the density of their cover. I like to distract myself by looking at the plants: if I concentrate too much on the unbelievably bad driving (slooooww and incompetent!) that we witness, I’d get far too stressed.
The end goal, the beach, was flat as a table, but the sun was beating down and the water was relatively clear and blue. Cass and I had a very enjoyable swim and loll around before Wal and Josh turned up. Josh brought a tennis ball, so all sorts of action followed till we all gave up exhausted! We paid our $10NT (about 50 cents) each to get the top of the tap from the shop so we could use the water near the car park to wash our feet…. lesson here: don’t take for granted the free taps, showers etc back home, let alone get me started on the bubblers!!
We’ve had a good week and a great weekend: Cass says we need to get back to work to have a rest!