May 1, 2025
May 1st
Lunch in Puxin (埔心)
Like the intro' to any Bond film, an action sequence is in order. Just keep your expectations in check, as there'll be no physical altercations with the likes of Goldfinger's henchman Oddjob. Here you're dealing with an oddball.
Riding out to Puxin, a district within this congested, sprawling city, seems about right, as there's a Starbucks there and the route is either along a riverside cycle path, or small side streets. It's about an hour's ride each way.
My Canon is slung over my right shoulder and I'll be looking out for mops and brooms: these mundane objects have become my latest subject to take snaps of and a high percentage of buildings here have one or two of these implements clearly visible out front. However, it's not the actual mop or broom, but the overall composition that I'll be looking to photograph.
It doesn't take long to spot one leaning against what appears to have been a scooter repair shop. Letters on the roller door spelling YAMAHA have been thinly overpainted, but the circular logo remains and a large paper notice on the adjacent door asks drivers not to park, as trucks need access. It ends with 3Q, which in Chinese is pronounced San-Q... thank you. There's a piece of what appears to be junk mail sticking out of the slot.
It's about 10 more minutes' of cycling in a westerly beeline along fairly narrow streets to get to a shallow river which has a cycle path running down its eastern bank. It's much quieter here with just a couple of people walking along in the warm, intermittent sunshine, with fields on my left planted with rice that's grown to shin-height. A chunky concrete fence replicating bamboo, but which fools no-one, borders the river that in my opinion is a maximum of two or three feet deep.
There's a turtle sunning itself on a smooth rock below and it gets its photo taken before I place the Canon on one of the concrete 'bamboo' posts to take a self-timed shot riding towards the camera. I forgot to bring a tripod.
It's frustrating that this Mark III has a programmable timer that's fixed at 10 seconds, whereas my previous Mark II, which got smashed, allowed me to delay it up to a 30 seconds. This made it great for taking self-timed shots riding towards the camera - I actually found 15 seconds to be about right, whereas 10 seconds means it's a mad dash to make a 180° turn.
| Heart | 3 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The bike path comes to an end and I cross straight over a four-lane road, then pedal away in my lowest gear up a bendy lane that climbs a steep hill for a minute or so and this leads me into a network of Puxin's back lanes. Another five minutes and Starbucks, located at a large intersection, comes into view.
My bike gets leant unlocked against one of the large windows and inside is a queue of around 10 customers, which is nine more than usual, with nearly all the tables occupied. The crowd reminds me today is a national holiday, yet one that Debbie still has to teach on. The young guy standing directly in front of me has one leg heavily tattooed with a stylised cloud design and he could be affiliated with a gang, or a Bond villain, but maybe not.
I order a chicken pasta plus a cinnamon roll and the clerk informs me that today it's buy one, get one free, so I end up with two grande cappuccinos that are neither shaken nor stirred and find a seat at the back of the shop, where I've never sat before. I didn't even know there were seats and tables here. Strange. I try and take a photo of myself, but it's a bit dark and the snaps are not very good, despite me playing around with the camera's ISO and aperture settings.
Whenever I've cycled here with my Canadian friend Ralph, we usually continue riding south, then get a train back north, but today I can't be bothered and decide to simply retrace my tyre tracks home.
Just five minutes from Starbucks is a convenience store called Hi-Life - a chain similar to 7-Eleven - which sells pint cans of IPA from Lithuania that I really like. These shops do a deal of about 15 percent off when buying three, so I pop in only to find they only have two cans left. The clerk tells me there's no special deal on anyway, which while being odd is no real problem as I passed three other Hi-Life stores riding out.
I spot more brushes and brooms on the way back, a few of which I take snaps of, then pop into a second Hi-Life and find IPAs in the fridge and get three for NT$227, or roughly US$2.50 each, and they go in my saddlebag. I eventually pop into a third then fourth Hi-Life store as I get closer to home, but these last two shops have both sold out.
| Heart | 4 | Comment | 2 | Link |
2 days ago
Debbie and I sometimes take a 30-minute walk around the blocks near home and on one of these strolls about a month ago, I noticed a terra cotta plant pot on the other side of a dyke. It'd obviously been dumped a while ago, but looked to be unbroken. The only way to find out was to go over a make-shift bridge comprising a pair of 6" diameter pipes, which Debbie reckoned was too risky, but as she's not here now, I decide to have a go.
007 would likely traverse this at speed on a motorbike, but as falling off would likely result in a broken bone or two, I slowly shuffle my big feet along the cement that's been put between the two pipes and get across OK. I then make my way down the concrete bank and pick up the plant pot, which is thankfully intact, and I carry it back across.
The pot is too big to go in my saddlebag, which already has three cans of IPA, and won't fit into my bar-bag either, so I carefully rest it on my handlebars and ride home with one hand. It only takes a few minutes.
Tonight I've arranged to meet an old student of mine, Joseph, in a pub in town and after a quick shower, my commuter bike gets wheeled outside and I ride to Subway for a bite to eat. It's on the way.
I'm sat in the pub a few minutes before six and when Joseph turns up a bit of my bottle of Tribute, a beer all the way from Cornwall, has been downed. I'll be having more of it soon enough - much closer to where it's brewed.
Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 25 km (16 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 7 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |