Friday January 4, 2013

7:45 a.m. at the 7-11 on Bade Road

You think it can’t get any gloomier and colder in Taipei, but then it does. I don’t wear gloves on my scooter because I find it interferes with operating the gas and the brakes, so my hands are pretty frozen as I sit here in this 7-11 and try to type.

I wrote the other day about the traffic jam that materializes around schools in Taipei in the morning, and there was a huge one today. I was passing a school at about 7:25, and there was a real urgency as the students were rushing through the gates, so perhaps 7:30 is the official start time. I was going to ask someone the other day, but I forgot.

As I mentioned at the end of yesterday, the classes in Sanxia went well. The students even seemed to have absorbed and put into practice what they were supposed to learn that day. But even though the classes could be called successful, I wouldn’t call them pleasant or pleasurable. Starting with the stress of planning the lessons, then the stress of getting there on time, and running through to the physical effort of teaching and being “on” for more than three hours, I was exhausted at the end. I commented to a fellow teacher as we were walking up to the MRT station that my legs felt like a marathoner’s, as if I’d just run twenty miles. They were trembling and kind of weak, like I couldn’t really count on them to carry me. And the stress of the classes carried right through the evening and the whole night. I didn’t sleep much last night as I couldn’t calm down, and I felt bad about some things that didn’t go well. I had, at the last minute, gathered together a bunch of magazines from my bookshelves to use as prizes for students that do well. It’s a bit of a cheap move – like regifting – since these were Taiwan travel magazines that I’d gotten for free from tourism desks and I’d already read them myself. But they were great magazines with great content and I don’t think the students would have seen them before. Unfortunately, one of the magazines was about a year old and the cover was dog-eared. The other magazines were all brand new and recent. Just this one was not as nice. I had hoped this would go by unremarked, but no way. These kids are sharp-eyed when it comes to that sort of thing and when I handed out the prizes, the student that got the old magazine didn’t want it. She actually pointed out that the front cover had been dog-eared and she asked if she could exchange it. I didn’t have any other magazines, so I tried to make light of it and I said that the articles were still good. Still, I felt bad and I felt bad all night.

That was my last class and my last scheduled school event for a while, so the busy period might finally wind down. I still have lots of things to do to prepare for my trip. I’m slowly but surely coming to grips with the mechanical side of my bicycle. The bicycle should be in good shape mechanically. When I was back in Canada three years ago, I had the bike overhauled and worked on. I replaced the chain and the sprockets – the entire drive train and gearing system in fact. I also bought new tires and replaced all the cables and had the hub bearings cleaned and repacked with grease. It should be ready to go from that point of view. I’ve also been working through my tools and that sort of thing, and I think I have everything I need, including a spare tube and spare spokes and tire patch kits and chain lubricant. I’m going to go over that side of things seriously this weekend, and I’ll likely write about that in detail. It will be a way of making a checklist, too.

One problem I have is that the rubber grips on my bar ends have split and fallen off. The rubber grips never quite fit right and they had to be stretched too tight to fit. They finally split open and fell off. The bar ends don’t really need rubber grips, but without them, they are a bit small and hard. To be honest, the entire bike is not well set up for touring. But it is what it is. The pedals turn and the wheels turn just fine. Anyway, I removed one of the bar ends from the bike and I have it in my knapsack right now. I’m going to carry it around with me and hit some bike shops and see if I can find something that will fit. There are tons of grips out there, but I don’t think they are designed to fit bar ends like this. We’ll see.

I was actually at a store last night – a large camping store just down on Zhongshan Road near my apartment. I’d recently purchased a lens case there, and I went back to pick up a couple more. The problem is that I have no good way to carry the various lenses I’ve purchased for my new Olympus camera. I had been holding out, trying to find small and yet good cases to fit these extra-small lenses. I haven’t had much success, though. No one makes lens cases for lenses as small as these. I tried to come up with various compromise cases, and I had some success, but my feeling is that though these cases will work, they don’t offer enough protection. There’s no point having an expensive lens if you then don’t take care of it. I also toyed with the idea of getting a single case of some kind – a camera bag that can fit many lenses. That would be more efficient and be cheaper and take up less space in the end since the protective walls can all serve double duty. But that would mean I’d have to carry all of the lenses at all times, and I don’t want to do that. I want to have the flexibility to just choose the one or two lenses I want to bring with me at any one time. And that means having individual cases.

I’ve realized that I just have to bite the bullet. If I want to have all these lenses with me and I want to protect them all, I have no choice but to buy a standard Lowe-Pro style lens case for each lens. They are about twice as big as I actually need, but I don’t seem to have a choice. So I went to this store to pick up a couple of more lens cases. In fact, I need three of them – two medium-size and one small-size. Unfortunately, they had no lens cases at all. I think I bought the last one weeks ago, and they’ve never bothered to restock any of them. That was disappointing, but I enjoyed wandering around the store and looking at what was on offer in other departments. At the moment, I have practically no suitable clothing at all. However, I don’t want to buy expensive outdoor clothing here in Taiwan if at all. That sort of stuff is very expensive here – probably double what it would cost back in Canada because of import duties. I’ve blown my budget entirely on camera gear, so I don’t have any money leftover for other luxuries. I think I’ll just take what I have in the way of shorts and T-shirts and see what happens. If I start buying outdoor gear here, I’ll probably spend way too much money. And it may or may not be worth it. I generally prefer ordinary street clothes anyway.

I’m also a fanatic when it comes to bags. I can’t seem to resist bags of any variety. I think it is a response to the total chaos that is life in general. I try to compensate for that by having the perfect bag for everything I own. All that really ends up happening is that I buy a lot of bags that end up not being very useful at all.

 

Tags: bike, Canada, Taiwan