Lin's Travels: A Few Good Men

We're hoping a few good men will attract more women to the ultimate field. Not that men-crazed women are really the best suited for ultimate. I'd probably go after soccer players. But that's beside the point. Here are a few of Sunday's players trying to look their best. Dan hosted a BBQ, which is a traditional activity for celebrating the mid Autumn Moon Festival. However, Stanley tells me that when he was a kid, the only tradition was eating moon cakes (yue bing). But then somebody started advertising the absolute need to BBQ about 10 years ago and now everyone does it. Go figure! (In the pic, we're about to dig into some delicious grilled vegetables along with fish and sausages. It was nice to have a pile of veggies that weren't fried!)

On Tuesday, John and Becca took Tommy and I to Wulai for some hiking. This was my first hike in Taiwan and I wasn't sure what to expect. So I did what I would have done in the US - wore some sturdy sneakers and brought water. It wasn't what we were expecting. We paid $50NT to take this mini train along the side of the mountain, and then ended up walking along a wide paved path. Granted, it was surrounded by trees and waterfalls. But there were lots of people with bags of McDonald's and fires to grill their lunches. A bit different. At the end of the path, there was a booth to charge $80 NT for access to what we presumed was a longer, wider, paved path ahead. We decided it wasn't worth it and turned around.

On the way back, Tommy noticed this tiny little sign on a very narrow path going up the mountain. Becca assured us it didn't say anything like "DANGER! Turn back now", so we decided to see what it was about. The whole path was extremely narrow, but clearly maintained. We went up and up, nearly slipping off the path down the steep hill at times, but all made it safely -- to the middle. That's when we decided we had had enough - what with not knowing where it was going and for how much longer and starting to get hungry for lunch. I enjoyed the walk and learned more about the past lives of my three ex-pat companions. It seems most people here have an interesting story, and I quite like the variety.

On our way back, there were bigger crowds of people by the waterfalls. We stopped to get some Grilled Goodness - I got something that looked like fishcakes, but tasted very QQ (instead of like fishballs).