I am going to bike from Tainan to Taipei along the east coast with Brian. The Cycling Life-style Foundation has provided us with a GPS tracker that will let YOU see where I am!
Look:
http://cert.cycling-lifestyle.org.tw/emap/rtpos.php?Phone=0975237437
Now you can track me like I track a bat.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park
This evening, I exercised in the park. There's an elementary school that takes up a corner of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park that leaves its track open for old people and kids playing basketball or smoking. I did some weird kung fu exercises on the dimly-lit track that I normally feel self-conscious about doing. Last time I did them, an old man told me I shouldn't do them because they're bad for my knees. I felt ashamed to continue in front of him, so I left.
This time, there was a man spinning in the middle of the track. He just kept spinning the whole time, and was still spinning when I left. Maybe he's training to be an astronaut.
Monday, March 15, 2010
And so
My job ends.
When I first saw Turtle Island, I wanted to climb its mountains; to stand on the tip of the head of the turtle and look over the cliff and the crashing waves below.
That night, we caught the last bat to be radio tagged, frequency number 150.985; "985" for short.
Thus began six months of the radio tracking of four bats. From the beginning, one was never found. After a month, another disappeared. Sometime in December the third died, but we weren't able to reach it until February. In the last week of February, I concluded that 985 could no longer be moving, either.
Yesterday we climbed to get the last bat. Or radio-transmitter, as it turned out. Our worst fear, that the radio transmitters were killing the bats, did not turn out to be the case, at least in this instance. We found the broken collar still attached to the chewed antenna on the slope of a gully that emptied into a sheer cliff.
It was not an easy climb. A-Hong had to cut the entire way through, until his blisters cut open, while I followed with an antennae, getting it caught on every thorned vine I came across. The grade was ridiculously and dangerously steep, and we had to clamber and pull ourselves up by tree trunks and plants, too often covered in spines.
So it's done. The bat tagged on my first day is accounted for (the collar, at least) and I climbed something. I couldn't really get a good view because of the dense undergrowth, but I saw the sea a couple times through the trees. And I looked down into several drops at another jungle below. My hands are covered in little cuts.
Mission accomplished. Is this it?
When I first saw Turtle Island, I wanted to climb its mountains; to stand on the tip of the head of the turtle and look over the cliff and the crashing waves below.
That night, we caught the last bat to be radio tagged, frequency number 150.985; "985" for short.
Thus began six months of the radio tracking of four bats. From the beginning, one was never found. After a month, another disappeared. Sometime in December the third died, but we weren't able to reach it until February. In the last week of February, I concluded that 985 could no longer be moving, either.
Yesterday we climbed to get the last bat. Or radio-transmitter, as it turned out. Our worst fear, that the radio transmitters were killing the bats, did not turn out to be the case, at least in this instance. We found the broken collar still attached to the chewed antenna on the slope of a gully that emptied into a sheer cliff.
It was not an easy climb. A-Hong had to cut the entire way through, until his blisters cut open, while I followed with an antennae, getting it caught on every thorned vine I came across. The grade was ridiculously and dangerously steep, and we had to clamber and pull ourselves up by tree trunks and plants, too often covered in spines.
So it's done. The bat tagged on my first day is accounted for (the collar, at least) and I climbed something. I couldn't really get a good view because of the dense undergrowth, but I saw the sea a couple times through the trees. And I looked down into several drops at another jungle below. My hands are covered in little cuts.
Mission accomplished. Is this it?
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