January 5, 2013

The movers arrived right on time at 9:00AM.  They and all the packing materials were gone and all of the shipment from the US was unboxed by 1:00PM.  Nothing of significance was broken, though it seemed that some things definitely got rolled a few times since they were packed.  I'm guessing it wasn't the US movers as they seemed very careful in their work.  I doubt that the shipping container or the ship did any barrel rolls en-route, so I think that's out as a cause.  My money is on the customs inspectors, but I could be wrong.

After a shopping trip to get some groceries and other household goods, and, most importantly, some really nice floor to ceiling stands to hold our bikes, we got back to work making the apartment into home.  We got enough done on Saturday to get out for a great bike ride on Sunday and then back to work.  By Sunday night, we were pretty well situated.   There've been a few things that we've moved around since then having determined better locations for them, but for the most part, we're done, save for an office desk and some rugs.   Presto, home!

We've been having great fun riding with folks from the Nike office here - there are a bunch of really avid cyclists amongst Julia's co-workers.  As a result, we're learning a bunch of cool roads and ways to get around town.  After our weekend rides with the group, I generally get out and explore further from the previous weekend's excursion.  I've already got a reasonably functional sense of the immediate geography and overall road layout, but there's much, much more to learn - better connections and better roads await.

There doesn't seem to be much of an Ultimate Frisbee community here in Taichung.  All that we've found thus far is a club/team at a local university who open their practices at times and also have pickup games following practices.  It's been winter break for them thus far, so I'm very much looking forward to connecting up to play with them once their schedule gets back to normal.  I'm very much not looking forward to having to chase 20 year olds around the field, however. Where oh where is the old guy game 'round here?