A change of plans

Thursday. A work/school day. The only people who are free to do anything are Emilia, Vicky, and me. Summer's almost over so of course we gotta hit the beach! So simpo righ? Wrong! Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, it seems. 

Bright and early at 8:45 I get a wake up call from Emilia. I've only just gone to sleep like 3 hours prior so my eyelids are pretty much still glued to my eyeballs. The beach calls! but still, I roll back over and snooze until my real alarm clock goes off at 9. hit snooze. hit snooze. hit snooze. SHIT! It's 9:30 and we're supposed to meet at 10:00! I call her to say I'm gonna be half an hour late (as usual) and find out Vicky flaked cause she had also only slept for 3 hours. I thought she was down. I guess I was wrong. I jump outta bed, get my beach stuff together and I'm out the door. I try to butter Emilia up by asking if she wants me to buy her breakfast but she's already eaten. Oh well, I tried. 

I get to Taipei Main Station right on late time, 10:30. Emilia is right behind me. So which beach should we go to? The ticket girl says WaiAo is a 2 hour ride and Fulong is 1.5. We agree on Wai Ao cause we can surf if we want to and it's only half an hour further. Train ride is semi-boring but we always find some way to entertain ourselves. As vain as it sounds, taking pictures of ourselves and of each other can help pass lots and lots of time. But there are just so many people we can attempt to imitate and so many moods we can attempt to express. Keyword being "attempt." haha. Then I play English teacher for a little bit as I explain the lyrics to Jason Mraz' If It Kills Me cause I've been all over this song for a couple days now. I then try and explain Mariah's I stay in Love but for some reason I can't understand a couple lines. There's one line where I keep hearing "I float like a whale" but really? That really can't be right. She then shares some black music with me. Catchy but with no content. Whoops I didn't say anything. After about an hour, I ask if she wants to just go to Fulong cause it's closer and I do still have a class that evening at 8:00. It'd just be less of a rush and I don't really NEED to surf. 

After a bit, she goes to the bathroom as our train pulls into GongLiao which is the station right before Fulong. I start thinking about GongLiao. Every summer, there's a music festival held at Fulong beach called the GongLiao Music Festival so I start thinking maybe we're supposed to get off here. But Emilia's ass is still in the bathroom and the train is gonna leave the station soon. So I start panicking slightly. Right when she comes out I ask her if we're supposed to get off here and she uses the same logic as me and says I think so! So we're all in a frenzy gathering our shit and then jump onto the platform. Right after we step down, the train doors close behind us and we've realized we've made a horrible mistake. Oh well. Being the optimistic people that we are, we just shrug our shoulders and exit the station thinking What we should do next?

We have a couple options. Wait for the next train which comes in 1.5 hours. NO. Take a cab over to Fulong. MAYBE. As we walk out of the station, what do we see right across the street? Bicycles for rent. You wanna ride over to Fulong? OK!

It really did seem like a good idea at the time...until we got to THE HILLS!!! Uphill, uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, uphill... 

That's basically how it went. I think all the exercise I've been doing helped me out that day. I mean, I was tired, that's f'sho. But I was definitely in a much better position than Emilia, even though my bike was really low (for my short legs) and each pedal only went like a foot. 

(Can you see Emilia making her way up the hill??? hahaha)

So after about 45 mins of going uphill, uphill, downhill, uphill, we finally reach our destination...and GUESS WHAT?! See that red flag?? It means the beach is closed due to post-typhoon maintenance. :( DAMN YOU TYPHOON THAT HAS ALREADY LEFT! We're so close! Look at the beach! Just look at it! It's beautiful... DAMN YOU RED FLAG! 

   

So...with our music on full blast and stripped down to our bikinis, we slowly make our way back to GongLiao to return the bikes. After a long day of biking, we reward ourselves with the best 便當ever! BEHOLD!!!