slickensides

slickensides are parallel striations on rock surfaces produced by relative motion across opposite sides of fault planes. they can give important information about the sense of shear and direction of motion across the fault plane. these slickenlines indicate a top-to-the-west, thrust sense of shear along the interface of a coal bed with a sandstone bed. the coal (with its low internal strength and high graphite content) acts as a weak layer that allows the overlying shale to 'glide' across the sandstone.



~t

time...

not much of that left here... trying to get my remaining tasks prioritized and it's proving to be a little more diffucult than i thought it might be. in part, i want to have some more polished results ready to present upon my arrival in colorado, but on the other hand i would like to spend my last several days here having fun and trying to squeeze in some last-minute exploring. ultimately i'm sure i'll manage to do a little bit of both, but not as much of either as i would like. eh, that's the way it goes.

it seems i've been slacking on posting photos recently too... so here's a quick pic of the farms around puli just before twilight.



~t

data transcription

phew. back from puli... it was sunny and hot there (as the farmer-tan i acquired can prove) and it's pouring rain again here in taipei. i'm sitting at my desk here about to start transcribing all of my field notes, which of course didn't happen during the last few nights as i'd fooled myself into thinking it would. talk is tomorrow, but everyone keeps reminding me that it's no big deal and to keep it simple.

my cough is still lingering on, but i took some time to further research the side-effects of the drugs i brought with me (tamiflu and cipro) ...it sounds like the potential side effects are much worse than an annoying cough. i've been reading all these first hand accounts of permanent disability and tendon injury and all sorts of really nasty things. i think i'll put up with the cough for a little longer... even after just two days out of taipei i could feel my lungs clearing up a little.

~t

puli bound

ahhh...

leaving today at 5pm for some last-minute field work and data-mining in puli. i'll be bringing my laptop to plot up new data every evening, and also to slide this new info into my presentation for tuesday (if i'm back by then).

the thought of leaving here is a little surreal now, after four months of really getting settled in. i know my way around really well, i'm comfortable... i have some really good friends here. if highschool represents the kind of ultra-awkward and socially combative image of my past (as it does for many people in the states) then i would have to say that grad-school represents a time when i can be at ease with my surroundings and feel socially uninhibited. this sense of ease makes traveling a hell of a lot easier than it was when i was 17, and my experiences are that much richer.

i'm not really sure what the point of this post is.... maybe just a reminder that if you're ever off in the middle of the jungle doing field work and worrying about how you're going to solve some sticky problem or how you're ever going to manage to give a talk the day you get back, remember to stop for a minute and take a look around; enjoy the view, smell the sunshine and sit back with a bowl of pork wonton soup and a bottle of pi-jio. you are a lucky bastard.

~t

down to the wire

i've got exactly two weeks remaining until i am uprooted once more and returned to my land of milk and honey (or micro-brews and mountainous peaks). at the moment i am filled with conflicting feelings for my impending departure, from joyous anticipation to mild dread.

i've spent the last four months trying to wrap my noggin around the puli basin... to get into the nitty-gritty of what will eventually become the focus of my doctoral dissertation, and i'm slightly more confused at this point than i was coming in. i've spent hours futzing with digital elevation models and ascii (american standard code for information interchange... i had to look it up) data, then days plotting profiles and vector maps. i've stared at cross sections from different sources and so far they've all constructed sections through my study area with squiggly lines, the structural geologist's equivalent of saying, "forget it, i'm not even going to try". if anything, i'm frustrated that i haven't been able to really shed a lot of light on the processes at work here... and this is where my feelings of mild dread come in.

on the one hand, returning to colorado will mean being reunited with friends and being able to understand everyone i talk to. i can ride my bikes, and enjoy all that boulder has to offer, namely clean air and that wonderful small-town aesthetic. on the other hand it means returning to my office (and my advisor) with a big question-mark on my forehead. now, i know it would be foolish for me to return with the idea that i'd figured it all out, and that it's unrealistic to think that i could have in relatively short time. it's still nagging at me though. the good side to going back to the office is that i'll have an easier time checking in and getting feedback... not to mention a little more motivation to get cracking on this stuff. this summer will be spent restoring (sort of deconstructing piece by piece) balanced structural cross-sections of the western foothills... then meshing these with my own updated cross-sections of the hsuehshan range. i think my goal for the year could be a poster at the annual a.g.u. conference with a complete balanced cross-section and axial surface map.

for now however, a 30 minute talk next tuesday and an hour long presentation in three weeks will be the focus of my energy. i think the next few days are going to be very long ones indeed.

~t

junk food...

...is the same the world over. for some unknown reason i decided to get a hot-dog last night from the local 7-11. yuck. i've never been a really huge fan of hot-dogs, but every once in a while i just get that craving for something that reminds me of summers when i was ten years old. rest-assured, the taiwanese have not quite mastered the "art" of the american hot-dog. i can't say if there were too many preservatives or not enough, if the meat mixture had too many pig snouts or not enough, but something was quite amiss. i won't be buying any more of those.

my latest field excursion was supposed to take place this past weekend, but due to dangerous conditions (heavy rain raising the water levels in the peikanghsi valley) i opted to wait it out. now i'll be going back down as soon as the conditions allow access to the riverbed, where i need to fill in some data-gaps in order to complete my initial cross-section through the area.

from the data i've compiled already, it appears that the high terrace surface deformation doesn't really follow from the deformation pattern of the rocks immediately below them in the valley, so i need to start looking for some other less obvious cause. i have a few in mind, and one hypothesis i particularly like (involving some exciting new models from very new research on the internal deformation of critical coulomb wedges under conditions of steady-state erosion) but i don't yet have enough information to prove anything. i'm sure, in fact, that even if i can come up with some convincing "proof", it will be months before i can pull it all together. i keep forgetting that i'll be taking the next 4-plus years to work all this out. ahhhh.... grad school.

~t

bali: fictional life - real death

it's been a week since i returned from bali. images of beaches and palm trees were put aside in the last few days for more dreams of structural geology and questions about noncorrelable surface and subsurface deformation patterns... but now some of those questions have been answered and i have plans to re-visit my field area soon to help fill in some gaps. in the meantime, i'll finally get to write something about bali.

several weeks ago i was im-ing with my boulder roomate about plans i had to take some time off from my studies in taipei, in order to spend a few days in a villa in indonesia. i'm sure i added a few embellishments about my plans, but the one thing i remember about the conversation was chris telling me, "the more i talk to you, the more you sound like a fictional character." in following conversations since then he's clarified that he meant a character more like james bond or some such globe-trotting-martini-swilling-tropical-villa-living type persona... the point is: i never really thought about this 'fictional life' of mine until someone else brought it up.



bali is an interesting blend of realities itself. the very mention of the name brings up images of postcard beaches... attractive tanned people and white sand, palms, turquoise water and vivid sunsets; but the truth is a little more three-dimensional than that. one walk through central kuta will show a person a lot about what bali is like. yes, the island is beautiful... almost exactly what one might expect from the postcards, but the postcards can never do justice to the human element.



there is a very clear separation between locals and foreigners. foreigners are there by choice; we fly there on a jet and stay in a hotel. we see the sights and pay people to drive us around. we shop, we spend, and for the most part that is our role. it's obvious that the economy depends on the tourist trade and just about every local has some part to play in the exchange. it's nearly impossible to walk more than ten feet through central kuta without being offered transport or souvenirs or drugs. stray dogs cruise the streets while shop-keepers arrange small, ornate hindu offerings of food and flowers and place them at the entrance of their stores. the overall aire in the town is one of real-life... people trying to make a living doing what they can with what they have.



off the streets however, behind the scenes almost, small pockets of paradise and almost opulent indulgence are everywhere to be had... by those who can afford it. "afford" is a key concept here, because just about everyone who visits bali can afford this... but if you are a local you would be lucky to ever see inside this world. even i, with a relatively meager income by american standards (a lowly graduate student stipend), was able to afford an entire private villa. this is where fictional life begins. each morning in the villa, two staff came to cook breakfast. i swam in the pool and sipped cocktails floating on a tray. i had a masseuse come to the villa to work out a knot in my shoulder. i prepared dinner in the villa's luxury kitchen... the list of surreal experiences goes on (and gets better) but i'm at a loss for words to adequately describe them. five minutes walk from my compound's front door was the beach. sunsets were beatiful and a very popular restaurant (kudeta) was right down the street, where one can enjoy tapas and martinis by the starlit ocean.



on the last full day there, i was treated to a trip to 'dreamland beach'. as the name implies, the beach is amazing. after a 20 minute drive and short hike down through old terraces of uplifted coral reef, dreamland beach is a light coral sand stretch that separates the sea from the myriad small thatched huts and bungalows that occupy every cranny along the cliff. good indonesian food and beer and fun playing in the salty surf all seem like just the things you'd want from a place like this. again, surreal perfection leaves me at a loss for words, for fear that i would fail to do the memory justice.



on the trip back to the villa, the road was blocked by an accident that had just happened. already a throng of people had flocked to the scene, surrounding the tattered wreckage of a large truck and a small scooter. both vehicles lay on their sides; the scooter looked like a toy next to the heavy, broken form of the truck. among glass and platic and metal, all shattered and shorn, a very real hand lay limp and relaxed, protruding from beneath a white sheet laid out next to the scooter and the rider's broken helmet. the realization of life lost was sudden and sobering, but still confusing given where i'd just been.



flipping back and forth between these worlds, of frivolous indulgence and harsh reality, is an experience that seems uniquely balinese. luxury and strife co-exist in close quarters... foreigners on one side and locals on the other. sometimes the two worlds coalesce and the results can go either way, but no matter what, bali will provide anyone with memorable experiences and a new appreciation for what you have in your own real life.

~t

when it rains...

...it pours! i'm not talking about morton's iodized salt, either... it is absolutely pouring buckets outside right now, thunder and all. i've learned the hard way that my puny but 'convenient' umbrella is utterly insufficient in rain like this, as is evidenced by my wet shoes, pants, shoulders and messenger bag. thankfully, my bag is waterproof, otherwise my laptop would be just another cute piece of white plastic with the apple logo on it.

i know, i know... i still haven't posted a single thing about bali. i'm still in the crunch trying to pull a cross section and working kinematic model together so it'll have to wait a little longer. i will leave one pic as a teaser though... this is 'dreamland beach'... enjoy.



~t

back from bali

hey all...

just a quick post this time. i got back from bali late last night and didn't really have any energy left to speak of. in short, bali is amazing... beautiful sights, awesome food, world-class entertainment all came together to make a really memorable 4-day jaunt to indonesia. i'm safe and sound and none the worse for wear (i even managed to pick up a mild tan).

i've got a lot to write about, and i think i managed to get a few good pics (i haven't even had time to look through them myself) so i will likely spend some time in the coming days posting those up here.

~t

cat

~t

saved by schedule conflict

thank god.

i've been working on getting all of my recent data compiled into a couple of maps and figures for the last few days, and was supposed to have a rough version today, but haven't quite made it to that point. getting sick hasn't helped me at all either, but it turns out one of the other students can't meet today so i get an extension by default.

i don't usually get sick more than once a year or so, and i've already been ill a few times this winter. it's what i refer to now as 'city-shpillchus', seeing as how i seem to have the exact same symptoms now as i did when i lived in the industrial city of pontevedra, in northern spain. the constant inhalation of everything from sewage fumes and carbon monoxide to diesel smoke and disc brake dust inevitably ends with my haucking up my lungs. i used to think the greyish stains on all the building here were just a sort of mildew from all the moisture, but i'm fairly convinced now that it's really just all the suspended particles in the air glomming onto the buildings when it rains. i have noticed that the air quality has been particularly crappy in the last couple of weeks, but i'm not totally sure why.

anyway, i've got data to plot and maps to pull together, which at this point should only take another day or two. this is very good news, since i'm leaving on saturday night for bali. yes, beautiful-island-in-the-pacific bali.

i'm excited to go, but i've also been reading up on the activities of jemaah islamiah, the terrorist organization that has been linked to al-qaeda and the 2005 suicide bombing of a popular restaurant in bali. the ideals they follow and the reasons they've given are all old-hat to those of us who took enough interest after 9-11 to read up on extremist islamic fundamentalism. in the most simple terms, indonesia is a muslim nation (88% of it's inhabitants anyway). if you show up to a muslim nation baring your flesh and imbibing alcohol you are performing acts of sacrilege and deserve to be punished. note the word 'extremist' in the previous sentence. of course not all muslims think this way... few would ever consider performing acts of heinous violence against someone who likes to wear a bikini or have a beer... the kicker is that most of the local people on bali are not even muslim, they are hindu. this would make bali a target even if there weren't hundreds of half naked drunken white people running around making fools of themselves. add to it the fact that bali is one of the most popular holiday vacation spots for australians in the world, you get an ideal location for fundamentalist focus... essentially a tiny hindu island in the midst of an expansive muslim archipelago acting as an influx point for thousands of infidels that wish only to defile everything muslims stand for (or something like that)... no wonder.

in the end though, it's no more dangerous to go to a place like bali then it is to visit london (i.r.a.), or madrid (e.t.a.), or any other place in the world where ideals clash and bombs go off.

~t

rainy season?

hi all,

it's been pouring buckets over the last four days or so... you just get used to feeling damp most of the time. i used to hate umbrellas, i hated carrying them, i hated walking on the sidewalk when everyone had them, but i think i've finally come around. this is more of a necessity here than other places i've lived in the past though, so it should come as no surprise to me. you all know the experience of standing on a porch in a summer thunderstorm and seeing spouts of rain sheet off the roof of the porch? ...here you get the same effect even though you're just standing under a small umbrella; water pours down all around you in a thin veil, reminiscent of a small garden fountain. people ride their bikes with umbrellas in hand, and in some cases you can see two people on one bike both holding umbrellas. i saw this just last night, and was kicking myself for not having my camera with me, since the image looked like something right out of a shigeki kuroda etching.

at this point, i only have five more weeks here in taipei and i am really trying to make the most of it. i've been thinking so much about my work that last night's dream was more a continuation of my research than a respite from it... one that you awake from with a start and unexpectedly blurt out, "synformal-axial-surface!". such is grad-school though... right?

it looks like the weather might improve for a couple of days... that last system is blowing out to sea and the air behind it looks pretty dry, maybe that will add to my motivation a little.

~t

highschool correspondence

hey all,

several things in the past weeks have had me thinking back to my old highschool, "acs"... 'the alternative community school' in ithaca, ny. i randomly decided to send a quick email to a bunch of the teachers who taught me while i was there, just saying hi, and what i'm doing now, and thanks for helping get me here in the first place. one of those teachers, who was responsible for getting me into my first academic conference in new mexico when i was about 14, responded with the question of what turned my interests to geology in the first place... my response is below.


"I think originally it was an excuse to study something that would allow me to spend lots of time exploring mountains... but in college that excuse quickly grew into a genuine interest and curiosity about the processes that move and change our planet. There are so many fields within the broad subject of geology that picking one I really enjoyed (and seemed to have a knack for) wasn't that hard... after some trial and error of course. Structural geology basically studies the geometry of brittle deformation in the earth's shallow rocks (the first ten kilometers or so, above the depth at which rock begins to behave as a ductile material) and Neotectonics/Kinematics is the study of the evolution of that deformation through time.... or 'how mountains are made'.

My real fascination with this field is the thought of just how impermanent things like mountains and oceans are. There is a quote somewhere that goes something like, "Societies exist on the whim of Geology" (though the actual quote is much more elegant... I can't seem to find the original...) which is essentially true. Our world is ever-changing, mountains rise and fall and oceans shift, and it seems so unlikely to observers like ourselves who live and die in a geologic blink of an eye. Tectonics as a whole, has only been around as a science for something like 40 years, so it is still very young, and exciting advances in techniques, technology and understanding are still happening.

Perhaps that explanation is a little melodramatic, so to lighten it up a little; sticking with geology really HAS allowed me to spend lots of time hiking and climbing in mountains from Argentina to Taiwan, which of course was the whole point all along!"

~t

night lilies

~t

saturday

...was interesting. got up at a reasonable time, and grabbed my cameras and tripod and caught the train to danshui. shot some pictures around the market area, and the sea-walk... a small temple squeezed between two apartment buildings. went back to the little open air cafe overlooking the bay and had an espresso while i took a few more random shots off the balcony. i also recognized a name when the owner said it to one of the other people there.... "mani". when i got here, (taipei i mean) i started checking online for information about the area. i ran across a post about tian-mu on 43places.com by mani, (i recommend the site by the way... it has a lot of good information about travel destinations all over the planet) who also recommended danshui and the cafe i went to. it's funny to run into someone you only know about from an internet posting online... it lends some sense of humanity to the impersonal atmosphere of the web.

i also went up to yangmingshan park later that night to see the blossoms. during this time of the month, there is supposed to be a brilliant display of cherry and azalea flowers. the trees and bushes are lit at night and the other big attraction are the cala lilies, which are planted along the ponds in the park. the only problem with the attraction is that so many people from the city make their way up the mountain that it turns into a huge traffic jam, and the actual display of blossoms leaves something to be desired. ...the flowering trees along the lake in central park (nyc) are more impressive.

we'll see how the 35mm shots i took turn out. in the meantime, i'll post a pic of one of the lilies at night.



~t

hazing

no, not the drunken frat-boy kind. the humidity here in taipei is something else.

today is ultra-hazy... it's not particularly hot, or muggy, but the air is thick and the haze looks more like grey smoke than the result of suspended water particles. it feels like sound is somewhat deadened, energy is absorbed, and everyone is just a little slow. the sun doesn't really shine, in fact the greyness is uniform enough that there isn't even really a bright glow from any quadrant of the sky... just a mild light that is simply present.

i know, it sounds a little depressing... it's not particularly, just kind of lends a little blase-je-ne-se-quois overtone to the day. i do feel a little stifled in my office. working in the same small area with 5 other people who have all grown up used to high temperatures and suffocating humidity can give one pause when approaching the air-conditioning unit with thoughts of the frozen peaks of the rockies in mind. that is to say, i don't want to make waves by turning the a.c. on to its maximum setting and bringing the whole office down to my comfort range; i think everyone else in here would be wearing down coats. honestly i think it's pretty funny that they even sell down coats in taiwan.

needless to say i'm looking forward to the dry, thin air of colorado, clear skies and crystal mountain streams. my summer is going to kick ass.

~t

visa versus...

ugh.

i've spent the better part of the day traipsing about the city trying to get an extension on my visa so that i can stay until may. when my visa was issued, they gave me a standard 90 day visitor's visa... they also told me (and this is the 'they' that they talk about when they talk about 'them') that once i got here, i could just go the bureau of consular affairs and get a stamp that gave me an extension. well... not quite. it turns out that i have a "personal" visa, different from a work or student visa, and they won't extend my visa without changing my visa type. this requires some official paperwork to say that i'm a student or i'm employed or some other such thing. this would be fine except i don't have any kind of paperwork like that, since it was easier for me to come here without any (my university makes you jump through a ton of hoops if you officially go abroad for study).

thankfully, there is an easy, albeit not super convenient, loop-hole in the system. if i leave the country within the 90 days and return, my stay gets extended another 90 days from the day i re-enter the country, since it's considered a new visit. thankfully my visa does allow multiple entries so it looks like i'll be taking a short trip sometime very soon. apparently this is very common.... and even locals who have foreign passports use this option in order to live here without official papers. students and professionals alike just take a weekend trip every three months and there is no problem.

more as the story develops... and sorry for the double posting earlier... i took down the duplicate so unless you check daily you probably have no idea what i'm talking about.

~t

still pluggin away

sitting at my desk today.. trying to figure out the best way to run smoothing algoritms over my data... finally just realizing that i should just keep all the inherent noise and use my eyes and better judgement to filter stuff mentally. also need to get my notes and data from the field trip this weekend in digital form. anyway, in between short bouts of productivity, i've started getting my website together again... i have the rough site together, and i'll post it up to my webspace on the cu boulder servers soon, as a preliminary step to getting my own domain registered and hosted. as soon as the page is accessible i'll put a link here to it. i've been trying to put together a small collection of images that i have on my laptop here... most of my stuff (including my resume) are still on my desktop at home... so it'll be sometime this summer before i can put that stuff up.

taking it easy tonight... going home now. before i go though, i'll post one of the pics i took in colorado before i left... this one is going up on the site.



~t

lesson time

hey all...

so i'm back from the field, safe and sound, despite sitting on the back of a scooter and riding all over the peikang-hsi valley and puli basin. found some cool outcrops and decided that when i finally draft a cross section through this area, the areas where the shui-chang-liu and pai-leng formations are deformed by intense folding will just be shown as squiggley lines... the real pattern of deformation is totally confusing to me. the one thing that is very clear to me is that these rocks have really been through the wringer. actually, an old style laundry wringer is a fairly effective analog for what happens to the deeper rocks of the chinese continental margin as they are accreted into the critical wedge of the taiwanese orogen. sorry for all the lingo, if you don't understand it, google it, that's my best suggestion. in so many words, the westward motion of the pacific-sea-plate is cramming the entire island of taiwan up onto the chinese continental margin. as these rocks are fed into the orogen (read: mountain range) they are over-ridden by the weight of the entire island. the rocks get crunched and rolled and smooshed, sort of like feeding a flat towel into a wringer, and letting it just pile up on the other side. once enough of the overlying rocks have been stripped away by the amazing erosive power of typhoon's rains, the "munched" rock finally reaches the surface. this 'exhumation' of material occurs because surface material is stripped away and more rock has been placed underneath the island... essentially cycling material from deep underground up towards the surface. picture putting the same towel through the same wringer, but then wring out another towel, and let it pile up underneath the previous one. repeat for a while until you have a really big pile of towels and you start taking the dryest ones off the top, though you continue to add towels to the bottom of the pile... eventually you'll see your favorite beach towel you wrung out half an hour ago because you're working your way down through the pile. the cool thing is that the pile never gets any bigger once you start taking the towels off the top... this is referred to as 'steady-state tectonics' (well, not when you're talking about towels, but you get the idea).

another process that happens, on a smaller scale, is 'flexural slip faulting'. this is specific to folds (especially cylindrical ones), so i'll try to keep the analog simple. as i mentioned before, rocks fold. it seems odd at first, but under the right circumstances, rocks will fold just like cotton towels. a better analog however, is a book. folding is most easily understood when talking about sedimentary rocks. you can fold any kind of rock, but only sedimentary rocks start out in thin flat layers, like the pages of a book... parallel planes resting against each other. quickly, a fault is basically when rock breaks. flexural slip faulting is specifically the kind of fracture that happens parallel to bedding (the pages) when folding occurs. all of you have picked up a phone book and bent it in half... or at least rolled up a magazine. it's all the same thing, what you notice when you do this is that the open edge of the book sort of splays out... the edges of the page are no longer even with each other. the ones on the inside of the fold stick out further than the outside cover... pages (or beds) which are all the same width are being forced to conform to different radii... and as this happens, the pages rub against each other. if you glued every page in a phone book together (which is a classic prank, by the way) you essentially end up with a big piece of wood, which bends about as easily (interestingly enough) as a big piece of wood. when you fold rocks, the beds can break along their interfaces, and slide along each other... this is the easiest way to accomodate the shearing created by folding. some pics are here to help illustrate this... the fold: this is what folded rocks can look like. this is a pretty tight fold for beds this thick... thin beds are easier to fold and thick ones tend to have a larger fold radius... think about the difference between folding a magazine and one of those nearly-indestructible cardboard baby's books. the book: the two covers are the same size. when the book is bent, the inside cover has a tighter radius, and sticks out further. look at the triangle. the short leg is the thickness of the bed. the long leg is the total bed-parallel slip of the unit (book). the angle between the hypotenuse and the short leg is the shear-angle. the blue plane is the axial plane. the rock wall: this is a bed. the exposed surface is in fact a flexural slip fault plane. it is practically polished from the sliding, and exhibits excellent "slickensides"... kinematic indicators that show the direction of sliding. these can be used to reconstruct the stress-field responsible for creating the fold and can also record multiple episodes of slip in different directions. btw, the two people in the pic are ling-ho and po-no (thanks guys!), two of the students who help me with field work here. the close up of a slickenside: just that... the best slicks often form in recrystalized mineral deposits left by thermal fluids that flow along the fracture plane of the fault.

ok.... enough lesson for now... geez that was kind of long. anyway, i hope that satisfies the technical info request i got a little while ago... maybe i'll post something about the actual geologic history of the at some point too...









~t

night lights

'nuther quick post here.... i'm leaving taipei in about half an hour to go back to my field area. i could really use a weekend away from the city. it'll be sunny and warm in puli, and i'll be spending a few days riding a motorcycle up and down the peikang-hsi ("-hsi" is mandarin for river) and taking measurements of the rock column and structural orientations.

there is a huge bike expo in taipei for the weekend, so i went to check it out yesterday afternoon... just to ogle and covet and drool. i spent about 4 hours walking around the expo hall, fondling all the newest gadgets and bike frames, and wishing i had the funding necessary to walk away with some of the nicest italian road bikes. for those who don't know, it's not that hard to spec a top-of-the-line racing bike out at about 11-12 grand.

i also took a few shots of 101 and a neighboring building as i was leaving... taipei has a lot of stunning buildings that are lit up at night. various schemes are used to illuminate the buildings, and seeing them at night completely changes your perception of the design compared to viewing them during daylight hours. i've been planning a sort of night-tour of some of the better buildings sometime when we have a clear night so that i can take some good images. i'll have to shoot with film too, since the gain in my digital camera sort of blows up the grain of the image... if i can find a tripod to borrow that will help. anyway, here are a couple of the shots....






~t