2008-07 Taiwan High Speed Rail

While on his last visit to Taiwan , Ray was able to ride on the bullet train from Taipei to Kaohsiung with a couple of local employees of Advantek. In the past, travel between these 2 cities consisted of a short plane ride and all the airport hassles that went with it, or 6 hour bus ride. The new train connects the two cities in about 1.5 hours, with many trains throughout the day. We arrived at the train station about 8:00 AM and were on our way about 10 minutes later. The bullet trains travels over 280km/hr (175mph) and have various classes of travel. The one-way ticket costs about $40.

The train roughly follows the west coast of Taiwan, although not close enough to view the ocean. The first 30 minutes going south are through a series of tunnels cut through the mountains. Then the remaining hour is along the coastal flatlands. The flatlands are densely populated as the entire stretch seems to be filled with one city after another in the distance. Along the way are various temples with intricate roof decorations interspersed between the cities and the fields. The tracks cut through vegetable farms, rice paddies, and what I think were fish farms. In one area, the vegetable fields were all covered with netting to help protect the vegetables from birds and other predators.

When we arrived in Kaohsiung, an interesting sign at the pickup and drop off point was translated as the “Kiss and Ride” area. That makes sense for your loved ones, but not necessarily for business acquaintances. On the way back to Taipei, we ate lunch in the train station in Kaohsiung at a fast food restaurant called Mos Burger. It was pronounced "moss", so I was expecting something along the lines of a mushroom burger. Instead they had various meat options all on a bun, including ground beef, pork, fish, and their specialty--octopus. I had the spicey hamburger, made that way with jalepenos. The sides include standard french fries or deep fried prawns, so I had the prawns since that is not on the menus back home

Coming back to Taipei, we arrived at the main Taipei Railway Station, which is right across the street from the hotel that I was staying.

2008-07 Geocaching

Ray has started to do some geocaching again lately. Geocaching is like a hi-tech scavenger hunt, using GPS units to zero in on the locations of the cache. Containers called caches have been placed all over the world for people to hunt down and then log their visits. Coordinates for the geocache are placed online along with hints and information for the search. Canisters that are used for caches can be anything from a small pill bottle to giant pickle jars. Most caches contain a paper for listing your visit at the site, but some also contain trinkets that you can exchange for trinkets you carry, and others contain items called travel bugs that are moved from one cache to another. The travel bugs have serial numbers and are traced online as they move across the US or the world. There are over 600,000 registered caches world wide. Once you return home you can log your visit online.

Although he did his first a couple of years ago, Ray got started again on a trip to San Francisco where he went looking for various caches with one of his workmates. It was a great way to see the city and get some exercise. The San Francisco caches were all in the city, along roads and in parks. A lot are hidden in plain sight, but blend in with everything else around them, so unless you know they are there, you will not see them. This one was attached to a plastic ivy leaf that was mixed in with all the live ivy growing along Lombard St.

After returning home, he went looking for some of the local caches in the parkland directly behind the house. There are at least 5 caches in the park. Some of the caches can have multiple steps where you find a new set of coordinates in the initial location and then have to move to the new location to actually find the cache. Sometimes the second set of coordinates is given on a piece of paper, but sometimes the cache owner has made a puzzle that must be figured out to find the next stage. In one case, a stone was at the location of the initial coordinates that have a series of lines and dots on them. The challenge was to determine what these symbols meant and how to convert them to longitude and latitude for input into the GPS. Some research on the Internet provided the information and the next location. A concrete dragon head tucked deep in the park was the cache location.

Trinkets can be items such as golf tees, happy meal type toys, items with city or town names, foreign coins or currency. Generally the value is minimal and they are small in size to fit in the cache canister. One interesting item Ray found was a stamped aluminum commemorative piece created from the scrapped airframe of the first UPS airplane.

At the tail end of soccer season, Ray, Hailey and LeAnn pursued a couple caches near the soccer fields were the kids were playing. Ray and LeAnn had hoped to do a little geocaching on RAGBRAI, but time and location did not allow.

Geocaching is fun family activity that can be done by all ages, either alone or as a group. You can learn more about it on http://www.geocaching.com/

2008-07 RAGBRAI Bike Ride

Ray and LeAnn both ventured out to ride on the RAGBRAI bicycle ride across Iowa this year. Our brother-in-law John and neighbor Mike (thanks for all the planning, phone calls, emails, and coordination) along with 2 of his workmates (Shannon and Michele) made up the riding team this year. We rented an RV again this year for the overnight stops. Mike’s friend Matt (thanks getting us the best parking/camping spots everywhere) was our driver and support crew.

We rode 2 days this year across the middle of Iowa, both in terms of east/west and north/south direction. We started in Jefferson and rode almost 60 miles to Ames the first day and then almost 80 miles from Ames to Toledo the second day. Our route mainly followed the Lincoln highway (US 30), one of the first complete routes across the US.

We arrived in Jefferson on Tuesday evening and ended up with a parking spot at the very end of the county fairgrounds. This was a quiet area, except for the trains rolling through town and blowing their whistles all night long. It seemed as if trains went through every half hour or so. This was the case along the whole route. It was amazing how busy the train tracks were in this area, with coal, tankers and boxcars going both directions at all times.

We walked downtown and had a bite to eat (a recurring theme you will read about over and over again) and listened to some music before heading back to camp. On the way back, we walked through a very dark area and looked up to see a brilliant sky full of stars. You can see so many more stars out in the country than you can in the city. The moon came up and washed some of them out, but it was a beautiful sight.

We left Jefferson about 7:00 AM and headed east. It was a clear day with light winds (although from the east), relatively cool and flat terrain. There was only one hill to speak of, and it was a killer. A lot of people had to walk their bikes up the last few hundred yards. During the day we heard and saw a lot of ambulances going back and forth, which surprised us, but when you consider the number of riders (estimates range from 15,000-20,000 each day) and the varying skill levels and speed, it is easy to understand how accidents can happen.

We stopped about every 10 miles or so for refueling, either food or beverage or both. The towns along the route all have lots of food and drink to benefit the local community sold by community groups, schools, churches, scout troops, etc. Although the bike ride does not have a specific charity sponsor, everyone along the way benefits. The ride itself follows a different path each year and has been in every county in Iowa at some point in time. This was the 36th ride.

As we rode into Ames, we went right through the Iowa State Univeristy campus. There was a lot of open space and it looked very pretty. The campground was about a mile form campus in the football stadium lot. We arrived early on Tuesday due to the short route. We went over to another tent campground which had portable showers. These were individual showers in the back of a converted container van, 12 showers to a container and 2 containers on sight. It sure was a better set-up than last years open air showers in show barns!

Across the street from the stadium were the large festival grounds for the evening which included the food stands, bike stores and entertainment venue. The featured acts were Styx and The Nadas, and the concert was a benefit for flood relief which devastated a wide area in Iowa. RAGBRAI was also selling bandanas to benefit the flood relief. The crowd at the concert was very large, so it appeared to be a success.

We again got up and got going about 7:00 on Wednesday. It was another clear day, but the winds were a little stronger (again in our face), but the terrain was much hillier, one hill right after another all day long. The 20 extra miles and all the hills slowed us down, but we all made it in by 5:00.

We noticed during the morning that the food lines were a lot shorter than Tuesday (and last year), so we were able to walk right up for a giant breakfast burrito at Farm Boys, which usually has a very long line. We never did figure out why that was the case. There were probably a lower number of riders that day as Tuesday was extremely large due to the short, easy route and its proximity to Des Moines allowed a lot of people to come for that one day. The good thing on Wednesday was it seemed like we heard and saw less accidents.

Our destination on Wednesday night was Tama-Toledo. We had a nice long decent into Tama through the river valley. We saw some signs of flooding in the valley. Matt had done some scouting around town and befriended a local who allowed us to park the RV in front of his house and set up our tents in his yard. We were just a block from the courthouse square where the festivities were centered.

We hit the food lines at their busiest time, so it took some time to eat. But by the time we finished eating the lines for pie and ice cream were short and quick, so we topped off our tanks with some great home made pie and ice cream. Small little John Deere popper engines were used to crank the ice cream, and they always sounded like they were ready to stop running, and made a loud popping noise every few seconds.

There is a great amount of trust and friendship on this ride. Everyone is willing to help out someone in need. Local stores would set out power strips for anyone to use for charging cell phones. Many farmers along the side of the road would have drinks or food and just have a free will offering, no set price. Food and beverage prices were reasonable, and there was plenty of competition to keep it that way. Schools opened their doors for space, cooling off, or rest.

It is a fun experience and well worth the time it takes to prepare for the ride. I would recommend everyone try to do some portion of RAGBRAI sometime in their life. Not every segment may be easy, but it is doable. You see young kids riding, and you see 70+ year olds riding, many doing the whole week. It is not a race, so you just have to know your pace and work to that.

2008-07 Fourth of July

We had a full day on the 4th this year starting with the parade and ending with the fireworks. The pragde lated about 2 hours and was filled with politicians this year since it is an election year. In between we enjoyed a barbeque, root beer floats and games such as ladder golf and bean bag toss. Ray and John went over to the community center where they were having a classic car show with lots of cars from the 60's. The weather was good this year, so we did not have to worry about any rain.

The weekend started with dinner with LeAnn's mom and her sisters to celebrate the end of her stay up here in the cities recoperating from knee replacement surgery.

Mariah did not join us this year as she was running in a 12 mile run around Green Lake out in Spicer, MN this year with a couple of her friends.