Sweatin' to the oldies (in Chinese)

More mountain climbing! Yay! Until you get about two-thirds up and then, phooey.

But before you go hiking, gotta have a healthy breakfast.















These are called "chicken paws" in the menu. They just gave them to Marie at a fried chicken place she goes to. She says they must like her to give her free food. I shouldn't disagree but I wonder if this isn't the fast food version of the horse head in your bed.

We chucked the whole bucket. Marie said we should leave 'em out for the local dogs, but I'm worried about local rats and cockroaches.

Speaking of: I've recently learned that window cleaner makes a surprisingly effective roach killer. Part of life in the tropics, you have to deal with the occasional roach. They get in through the AC. I've never seen Marie hide under the covers until a roach flew in the bedroom one morning. She said she heard it go "oooph" when it hit the far wall. I went for the cleaner while she left the room, somehow without touching the floor....

Really cleaner works 'cause we've only seen a couple this entire summer, tho' we still have a lot of summer to go, here. Something about drowning them in ammonia. At least the area's clean after it's dead, which's a plus when it greets you on the kitchen counter. And I should be grateful it just walked out in the light and found me and not Marie.

But who cares!

The educational part of my hike yesterday was how I had a map and a guide book and I still ended up on the wrong mountain. I think I was one mountain west of Yangming mountain. I was definately on Zhongzheng mountain but I must've made a wrong turn at Albuquerque, so to speak.















I was really glad to find these trail signs, even if they took me to the wrong mountain they were rather comforting. Tho' it's pretty funny to see them while you're still in town.
















I love how people will build a row of three and four story apartments across the road from nothing. Sure, everyone wants the view, but I'm used to it being out the back of the apartment-house-condo.

I was aiming at "the tallest mountain north of Taipei" Yangming mountain. At not quite 1,200 meters I thought it'd be okay. I keep forgetting to convert. So I set out to walk up instead of taking the bus to a trailhead.















In my defense, I did get to see some really great scenery like this tower.
















And this temple or something like it. And it was a really nice day. The high point was about 94 so with the humidity it felt like 111 (so says weather.com). But I had a lot of fluids and a hat and lightweight clothing. I spent my day dodging from shade to shade and I was fine.

I don't know what this building is, but it was amazingly yellow. It's like a like detergent ad. As in, "gee Marge, how do you keep your building colors so bright?"















I'm still working on getting details of what this place is, 'cause I want to know. It was just on the side of this suburban road on the side of the mountain. Obviously, it's not little, but it wasn't as eye-popping as most temples are with the bright colors and dragons. More like a hotel, but it's not in a good place for that.















This's how I spent most of the afternoon. Some group had cut and placed more of the footpath stones through this bamboo grove. It was kinda stifling in there, but it was shaded, so there was a trade off. And every few hundred feet the trail would cross a road and I could get a breeze.

The road for cars and scooters, which was not made for two cars to pass each other, weaved back and forth, while the hiking trail shot straight up the side. It was a great physical example of switchbacks versus straight-up-the-mountain hiking.

I kinda like the straight-up idea, but I found myself considering each stairway and if I wanted to go slower and longer. I took a couple short curves on the road. Fortunately, the park at the top was the only destination and Tuesday afternoon wasn't a big hiking time, and I could hear everything coming.















This's an example of how confused this city and country is about pedestrians, or how comfortable people are with traffic, I haven't figured it out, myself. I'm just really careful when I hike these places.

You can see next to that black-on-yellow arrow in the middle, there's a railing. There are benches there and even a trashcan (which's really unusual for Taipei) and the view is great, terrific even. So they want people to come and rest and look, but you can see the shoulders of the road... there aren't any. Weirdos.

I did finally make it to the parking lot at the top of the mountain. At the time I still thought it was Yangming and I thought a bus would stop there and carry me home. So I decided to dig in and climb just another five hundred meters for the view, even tho' the parking lot was pleasant and pleasantly breezy after an hour or more in bamboo groves.
















But I did learn that when they say .5 km, they almost certainly mean, straight up. I found this sign after what felt like a half mile. It says, you have only walked .2 km, weenie.















I did meet this guy on the way up. He was very happy to sit and have me scratch him. He didn't want me to leave, but he didn't want to come up with me. I guess he'd seen the view plenty of times.















And it'd become a mantra for the day, "and what did I find when I got there? More stairs!" It was staggering after the afternoon, but it was worth it.



I did an entire 360 pan. The mountains behind this one are obviously larger. That was disappointing, especially how big they still looked. I had to save those for another day. Obviously it doesn't do as much in this small frame, but it's overlooking the entire Taipei basin and as the camera pans it goes from east to west. You can see all the way from downtown Taipei and 101 to Danshuei and the Taiwan Strait.

The amazing part is, I'm on the wrong mountain. This's only about 650 meters up. It sounds better when I say it's a little more than 2,000 feet, but until I got to the parking lot, I thought I'd climbed almost 4,000 feet. Talk about a let down, or a didn't-go-so-high.

But it was still a lot of fun. I did discover that by not being on the right mountain, there was no bus to take me back. I had to walk down a half hour before I found a bus stop, which took me to the metro, which took me home.

Oh, in the video, technically, I think you can see our neighborhood, if not our house.















And I saw this and I remembered mom telling me I needed to take pictures with people in them. So, there you go, ready-made self-portrait opportunity.