Field Guide to the Flat Snakes of Central Taiwan

Riding the roads across the middle of Taiwan has given me a great opportunity to see a wide variety of the local wildlife.  I pass plenty of birds, toads, lizards, giant snails, the occasional monkey, but no animal as common as the various species of flat snakes one sees nearly everywhere.  Fascinating in their variety, I’ve thrown myself into a bit of herpetological research, and I’d love to share a larger project I’m working on…. The Field Guide to the Flat Snakes of Central Taiwan.

I’m pretty proud of my work and I’ve learned a great deal about the various species, their names, how to identify and what not.   So forgive me if I skip common names in favor of the formal taxonomic names.  Speaking of which, I was astonished to learn that in some cases binomial nomenclature for genus species names also includes punctuation marks… who knew?

This is a fine example of an Ocrapae Carmium!

A particularly lovely specimen of a Whydai Lieheeria?

A juvenile male  Nota Baskingspot.  He'll flatten out nicely when he gets a bit older.

Updated....again! on 11/17 with bonus campaign poster

As you might notice, I'm not the most prolific blogger out there.  The reasons for this are twofold:

1.  I'm lame
2.  See reason #1

Loads going on 'round these parts, you might have seen on the news.....  In the interest of not making this a wholly political blog I'll let the Hong Kong protests and their portents for Taiwan's future go unremarked beyond this.  If you are interested in learning more about what's been going on and why, I'd suggest seeking out The Guardian or the Taipei Times' coverage.

A few random things to share:

Here's a video put together by my cycling team, CCT,  (that's us in the kit that incorporates most all possible colors),  from a race back in April on the east coast of Taiwan.  It'll give you a small window into it all.

There are big elections coming up here in November.  This is good for a number of different constituencies:

1. Printers - there are posters, banners and billboards everywhere - plenty of business if you're a printer

2. Owners of trucks with loudspeakers - they are everywhere playing recordings of the candidates or jingles, or other 'vote for me' kinda stuff.  The best ones have a platform where the candidate rides exhorting passer by to vote for them via said loudspeaker 

3. Bicyclists - as a result of impending elections, there is road re-paving going on everywhere.  I think the incumbents see this as a way to show that they are on the case.  Whatever the reason, I'm not complaining, swanky new pavement is better than what was there.

But just the other day I noticed a trend amongst some campaign posters incorporating 'Little Guys'.. there are several posts earlier in this blog showcasing my fondness for various business and government 'Little Guys' (if that reference confuses), but I was really surprised to see that candidates would create and add personalized 'Little Guy' caricatures on their posters.  A few of my favorites:

Ok, so I can at least wrap my head around the caricatures of the candidates above, but this one just baffles me..."If elected I vow to vote like the cartoon bear on my shoulder advises"?  "If you, too, have a cartoon bear on your shoulder, vote for me"... I like it, but I'm lost here....

Updated:  Just saw this poster this morning and had to add it here...I guess this makes total sense, who better to run for office than running shoes... totally got the whole 'experience thing' locked down. 

I really liked this sign at the trailhead of a path that Shirl, Bo and I hiked a few months back. It really helped drive home the need to watch where you put your feet!  Bonus was on this trail we got to see a giant wasp and giant spider duking it out.  The spider lost and was lunch.  It was our own Mutual of Omaha's 'Wild Kingdom' moment.  While they were fearsome and large, they were still just insects, but even so,  I'm guessing ol' Marlin Perkins would have still been inside the Range Rover with the windows rolled up a good, safe distance away, while Jim was up close and personal with it all.

Lest you think that other bike path photo I've posted here was a fluke, they're clearly on the case to create more stellar bike path/tree interactions... this is a brand new path and tree along a route that I regularly ride so I can confirm that this was all just installed as you see in the photo.  This was obviously planned and executed without anyone stopping to say... "Hey wait a minute...."  It's no big deal at present as the path ends about 150 feet farther up, behind the car parked on the path in the background is a construction fence.  But eventually it will connect up to a longer path.  The time until it is all open will give this tree a chance to grow and really end the path properly.

And last and certainly not least, the following:

Kinda cute for a sort of burly business like freight handling/delivery, but I dig it.  I like the idea of a genetically modified, trunkless elephant koala bear (thanks Mitch!)  cartoon hurrying to get my shipment delivered to me so this works (provided he's not too drugged up/surly from Eucalyptus leaves).   Well done trunkless elephant, err, koala delivery service...

But this one just confuses me every time I see their trucks.   All I can think of is the meeting with the designer when they were working on this new mascot/logo.  I imagine that the first iteration was a bit more 'butch' of a panda, you know stout, steadfast, more interested in working hard to get your package to you than in lazing about eating bamboo shoots etc... and then an executive from the delivery company takes a total left turn in the discussion and says "Yeah, that's ok, but can you redo it to have the Panda mince about a bit, and while you're at it, let's have him dressed like Richard Simmons too, ok?"....cause that's the only way I can imagine that they get to this as their logo.   (And I should state, for the record, that I fully support the rights of pandas to dress and move about in whatever ways they choose, and also, of course, to marry whom ever they happen to love regardless of the gender pairings involved - wow, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution Equal Protection Clause imagine that!..  It's fun to watch supposed Constitutional literalists writhe, prevaricate, and out and out bullshit to try to get around it when it comes to their opposition to same sex marriage.... d'oh! Political stuff, I couldn't help it!)   I'm just fascinated imagining how this company ended up with this to adorn their trucks, that's all.....

Giant Insects of Taiwan.... and other stuff...

As an antidote to that last post, I give you..... giant bugs!... and, er, one other photo of something else....

And those are my fat fingers, not some small child's...

For scale, the bike computer here is 2.5 inches long and over an inch thick with the mount...

A live one... (the one on the bike had ceased beetling)

Smallest of the bunch, but moving about... also my fat fingers (not two big toes as it might appear to be)

And, obviously, not a bug at all, but I couldn't resist adding this in, and frankly, I didn't have a clue where else to put it. This may be known depiction of a mythological figure, but I was clearly absent that day if it was discussed in class, but in any case, a cherub with a shell or whatnot cradling some dude's genitalia is not my first pick for the front of an apartment building - but that's just me, clearly.  I probably should start a collection of apartment building art and statuary, there's a wealth of ridiculous stuff both in front of and within the lobbies of Taiwanese apartment complexes (to my tender sensibilities).  A friend used to live here and the architecture of the building is a mish mash of different styles, and the art is also a grab bag ranging from this statue, to giant golden horses pulling some other mythological dude's chariot, along with a mess of busts of other guys (that's all out by the pool).  In the lobby are suits of armor and all manner of other ostentatiousness.  And there are elements on the exterior of the building that look to be from Chinese mythology and symbology.  They're clearly hedging their bets,  but it's a great mix if you're into that sort of thing!

Not trying to make the long form rant a trend here, but.....

It's June 4, 2014, the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.  It's sad that protests that began with so much promise were put down not only with such brutality and death, but that looking back, it appears the Chinese rulers have thus far at least succeeded in buying off the Chinese people with material goods and prosperity.  Bread and circuses as such.  

It's fascinating to see this anniversary through the local media here in Taiwan.  It's openly discussed here, but in China, you can't really mention the massacre much less protest about it.  It's been well scrubbed from history it seems.   And the Great Internet Firewall of China is working overtime at present to stamp out any chance citizens there might have to learn about what their government did to the protestors.

The anniversary has been marked annually in Hong Kong, and also here in Taiwan.  But in Hong Kong, it's hard to say how much longer that will be the case as they are watching their freedoms - both existing and promised go away as the Chinese tighten their grip on the local media  and government to make any dissent and protest in HK more difficult.  

Here in Taiwan, the ruling KMT is so smitten with the Chinese Communist Party it appears they won't be able to say much beyond calling Tiananmen Square "a regrettable occurrence" or some other similar bit of mealy mouthed, passive sentence construction BS.  I hope I'm wrong, but from what has been done and said by the KMT about the protests here in Taiwan and how they kowtow to the CCP, I cannot imagine I'm too far off.

Considering this anniversary, I cannot help but think back to how, despite our failings and shortcomings,  25 years ago it felt like we in America had a Constitution that most all of us could generally depend upon,  less so if your skin has a brownish hue, sadly.   But for most, much of the time, it worked.   When things happened that were unconstitutional, we made changes in stutters and starts, with too many outside of its protection, yet it was a good and noble ideal with protections that we were slowly making work for everyone.

But given the passage of time, and recent events,  it's clear to see that a bunch of cowardly politicians, citizens, military, judicial, law enforcement, media and intelligence people have pissed all over those great ideals, again and again, in the name of fighting whatever battle du jour seems most efficient to use as cover (whether the 'war on drugs', or the 'war on terror') for their desired authority and power.  

Sure we're not generally getting gunned down in the streets for protesting, though it happens - as the 44th anniversary of the Kent State shootings passed on the 4th of last month.  But you sure can get pepper sprayed and cracked across the face with a baton, as well as hauled off to court and convicted for doing provocative, dangerous things like sitting peacefully at a demonstration.  

Different than our right to peaceably assemble, but no less important, is the right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects.  I realize that a principled Originalist Justice, (and I say 'principled' wholly facetiously) like Scalia might try to argue that phone calls and email don't count since they said 'Papers' way back when, so there's that.  But we now live in a time where our government is hoovering up every last bit of data about us, who we associate with and what we might happen to read on the internet, what we might purchase, who we might call or email all without warrant.  

And the stories we're told about why we *need* to do this?   Well, here you go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders-nsa-have-stop-making-remain-credible

Remember when we learned about the really repressive regimes - scary police states like the Shah's Iran (and later the Ayatollah's Iran), Hussein's Iraq, Chiang's Taiwan,  Pinochet's Chile, all of the Communist dictatorships - those places where people lived with the constant fear of the government watching and listening to them lest they do or say something subversive.   (Sad how many of the list above were US allies, but that's another rant for another time)  Remember how we used to at least feel like we didn't have to worry about that, cause we had something called the Constitution and a government that generally tried to live up to?  Yeah, me too... it was pleasant while it lasted.

And yes, I get the measure of irony of me posting this on a blog platform from Google - who hoovers up almost as much information about us as the government - I'm not crazy about that either, but there are crucial differences:  I use Google services knowing full well what they are doing.  I do so voluntarily and secondly, at least so far, Google does not have battalions of armed enforcers to come to my house to beat me or throw me in jail if I do or say something that they deem provocative... I know, give it time....who knows if Sergey Brin's dreaming of having his own police force,  only time will tell. Ideally corporations aren't this big and powerful, but at the end of the day, they're still no match for the power of the government bodies above us - whether City, State or Federal - they all have various police and investigative forces that can, and will, make your life a living hell, or worse, at times end it if they deem you have run afoul of them.  

So to the honor of the memory of those who died trying to secure political freedom and self determination 25 years ago in Beijing and countless other times and places in lands distant and near, please don't imagine that the freedoms you enjoy now will always be around for you and your offspring in years to come.   It is true that it's a long way from Beijing to Washinton DC, and I don't mean to suggest that we're heading for tanks rolling down The Mall anytime soon, but if we keep chipping away at the foundation of it all, there could be tanks on The Mall.  Speak up and act - if we don't do it now, it's only going to get harder and harder, until at some point, it might simply be impossible.

You might say that this 'intelligence gathering' will never be used against us, that it's simply a tool to prevent terrorism or drug dealing or whatever.   But given the current structure of such programs, if you say that, you're counting on the good will of unelected people in the NSA and other similar governmental bodies.... something that the founders of the US knew to be folly.  It's why they wrote the Constitution and created our system of government in the manner that they did.

And if you think this is all ok because Obama's president, consider a President Ted Cruz with these powers at his disposal.   Or if you're whacked out enough to think that having Cruz as President is a good idea one other thing for you to consider if the Republican's 2016 voter suppression efforts are not sufficient - President HR Clinton.  

I'll close by saying I'm not at all talking about the mythical Constitution of the umm, people, (I'll stick with that simple non-pejorative word),  in the desert at the Bundy ranch and their apologists in the media and government, or those who think that government health insurance is the first step down the road to concentration camps - in my experience, people who espouse those views generally can scarcely get through the day without pissing on most all of the Constitution save for their beloved and staggeringly misinterpreted 2nd Amendment.  No, I'm talking about the Constitution that applies to, and that should protect us all.  That is the one at risk unless we do something to protect it by ending, or radically curtailing the NSA current programs.  The current Congressional efforts are too weak to be much help.

Protests in Taiwan - updated 4/6/14

Hey this is long, and possibly boring, and there aren’t too many pictures either….sorry.

It’s been fascinating to follow the protests here in Taiwan and the larger political climate. During our short time here, I have been a rather keen observer of the politics of this place, and those of the People’s Republic of China as it relates to Taiwan.

But  let me say at the outset, the following are the observations of a definite non-expert outsider, with some admitted simplifications and broadbrush treatments,  so with those caveats and disclaimers….

3/30/14 protests in Taipei

3/30 protest - There are, as usual, conflicting estimates on crowd size, some as high as 500,000 and the low end in the 200,000s... but I figure any time you get even 200,000 humans at the same place at the same time for something other than a sporting event or a concert, something's probably going on.

There are so many strange contradictions and vestigial tails of policy and thought process here as I see it - it’s a bit of a complex mess.

First off, Taiwan maintains constitutionally that *it* is ‘China’… the Republic of China, so that’s still around to muddy the water and complicate international relations.  Secondly, the KMT is still in power here. That is the party of martial law, wanton massacre and avowed enemies of communism - Chiang Kai Shek et al. Current Taiwanese President Ma is a member of the KMT, and the current legislature is KMT controlled.  And yet it appears that both the KMT and Ma cannot sell out the Taiwanese people, sovereignty  and security to the communist PRC fast enough.

Not sure exactly what date, could be when they cleared a government building last week. When will protesters learn not to attack police batons with their heads? Seriously I do not understand why this seems to be the norm for police the world over - including the great US of A and even the People's Republic of Portland, where peaceful, hell even unruly demonstrators are subjected to, as a matter of policy/training it appears, what are potentially deadly blows to the head.  Seems out of all proportion - not that getting whacked in the back or across the limbs is any picnic, but far less likely to, you know, kill or maim for life*

Note the provocative, threatening posture of the demonstrators here. 

There are definitely people here in favor of ‘unifying’ with the PRC, there’s plenty of money to be made, of course.  But there’s more to it than just that - the pull of the shared Chinese heritage and large elements of culture are very strong ones.  This is an angle that Ma and others in the KMT appeal to regularly - along with the PRC.   I can see that this is certainly not a small thing.  But also, coming from the US, and our history, this sort of seems like a measure of BS as well.   Following that line of reasoning, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand should all still be subjects of the Queen what with our shared language and significantly similar cultural history of many of the respective country’s founders/early citizens.   Of course it’s more complex than that, but it’s also as simple as that too.  Added into the mix, to my eye, is a strong strain of nativism and cultural chauvinism that undergirds this as well, the Chinese-ness that supposedly trumps all.  This chauvinism/nativism seems a hallmark of so much of retrograde, conservative thought and politics across the planet - pick a nation, language, or culture; you don’t have to go too deep to find it.

There are also those in favor of upsetting the wonderfully cryptic ‘status quo’ and formally and specifically declaring independence from China.  This of course has risks as the PRC has lobbed the occasional missile over head when talk of this nature gets too pronounced - and, pathetically the US gets all wobbly and scared at this as well since prices for cheap plastic crap at WalMart could increase if tensions get too high.  But there are many who value and wish for a totally free and independent Taiwan.  These folks are drawn from across a wide swath of people here, both aboriginal peoples as well as folks descended from more recent arrivals too.  I’d imagine that there are some amongst them who are ‘anti-Chinese’, but it also appears that plenty are simply ‘pro-Taiwanese’, that is, they, like millions of others across the planet, simply seek the right of self determination regarding their countries - the right to be free from coercion, military, economic threat, and outside influence in the matters of their nation and governance.

Then there seems to be a considerable number of people who are actually ok with a measure of the status quo - this supposed ‘1 China, 2 interpretations’ song and dance that, to varying degrees, the whole planet has been following.  

Not rocking the boat seems to be the goal - in either direction for this group.  They would likely bristle at more Chinese influence here just as they would reject an outright move to independence.   The only rub is that the PRC is definitely pursuing a boiling frog approach here - the temperature of the water is being raised ever so slowly as they seek to entangle Taiwan ever more fully with PRC, pushing towards making the status quo that people seek not to upset get to de facto annexation leading ultimately to a de jure result. Taking the long view is much easier when you have thousands of years of cultural history to look back on.

However if recent polls are accurate, the number of people actually preferring  becoming part of the PRC is much smaller than the number of people favoring the status quo or independence.

It’s strange to live in a place that has a flag, passports, currency, somewhat clear territorial borders, a military, a fully functioning, independent government etc and yet, is not as such, a country - particularly when there are a number of ‘failed states’ around the globe that have hardly any of the above and yet are recognized as ‘nations’.   

As a result of PRC demands, Taiwan is continually squeezed out of international bodies that deal with civil aviation, trade, sports etc - if you are watching the olympics or track and field world championships or other similar event - Taiwanese athletes are identified as being from ‘Chinese Taipei’… whatever  and wherever the hell that is.   The first word refers to a large country across the Taiwan Strait from here and the other is a city at the north end of this ‘nation’.   It’s total BS and in my opinion, it’s pathetic that the rest of the planet allows this to happen - but once again, there’s money to be made in the PRC, mustn’t do anything to impact that.  Another example that drives me a bit nuts is to use a pull down country menu online or on Apple products of all things that list this island, this place, dare I say, this country/nation,  as ‘Taiwan, province of China’

That would be Apple, most all of whose products are made in China, many by Taiwanese owned companies.   And those same Taiwanese companies, even if they had interest in Taiwanese independence, they sure as heck wouldn’t and couldn’t say anything publicly - again, too much money to be made to risk the wrath of the PRC.  

Therein lies another interesting muddle - a considerable part of the growth of Chinese manufacturing was via Taiwanese companies financing and growing manufacturing there.  They, like many US and global corporations, were simply chasing the lowest cost of labor they could find and helped build a colossus next door.  They have also hollowed out the Taiwanese employment base and stifled the economy here - much like the rest of the developed world chasing third world labor.  Heck it’s already happening in China - the race to the bottom for wages and environmental degradation is starting to pass them by in favor of Cambodia, Laos and elsewhere.

So you’ve got all of the above against the backdrop of Hong Kong citizens finding that most all of the promises the PRC made when Hong Kong got folded back into the PRC under the ‘1 country 2 systems’ theory have been ignored or otherwise not kept fully.  It’s a vivid cautionary tale, just a short way away from here.   

I’m just a visitor here so I don’t really have a dog in this fight except for this one thing - the idea that self determination of people and countries should mean something.  To me,  the United States should actually live up to the ideals we were founded upon (and we’ve got a bunch of work on that at home as well as abroad, clearly).   

The US relationship with Taiwan is so strange as well - if we followed our Taiwan Relations Act we’d be drawn in to help defend Taiwan from PRC military attack, but that, of course, would be messy.   Despite our arms sales and military support on one hand - of late, it seems we are more eager to not have to actually, you know stand up to the PRC in any meaningful way as it relates to Taiwan - even in words.  I’m not talking about sending in the US Navy 7th Fleet (though we have done so in the past) cause that could cost some corporation some money or something.  

I’m talking about using the soft power of the US and the rest of the world to stand up to the PRC’s bullying of Taiwan in international spaces, whether it’s sports, or trade groups, or other international bodies.  It’s pathetic to see how the planet kowtows to the PRC on this subject.   Long ago we pledged to the PRC not to recognize Taiwan as a country but hell, there’s all kinds of things we pledged long ago about not torturing people, or spying on them without warrant, or attacking countries for no good reason, but since we’ve pissed all over those pledges, why this one is so sacrosanct, I’m not sure… and yes, I’m being flip here, but in seriousness, I don’t see why we cannot lead the way in an incremental approach to independence if that’s what the Taiwanese people seek.  

To the contrary, it seems that our words and policy is the opposite, geared towards incremental moves towards PRC annexation.   A week or so back, Evan Medeiros, the  Senior Director for Asian Affairs on Obama’s National Security Council said the following as he sought to clarify PRC mischaracterization of Obama/Xi discussions on Taiwan by saying: 

 "China should focus on winning the hearts and the minds of the people of Taiwan as opposed to making them insecure about U.S. policy as if somehow we have changed our position on Taiwan and are saying things differently in meetings with President Xi than we do publicly, which we aren't," he said.”

This was a small part of a larger statement pushing back against PRC claims that the US sees matters on Taiwan like the PRC does, and the statement took pains to clarify and say that there’s been no change, so that was good.  But do you see the words used in the quote above?  That the US policy overall is that the PRC should “focus on winning the hearts and minds of the people of Taiwan”  That strikes me as suggesting that the PRC should continue its efforts to coerce Taiwan to agree to annexation.  Winning hearts and minds *might* be something that one state does to curry favor with citizens of another state, but most often that phrase seems to be used in terms of war and conquest - sufficiently wooing the populace you’ve invaded/overtaken into seeing yours as a benign/helpful presence.   

It would strike me that our efforts should,  even incrementally if the realpolitik requires it, at least be driving home the idea that the final determination of what happens to and with Taiwan relative to the PRC should rest solely with, you know, the people of Taiwan.   *That* would seem to me to be living up to the ideals that the US was founded upon.  But hey, if we can’t even manage to apply the dictates of the Constitution to our own governance and citizens, I know it’s high folly for me to expect noble moves across the world from us.   

The preceding is recent, but back in 2003, the US opposed the moves of Taiwan’s then President  Chen Shui-bian to amend the constitution here in ways that both the PRC and the US feared moved towards declaring independence - again, so much for the idea that people should have the right of political self determination.  I get that things are more complicated than that - loads of people seek political self determination - we could easily fracture the planet into many more countries than currently exist, and I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to who is or is not justified in seeking such a right on a broad level, but Taiwan/PRC seems a pretty reasonable case to come down on the side of allowing the people of Taiwan to decide - whether we or anyone else on the planet can help make that happen is a big question, but it seems to me to be worth the effort.

I don’t even know enough to say if Taiwan should be independent or actually pack it in and become a part of the PRC’s Fujian Province or whatever - but that should be up to the people of Taiwan to decide, unswayed by pressure from within and without.

The trade pact that was the proximate cause of the recent demonstrations here is a great example of the PRC’s attempt to annex Taiwan without firing a shot.  This pact, like many previous seem all built to increase the PRC influence here and drive the eventual merger forward as a fait accompli.

Seems to be some effort by the protestors to interfere with the Taipei sanitation departments new street cleaning devices.  Again, note the provocative stance the demonstrators are adopting here, it's pretty clear they had it coming to them I think.  The streets must be properly hosed off daily or disorder, uncleanliness and chaos will ensue, right? *

Again, if that’s what people here want, go for it, but I think it should be done consciously, openly and democratically by the people of Taiwan.  And not by force, either the kinetic force of artillery shells hitting targets, or the force of covert and overt external and internal political and economic defacto unification leading to final annexation if that is against the people of Taiwan’s wishes. 


Update:   Here are a few bits for  more context and analysis:

The Diplomat - Say Goodbye to Peaceful Unification by J.Michael Cole 

The Taipei Times -  'White Wolf' Leads Pro-pact Rally .... this is a great little story about a convicted gangster, who is now pushing 'unification' with China, after many years living in the PRC.  Note my aforementioned nativism/chauvinism/nationalism mentioned in the story.  Bonus points for the fact that there is a pro-unification organization with the word 'Patriot' in their organization name.... why is it that so often the use of that word is attached to things that are anything but *actually* patriotic?  

* I don't doubt that some protests and protestors in some places are violent, and those may indeed require a level of violence from the authorities to ultimately protect lives and property.  However, there are plenty that are largely police riots - where otherwise peaceful demonstrators are set upon with violence out of proportion with the 'provocation' of simply being in the streets en masse as a form of civil disobedience (and sometimes, not even that),  hence my snarkiness above.   As a further example of what I am getting at here, the head of the police force here made what appear to be pretty disingenuous claims regarding injuries to police - seems they were counting every scratch and abrasion to claim that more police officers were injured than protestors.  Meanwhile more of the injuries to the protestors included things like fractured skulls, fractured eye sockets, vertabrae etc... so there you go.

Miscellany...

Here’s a bunch of stuff that I wanted to pass along - nothing at all earth shattering, simply things that have caught my eye of late ‘round here.  And there's one thing that really belongs with the stuff from Australia, but I’m too lazy to put it there!

Not sure if this is a training route laid out by the Lobster Triathlon Club or what, but whatever it is, I like it...

There's plenty of 'Chinglish' on signs around, but this one really stood out to me, what with the fish and chicken and organic footpath and all.

I don't know who these big blow up dudes represent, but they lived in the park near our apartment for the last week or so...rather impressively huge.

Saw this on a ride and had to take a picture...

This was a really cool installation at the MONA Museum in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

This was at the Taipei Bicycle Show... It's not as bad a name as it might seem, I think.  Since if used properly and often, pretty much any bike is an assizing technology, right?

Summer in Oz...

“We’ve got a few days in Sydney, then we’re off for bike touring in Tasmania - where the weather forecasts look pretty cold and possibly wet too... perhaps when it comes to cycling in the Southern Hemisphere around Christmas - less South is a good call?” These were somewhat prophetic words at the conclusion of my last post.

Based on temperatures alone, yes, ‘less South’ would have been a good call.  It snowed on us on December 29 in Mt Field National Park in Tasmania.  True we were at a bit of altitude, but not that much, only about 4000 feet, and it was in the high 30s or low 40s F at the hotel down at lower elevation.  

Austral Summer bushwalk!

We had a great time wandering Sydney in the days preceding Tasmania, mostly fine weather and we had a blast visiting museums, hiking up and over the top of the arch of the Harbor Bridge, and all over town and out in the Blue Mountains. 

  

On our way to a professional soccer game,  we saw a huge flock of fruit bats - fruit bats are enormous by North American standards - imagine a squirrel sized body and probably close to 2 foot wingspan.   The urban wildlife in Australia is wonderfully exotic to our eyes: spoonbills, hooked billed kinda birds, parrot type guys and cockatoos all give your average pigeons and seagulls a run for their money.  (Unfortunately I don't have any pictures that do much justice, so you'll have to just imagine or fire up your Google thingy to find some, sorry!)

We got to Tasmania at the same time as our friend Ross,

Ok, so this is actually later in the trip, but this was a great photo of us all....

built the bikes and had a nice day wandering about in Hobart after we built our bikes.  The following day we headed off for a hike with our bikes and gear behind the car in a trailer.  Day 1 we had planned to ride out of Hobart to a hotel near Mt Field National Park.  But our wonderful Hobart host, Gavin, suggested that we really should all drive up together to do this hike instead.  We wouldn’t miss much in terms of riding - a good portion of the day was going to be spent on the roads in and around Hobart getting to our first stop.  Plus, we’d get a chance to see some high alpine vistas that we weren’t likely to get in that area.   So that’s how we ended up in the snow.  It was beautiful and memorable, to be in the driving snow on our Southern Hemisphere Summer Holiday.

The cycling was wonderful - very quiet roads, wonderful people we met in all of the towns we stopped in, amazing and varied scenery. 

Our travels took us out to and back from Strathgordon on the only paved road (dead end) for many miles around - the whole of SW Tasmania is essentially wild.   Several days we rode for hours and hours without seeing a house, a business or anything at all save for wilderness around us.  We got all the way out to the West Coast to a town called Strahan, after traveling through Queenstown, which could have been in the Colorado or Utah - almost from central casting for ‘mountain mining town’.   Our final stop was Cradle Mountain National Park

An iconic view from Cradle Mountain... this is on all the postcards, posters and calendars, we got to see it ourselves.  The funny part is that this boathouse is actually quite a bit smaller than you'd guess, not for model boats, but not for regular sized ones either.

and we took a day off the bikes there to do a wonderful hike.  We ended our bike travels in Devonport and rented a small van and drove back to Hobart.

The weather was mostly cool to cold temps, and a few days of rain on and off, some mostly on, and one day entirely ‘on’…the bonus was that that day was really cold and windy too!  

One of the highlights of the trip was on that very cold, rainy, windy day, a family stopped at the top of a pass with their camper van and offered us hot coffee and some shelter from the rain and cold.   We felt a bit bad as we made a wet mess of the interior of their van, but they were cyclists too and said they felt compelled to stop.  We learned that they were staying at the same campground as us that night, and we had a cabin reserved there, so we invited them over for dinner - it was a family of 5 in a small van camper, so I think this was a welcome break from the confines of their rig.

We hiked the next day and were able to meet up with bike tourist we met a few days prior.  Esther is a very kind and nice woman traveling solo all over the world by bike.  She left her home in Vancouver BC headed for Scandanavia, cycled through as much of Russia as her visa would allow, then on to Mongolia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Victoria, and from Australia she was bound for Portugal and Spain.

The shorts and short sleeves were still a few days hence, after a bunch more cold and rain!

  We had extra space in the cabin so she stayed one night with us and we all rode together to Devonport the next day which was big fun - and, the first day on the whole trip where we were actually warm on the bikes - as we went down in elevation and as the weather warmed up as well, we ended up doing the last 10 miles or so in short sleeves and shorts for the first time vs all the layers we’d been wearing most every day previously.

Echidnas ahead.

Visit to the body shop ahead....

I just love that they describe Wombat's movement as 'trundling', pretty accurate when you see them move..

The wildlife we saw was all so cool - wallabies (small kangaroo like creatures), actual kangaroos, wombats, possums (very different than North American possums), what we think was a Tasmanian Devil in the distance, and my favorite of all, the echidna.  Echidna are hedgehog/porcupiney marsupial anteaters, slow and rather ungainly as they move, they have two main defensive plans it seems:  One is to roll up in a ball and rely upon their spines for protection,

An Echidna ball....

the second, probably less effective, but highly comical plan is to simply hide their face (perhaps on the human infant theory of “if I can’t see you, you, of course, cannot see me”)

An Echidna, perfectly safe since he can't see us any longer ...

  We saw a lot of them along the road, and this second defensive posture was nothing but a riot to see.   We learned from an Aussie that they were completely docile and quite safe to poke, so we realized that that was probably a great band name and in turn, created, with Gavin’s daughter’s help, the design for tour t-shirt:

Wombats are startlingly cute and surprisingly big, while they can be nasty and ‘bitey’ and scratchy (well, probably more accurately ‘slashy’, they’ve got big claws), I feel like they’re sort of behind the curve for Australian wildlife, most all of which has at least one, if not several ways to kill you.  So I’m considering a Kickstarter campaign to design and outfit the wombats with helmets mounted with lasers or something.  I’ll work it out and let you know, but the ones we saw looked a bit bummed that they had nothing really frightening to work with.

I had to put both of these on here just so you get a sense of scale with the (adult) humans in background.

Talking with Aussies about the local wildlife was fascinating - we had pretty much the identical experience as Bill Bryson describes so well in this quote:

“Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.” 

― Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country

The thing that got added regularly to discussions we had similar to Bryson’s spot on observations, were questions about bears…as in “yeah, we got a lot of deadly animals here, but you guys have bears up there”… sure North Americans need to be cautious about bears occasionally, but this pales in comparison to how much more frequently Aussies can encounter the aforementioned deadly things in Australia.

After we completed the bicycle portion of the trip, we had the chance to spend a day or so in Hobart, visiting an amazing art museum and getting out for a great hike out along some spectacular cliffs above the ocean.

Our wonderful host and guide, Gavin way, way above the ocean below.  We hiked all the way out to the end of the point visible in the center background.

We closed out the trip with a few days visiting some friends in Melbourne which was much warmer than Tasmania and great for some time at the beach, and some wandering in the city proper through the botanic gardens and a great museum.  Then back home to Taiwan after an amazing trip!