I'm planning on quitting my job today. It's just not worth it anymore. This isn't like San Francisco where I was giving up my livelihood because I wanted to give up my life. This has become a sucky job, with sucky pay, that doesn't appreciate my being there, and therefore doesn't deserve me being there.

It's actually a no-brainer. This is not a job worth languishing in. It's not even my livelihood since I switched to part-time, and that doesn't earn enough to live on.

Taiwan is a dead city to me. It never really came to life, except for maybe the cycling. Time to leave.

What does that mean? Did San Francisco die? Almost. Yea, it did. There was nothing more left for me, there was no more potential in that city. I wasn't going to get anything more out of that city.

I did that North Coast Highway 2 ride. It turned out to be 66 miles long, possibly the longest ride I've done without hurting myself (that would be Tahoe, which nearly killed me. Well, not really, but it really, really hurt). It also established the upper limit of what I can do, which is nothing impressive, as some people do more than that as casual training.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2:49 a.m. - Not much to photograph or see at this time of morning, but in daylight hours this is a seaside plaza for taking wedding photos. There are a bunch of aesthetic structures built to enhance wedding photos. Taiwanese take wedding photos very seriously. 

2:56 a.m. - Basically across the road from the wedding photo plaza is the Jingang Four-Faced Buddha Temple.

But I was hurting in that last 13 mile stretch from Keelung back to Taipei. And the sun was well on its way up by the time I got back to my neighborhood. Yea, that was a long-ass ride. Especially solo and basically a straight shot. I took two rests, did the ride in 5 hours, averaging 16.7 mph until Keelung. That's fast for me! I'm usually happy when I complete a ride averaging over 15 mph (albeit those usually have climbs). By the end of the ride, after suffering from Keelung to Taipei, I was only down to an average of 16.3 mph.

5:42 a.m. - Last stretch of Keelung River bikeway approaching home.

But overall it went really well. It was a nice clear-ish night and I was able to track my direction as I made the curve of the north coast by spotting Sirius, high in the southern sky. I probably should've taken a rest in the stretch through Shimen, Jinshan and Wanli into Keelung, which I did in one shot. That probably would have made the last stretch less painful.

That ride accomplished, I don't know what else Taipei has to offer. Dead city. After I quit, I'll start doing more day rides as the weather allows, and start exhausting what photography is left to find.

Assuming I don't kill myself, which would be off the east coast I decided, not the north, I would quit the band and move to Kaohsiung some time next year, stay there for some period of time and then move back to the States and look for a job in New York or Philadelphia until I got sick of living so close to family and then relocate to Tucson. Unless I can find my way to Nagasaki.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28 - Raohe Night Market about to start preparing for opening.

4:43-4:49 p.m.

4:55 p.m.