Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Scoot

Kending, Taiwan on a winter Monday is a quiet place. This little tourist town lives for the weekend traveler. Saturday night the town bustles with lively vendors, random fireworks displays and thousands of Chinese visitors walking the night market. On Monday they are gone. We decide that this is the perfect time and place for us to cut our teeth on renting some scooters to explore the area. While Brian grew up on a dirtbike, I have never ridden a motorized bicycle of any sort so this was certain to be a new experience. But hey, I thought, how hard can it be? We walk down to the bike shop and negotiate a price of 700NT (about $22) for the bikes and after a two second description of the workings of the machine I hop on, hit the gas and cruise away, with Brian close on my heels. We've been instructed we need to get some gas and fortunately right in front of us is a station so we pull in and fill up. It is easy! We pull out from the station and head down the highway looking for a less busy road to test out our wheels. I spot one in front of me, turn on my blinker (man I'm good) and bank into the turn. To my surprise, I begin to lose my balance, and slipping, grab tightly onto the handlebars to keep from falling off. This grip hits the gas and sends me accelerating straight into the ditch! Realizing my impending doom I leap from the bike, fly off and land dashingly onto my feet! Nervously laughing, I turn to watch the bike crash onto the street smashing the left side mirror. Whew. Not the best moment I've had on this trip.

I manage to repair the mirror (mostly) and after a 1/2 hour of practice around an old graveyard I've actually got the hang of having the accelerator on the handlebar. We head off to explore the area, luxuriating in our new found freedom. The day proves a smashing success and after many hours of riding, we sit down to watch a beautiful sunset off the southern coast of Taiwan.

Tuesday, after our usual breakfast at 7-11 (milk tea and milk bread), we catch the bus to Kaohsiung which is to be our last stop after 10 days in Taiwan.

In the past few days I have come to realize that my appetite for "single serving friends" is rapidly diminishing. In each place we visit there are opportunities to meet and spend short periods of time with many different people. This is one of the joys of traveling. However, after a month of touring 3 different countries and many different cities, taking the time to form more significant friendships is beginning to feel necessary. This means staying somewhere for more than just a few days. We knew before we left the necessity of traveling fairly quickly while in more expensive countries. I look forward to slowing down further as we enter some less expensive, and warmer, parts of this continent.

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