Looking but not Finding

I woke up late, and went out to get breakfast. I got lost on the way home. I get lost pretty regularly. When I first moved in I got lost almost every time I left my apartment. I would go out to buy food, and take a different way back, just to get to know the area better. Then I would always end up two or three blocks in the wrong direction. I have kind of a failsafe though, because I live beside one of the biggest buildings around, so if I get lost, I just find it in the skyline and head that direction.

After making it back home, and eating breakfast, I decided to try to find a climbing wall in Taipei that Jerry had told me about. Ai Jin had said he was interested in going to the climbing wall so I called him. He crapped out, but suggested I call Luke (one of the guys I ate lunch with yesterday). I decided just to send Luke a text, but after I had it written I realized I wasn't sure what his number was. All the numbers in my phone were labeled except for one, so I guessed that was his. I sure hoped so. I sent the message, and quickly got a response. He said he was interested, but wasn't sure who the text was from. It was like a crappy soap opera. I had sent a text to a number that I didn't know, but which surely belonged to some new classmate, and they (not surprisingly) didn't know who I was. So, I told them who I was and waited, as the suspense built, to see who I was talking to. Indeed, I had sent correctly, but Luke wasn't interested, so I set off alone to look for the climbing wall.

Jerry had just told me the name of a stop off of the metro, so I got my gear and headed for "Bei Tou". After I got there I basically just started out in a bit circle. I figured a building that would hold a climbing wall would be sort of obvious (probably not in a residential area, and possibly at at a larger gym, or near a school), and I would be able to figure it out. I was, once again, mistaken. I made a big circle of the Bei Tou station, and didn't see it. I called Jerry, and got the name of a place from him. I checked the map at the station again, but the only thing I found out was that there were really two Bei Tou stations. One was Bei Tou and the other was "Xin Bei Tou", or new Bei Tou. I thought Jerry might have said something about new Bei Tou, so I walked off in that direction. I also decided I had better start asking directions, so I stopped to ask little woman selling donuts. I bought a donut first, as a show of good will, then asked for directions to the climbing wall. She had never heard of it, but told me to ask the woman across the street. The woman across the street had also not heard of it, so I pressed on towards new Bei Tou. I saw a real estate agency, and thought that if anyone would know they would. They did not know, and had never heard of any climbing walls anywhere. After I made it to new Bei Tou, I stopped to ask directions again. This time, I bought an umbrella, before asking the guy for directions. (I really did need an umbrella, because it was raining, and it rains all the time here, and I tried to wear my rain gear, but it doesn't cool down at all when it rains, so I was too hot.) The guy hadn't heard of a climbing wall in the area, and said climbing was way too dangerous. I asked if he had heard of a regular gym in the area, and he said there was one but the definitely didn't have a climbing wall, because climbing was definitely waay too dangerous. The fact that he did know where a regular gym was seemed to be promising, but again, I couldn't find it. I stopped at a hotel to ask, but they seemed never to have heard of any climbing walls anywhere. Ever.

On the bright side, I did find some public workout machines in a park, and a public hot spring, but no gym and no climbing wall. At this point, I had been searching for about two hours, so I decided to call Jerry again. He told me not to ask for a climbing wall, and he gave me the name of a regular gym I should ask for. I was ready to ask directions, but thought that if I bought something everytime I asked for directions, I'd soon be broke, so this time I just went into a 7-11, and asked. They told me to take off towards the KFC, and head straight down that street. After going down that street for a bit, I asked directions again. This woman seemed confident in the location of the fitness center, but her directions were discouraging. She told me to head back up the same street, and turn left and it would be on my left. The only thing of interest I saw when I got there was a man standing beside a public swimming pool, preparing a fishing pole to go fishing. I saw another real estate agency and asked there, but no luck. They told me to ask at the police station, but I decided to give up. I was hungry and it was about to get dark.

I went home and gorged myself at the vege buffet down the street. At 8:00 Jerry came and picked me up, and we headed back to Fu Xing (where he was working). On the way, he stopped and picked up a guidebook to Dragon Cave, the local climbing area. It was still raining, and the traffic was bad, so it took us longer than usual to get there. This weekend, was the mid-Autumn festival, and I didn't have classes on Monday or Tuesday, so I would be spending the next few days here. Also because of the mid-Autumn festival, there were no campers at the camp (where Jerry was building the wall), so all the staff hand a barbecue and were now sitting around drinking. They handed me a TGM and we started talking.

It was great. I was meeting the Taiwanese outdoor crowd. And in proper style, at night, with cheap beer, and a big moon (it wasn't raining here). I spoke Chinese as much as I could, but one of the other guys had pretty good English, and could help me fill in specific words that I didn't know. One of the guys lives in Taipei and told me he could help me find the climbing wall near Bei Tou, so I got his number. I had been wondering whether or not Taiwan had any multi-pitch climbs, and I found out. Taiwan does indeed have multi-pitch climbs. The only thing is that most of them are in river gorges, so you have to kayak in to get to them. I don't know how difficult the kayaking is, but that sounds awesome. Basically you'd have to choices. Either climb out, or not get out. Unless you could keep floating out, but that would be really demoralizing.

After a while the other guys started talking among themselves, and I couldn't keep up. It had gotten to be the early hours of the morning, and so Jerry and I retired.