A Three-Day Education in Alpine Geology, Burn Care, and Pyschotherapy; or, How To Go From On Top of the World to Misanthropic in Less Than a Second
How did I learn so much in three days, you wonder. Have I discovered some magical new pedagogical trick? Memory palaces or milk tea-fueled late night cram sessions...what could it be? No, I got this education on the street. Literally. Right down there, flesh on pavement, scraping along like fresh mozzarella on a nice sharp grater. But let's start a little before that.
Last Saturday I had a wonderful day. We took a bus some ways outside Taipei, to the ocean, to see some incredible rock formations. Well, we didn't time it so well. By the time our bus finally dropped us off in god-knows-where, just about the only passengers left, it was dark, cold, and a heavy rain was falling. There were six or seven of us, good friends all. No one was feeling down about the missteps of our little day trip, so we found our way to the sea and took a look. When you're close to the fierce ocean at night in a rainstorm, without any man-made lights nearby, the only thing that's lit up clear as day is the fabric of the world--violent, powerful, and endless.
We walked along a coastal road to the rock formations and looked up at them, in front of our eyes but barely visible through the storm. Far down the coast were the lights of Keelung, beckoning us. But it was too far. We turned around, umbrellas in shreds, and made our way back to the bus stop. Back in Taipei, we emerged in a daze near Zhongxiao Fuxing, the cosmopolitan shopping and partying center of Taipei. Think big Asian nightclubs, Gucci, H&M, Uniqlo, SOGO, endless boutiques, and a vibrant food scene with everything on offer. We went for a cafe that has been getting a lot of attention recently, and sat talking in those fashionable environs for almost three hours, taking in the crowd, the artisan sandwiches, and the sublime, cutting-edge tea drinks.
God's great ocean was a world away.
The next day, Sunday, I woke up ready for a bike ride. It had been raining more or less nonstop for almost two weeks, and that hadn't stopped me, but I was excited for my first dry day in a while. With no news of a group ride, I headed out on my own at a casual 10am. First I made my way to the Taipei zoo and up into the mountains from there. It was a beautiful day. What struck me was the temperature--it was cold! It couldn't have been below 60, but with humidity that's reasonably chilly, and on all my rides up to then it had felt like late summer would in Boston in Colorado. But I was working hard and had no trouble keeping warm.
I climbed a big, beautiful mountain. Taiwan has serious, alpine mountains, but those are down in the middle of the island. Up here in the north, as the central range gets ready to plunge into the sea, they aren't so high. But you can still climb straight up for an hour. The roads are all very well-kept, and it's easy to find ones with zero traffic. I was climbing toward Pinglin on Sunday, on a somewhat main road. I got to a high point and saw a narrow little one-lane county lane plunge down into the valley. It was paved and marked, and I'd wanted to try it for a while. So off I went.
And this. Was. It. As a serious cyclist and snowboarder with some experience, I know what it is to look for the perfect spot. No people, no noise, good conditions, good weather...sometimes you line all that up. And that's what I'd done. This little road curved sharply along with the contour of the hill, sloping gently downward into the valley. The view was always there. Occasionally I would pass another solo cyclist or an old man walking slowly. This was it.
With all the rain of the last two weeks, I knew I had to be careful. Riding in the rain on a bicycle is not terribly dangerous, if you brake properly. Or, I should say, the water itself is not what makes it dangerous. But it's very important to consider alpine geology. On this tiny lanes to some old person's house, cut right on the mountainside with no ditch, the rain washes slimy mud and dirt onto the road. Particularly where riverlets form, that sliminess stays on the road. It's often the same color as the road, and can't be seen. Because it's not really dirt and it's not really debris--it's just slime.
Riding with a friend on a similar road last weekend, I watched her fall three times. She would just be pedaling along and her wheel would slide out from under her. It almost happened to me twice but I kept myself up. That was when we were climbing. On the descent, we took a main road, where they cut ditches on the side and you never have the slime. But each time she fell on the climb, she would get up and keep pedaling. She had some bruises, but when you fall on a steep climb in your lowest gear it just shakes you up...usually, there's not much potential for injury.
We talked about the slime and how dangerous it was. We knew exactly what to look for.
And yet, on Sunday, I let my guard down. I was descending this time, enjoying myself immensely, exploring an isolated corner of a tropical mountain range impossibly close to an Asian metropolis. And at that pinnacle of joy, I braked on a slimy spot. That was my fault. The road was imperfect, but the road is always imperfect. Cycling is the art of processing the conditions around you at high speed and accounting for them. I failed to account quickly enough, and for that all the fault lies with me.
I probably went down at about 25-35km/h. You come to trust your bike as a cyclist. You trust the movements it makes and the way it responds to your touch. You trust the way the gears shift and the way the brakepads kiss the rims of your wheels. And most of all, you trust that it will somehow stay upright. So when it doesn't, it's a real visceral shock. A close-to-the-hardware jolt of electricity. Something like realizing your reliable spouse of twenty-five years has cheated on you.
I skidded for a while and then leaped off the pavement like a kernel of popcorn. I don't even remember unclipping. I can't remember if I checked my body or my bike first. Probably my bike. I realized it was serious when I saw my torn shorts, and a wave of fear hit me when I made myself look at my hip and elbow. There were dirt and rocks and debris inside my body, all mixed up with blood and skin. A cocktail of animal and earth. And my shorts were torn. My favorite shorts.
My first thought was to irrigate with water, but all I had was Pocari Sweat. That didn't seem like a good idea. For a few minutes, I just stood there in a rage, eyes squeezed shut, wincing away the rising pain. The isolation that had felt so good sixty seconds before now seemed damning. I thought of "The Pacific," which I had watched the week before. Put it in perspective, Hank. Put it in perspective.
I needed an escape plan. I needed desperately to get back to normal. I checked my wounds carefully and everything seemed okay. No bones jutting out, good range of motion on my arm and leg, just nasty road rash. Then I checked my bike. Brakes good, wheels not damaged, frame okay, shifting normal. But I was almost twenty miles from home. I had a small climb and then a 12-mile descent, and then a ride through Taipei City ahead of me.
The climb was not bad. Oh, it hurt. But I started to feel like a superhero. Teeth clenched, crushing up the hill, roaring through the pain. Taking it impossibly slow whenever I had to brake. I got to the top and looked with dread toward the descent ahead of me.
I am a born climber. There is nothing like charging up a mountain on a bicycle. Time stops, actually. Or, rather, it is replaced by the cadence of your legs beating on your pedals. Seconds and minutes and hours disappear, and all that's left is the human mind and the pair of legs which seem to extend straight out of it. But descending is dangerous and not very much fun. You have to be extremely careful and alert, and serious injury is always a few feet away. I dream of a mountain with no way down.
And at the top of this descent I felt less friendly toward the idea of going downhill on a bicycle than ever before. I imagined what road rash on top of road rash would feel like. That struck the fear of death into my heart. I decided to take it slow. Real slow. I even pulled over to let a bus pass at one point. Astonishing behavior for me.
I got down okay. The descent dropped me into the southern tip of Taipei City. If you don't know Taipei City, well, the traffic is miserable. There are too many buses, all with drivers who think they are at the wheel of a (insert fast car), and hordes of motorbikes swarming around them. Honestly, the bus drivers drive as if the motorbikes aren't there. They don't hesitate to veer over through two lanes of motorbikes to pick up someone at a stop. And the motorbikes just slow down and sneak behind or speed up and squirt ahead like tapioca balls through a fat bubble tea straw. Trying to ride a bicycle through that is a nightmare. It's a constant battle of nerves. There is no concept of right of way, and everyone drives their motorbike/bus/BMW like the Panzergruppen in Poland. And don't forget about the choking exhaust. I pine for American emissions standards.
Riding through all that with road rash, I hated Taiwan. A guy decided to back his SUV across two lanes of a busy avenue...almost right into me. Countless motorbikes zipped by me, hairs away. A few bus drivers decided to brush me into the curb, or to spew passengers right out in front of me. A sloppy mess of a Taiwanese man pulled in front of me on his motorbike and threw a half-full milk tea into a parked car at speed, splashing it all onto my front wheel and foot. Where was I? What hell was this? How did I find myself in a miserable inferno of motorbike exhaust, never-ceasing noise, and bus drivers with hearts of lead? And there wasn't even a girlfriend or family waiting for me at home. Could no one feel my pain?
Being a foreigner in Asia is never quite easy. It has its ups and downs, and in the end it all comes down to one permanent and uncomfortable truth: you stick out and there's never gonna be anything you can do about it. But when you're in a ripped cycling kit with blood and dirt streaming down your leg and arm, you stick out even more. At that point, worse than the pain was the psychological despair that was starting to creep up on me. What was this awful place, and what was I doing there.
I finally collapsed into the elevator of my apartment building and made it to my room. Then I took a close look at my wounds. This was the moment I had dreaded. I was unprepared for proper self-care, so I thought it might be best to go to a hospital. But that wouldn't be so easy. With no Taiwanese friends in reach, I would definitely have language problems. Where was a hospital? I could probably have a taxi take me... How much would it cost? I'd need to go to an ATM first. Would I have to wait? Would they see me at all? How would I explain my situation, and what had happened to me? I had only just learned the word for bicycle...
I did some quick research online and figured out my burns weren't that bad. I could probably care for them myself. There was a big one on my elbow, a bigger one on my hip, and a small but nasty one of my knee. The elbow was worst, because it had been skin on pavement. And it had already started to scab.
I got in the shower and turned on the water. This was gonna hurt for sure. I knew to use body temperature water and mild soap. I started with the knee, which looked least bad. It stung like hell, but I rubbed the dirt out with soap and got it quite clean. The soap felt good, like a fluffy wave of angel food cake after the water. Then I did my hip, which hurt much worse. Something like being on fire, or like having acid poured on you.
I can't clearly remember the pain of water hitting my elbow. It just ended up clean somehow. All I remember is screaming. I couldn't quite keep it inside anymore. It's really something to make yourself scream with pain.
After that, I had to go out for bandages. To do so I had to get dressed. Thankfully, I could wear shorts and a T-shirt, so the only wound I covered with clothing was my hip. I went down the elevator. It hurt a lot to walk, but any pain I felt now was like a half-hearted breeze blowing in the morning after a typhoon.
And then the most remarkable thing happened. There is a large tile courtyard in front of my apartment building. As I walked through it, a little boy on a tiny bicycle cut across my path, just a foot in front of me, his dad pushing him along. "Jia yo!" his dad shouted, letting go. It means "add oil," as in oil into the wok, but really it means do your best. I stopped dead in my tracks, and watched the kid ride a few meters on his own power, with his dad clapping behind him. And tears streamed down my face. It was too cosmic, too surreal, to feel such pain and despair in my heart, but to see such joy right before me. It was too uncanny and impossible to come from a bike crash and see a kid learning to ride for the first time. Like something out of a bad novel.
In the next few days I learned the art of caring for burns, which I have now perfected. I missed a day of school, but I went and took a test and did a presentation today. It wasn't fun. The burns are under control, I'm keeping them clean, and they are starting to heal. Washing them gets less painful every time. I did it just before writing this, and it was bearable. My psychological despair is slipping away, too. I've been to the same pharmacy twice a day for the last three days, and I've gotten to know the ladies there. They helped me find moisture-blocking dressings (人工皮), and ordered more when I ran them out of stock. Today they asked me some questions (which they had clearly been dying to do) and all gathered around to hear my crappy Chinese and wish me a speedy recovery. Saying what I'm doing in Taiwan and where I go to school and how I hurt myself in broken sentences is not an achievement. But it's the beginning of the process of learning to be a part of a place you're not used to.
I'm not totally happy here--it's tough to be in a foreign country--and the crash didn't help. But in the end it gave me another connection or two in the neighborhood, such as it is, and taught me a lot about burn care. By tomorrow, walking won't hurt at all, and except for my elbow, I think the burns are done oozing white stuff.
I'm glad I was able to take care of myself. I will never forget the kid riding his bike in front of my building. If life is a quest and the grail is feeling, then in that moment I was surely in its holy glow. The next few weeks will be tough, and I'm sure I won't pass JLPT, but that's okay. Life is not a multiple-choice examination.
Serious ups to my parents for fronting for all these expensive bandages. It's a blessing to have someone you can always fall back on--if you have that, you have something. Even when you're getting cut off by a cranky bus driver and pincered by fourteen grandmas on circa 1994 motorbikes.
Thursday is Thanksgiving. I'll be giving thanks for my health, and for all the people I love, all around the world.
