November 15, 2008 - Approaching the end of the Keelung River bikeway at the east end of Taipei. I was going on a ride out to the east coast of Taiwan. Look how nice the weather looks.


But on the east coast it was all cloudy. Reminded me of San Francisco, except I lived under the overcast, and rode out to the sunshine.

No sunshine now. It's a typhoon day in Taipei, Typhoon Morakot, and I don't have to work because my Friday shift got switched to Thursday earlier this week. I wonder who's the sucker who got stuck with the typhoon shift. I think they're going to try to knock-off early tonight, at around 11, but it won't make a difference, the typhoon is going to hit in the general area of tonight.

I still ended up riding home in the rain last night because I wanted to get my bike home and not leave it out during the typhoon at work. But I only started riding home because it wasn't really raining so bad when I left. But then it started picking up and picking up and I was pretty soaked by the end.

During typhoons it's all rain and wind, but pre- and post-typhoon, it's really touch-and-go. It may be calm as a lamb one moment, and then raging gusts 15 minutes later.

I have a different mentality during typhoons, which assumes getting soaked. We might have some rainy weather that I wouldn't think of riding my bike or going out in, certainly not without an umbrella, but during a typhoon, it might be much worse and I'll go skipping out into the rain; wind blowing in gusts tempting me to break out in a Michael Jackson imitation.

So I'm apartment-bound for the duration. I think it may still be stormy by my shift tomorrow, so I'll take a bus to work, dress like I'm going for a swim.

I Am One (Smashing Pumpkins)