Yet another typhoon survived

No, it's not a big deal. I mean, the winds in the latest typhoon were clocked at 140 m.p.h. or maybe 165 (my dad heard 165 but BBC said the wind measuring system topped out at 140, so who knows), but we're fine. Some siding or roofing plastic was littering the streets the day after, oh, and I forgot to get a photo of this guy working on his roof in the middle of the storm. But really, no problems for us. No flooding, we got a day off school, which we couldn't do much with, but it was still nice to have a two day weekend. Normally we have to work some on Saturday, get Sunday off, and then have to put in hours on Monday, so that was kinda pleasant, tho' we don't get paid.

So, we didn't go to the beach like we'd planned. Bummer, but I did go running just ahead of the storm again. Running in Taipei is an odd exercise, pardon the pun. I do see other people running, but it seems like an unusual activity. I think 'cause of the heat and humidity. Personally, I gave up running during the day weeks ago. Running in the evening isn't bad at all, and I think it makes the days a bit more tolerable. I still come home covered in sweat and probably a fair amount of condensed humidity, but I'm surprised every time by how the heat helps me loosen up while I'm moving.

Getting out of the city is an odd adventure. What I can't figure out is how I found a path to the park in the first place. I knew where the river was, so I started running east, but I had to bend right after a couple of blocks, then cross a major street and bend a little left, then cross an off ramp and run up three flights of stairs, run over the bridge and back down (which includes running down stairs, under the bridge, back up stairs and finally down more stairs). This takes about six minutes.

This's the Wild Duck, Goose Park Marie and I visited a couple weeks ago. Here, I can run without worry of scooters, cars, bikes, random pedestrians, and cumulative exhaust. Well, the bikes and pedestrians are still there, but in the evening there's far fewer of both on the river trail. Not a lot of lights there, but it's a comfortable trail. I haven't tripped yet. And the city views are just great. I keep thinking about taking the camera, but 360 degree views of a major city at night from a dark nature preserve just don't translate to film.

Oh, really funny. Go running in Taipei with your iPod and have James Brown's "Living in America" and Blues Brothers doing "Goin' Back to Miami" on there. First, it's a ridiculous sense of juxtaposing the location and the music, then it really hammers in that you're not in the U.S. any more.

Next time, I expect, we'll go to the beach and I'll have plenty of photos of playing in the sun, surf, and sand. There has to be an upside to 30 C this late in the year, right?