3/9/2013: My hotel offered free bicycle rental, which I hadn't taken advantage of, so I decided I'd get up early on Saturday and go for a bike ride before heading to airport for my return trip to Colorado. I got up at 7am, had breakfast, and then rented a bike. The bike was pretty small and extremely heavy, and I couldn't adjust the seat height without an allen wrench. My plan was to find my way over to the Tamsui River and bike north towards downtown. I had to leave for the airport a little before 10am, so I didn't have a lot of time.
I saw some cyclists at an intersection who were heading towards the river, but I lost track of them and ended up on a busy narrow road with lots of scooters whizzing past me. I came across some stairs that appeared to go up and over the wall that separated me from the river, so I carried my bike up and over and sprinted across another road to get to the bike path. The bike path was really nice, winding through some wetlands and parks. The air was noticeably smoggy, with my throat burning only after some light exercise. I crossed the river over a bridge, following some cyclists out for a Saturday ride. When I got to the other side of the river, I started heading back south, thinking I'd find another bridge to cross farther down to get back on to the other side of the river to get to my hotel. I passed through some more parks, seeing some Tai Chi, some birdwatchers with huge telescopes, other cyclists in lycra on roadbikes, and some frisbee players. There were also a number of baseball fields - Taiwan is another Asian country that has really embraced baseball. I found a bridge to cross that had a bike path along it, so I crossed over to the other side and kept heading south. I passed a bunch of basketball courts, more baseball fields, and even a track for RC car racing with a number of guys driving their remote controlled cars around the track.
I kept heading south and realized nothing looked familiar, so I pulled out my phone and found that I had crossed only half the river - I'd passed the point where it split into two branches and I'd only crossed the east branch. I had to backtrack to the bridge I'd crossed, head a little farther north, and then cross another bridge. I hurried back to the hotel, passing through some Saturday morning street markets and a neighborhood where I saw a number of elaborate floats for some parade.
I took a cab to the airport since I didn't have enough time to take a train, then a bullet train, then a bus... I had received an email while I was still at the hotel saying that my flight from Vancouver to Denver had been canceled (my original itinerary was to fly from Taipei to Seoul at 12:55pm March 9, Seoul to Vancouver, then Vancouver to Denver, arriving in Denver around 7pm March 9). When I checked in for my flight in Taipei, it was through Thai Air (a star alliance member with United), who said they couldn't do anything about my itinerary because they were just Thai Air. I then got an email saying I'd been rebooked on a flight out of Vancouver at 7:40am March 10, meaning I'd have to stay the night in Vancouver. I tried calling United but it was a 30 minute wait. The Thai Air lady wanted to know if I wanted to check my bag to Vancouver - I said I'd prefer Denver, but she said my plan at that point was to stay the night in Vancouver, so she said I'd need my bags and they can't be held responsible for my luggage if it is kept overnight. I was thinking that I could probably find a flight from Seoul to San Francisco - there was no need for me to go to Vancouver - but then my bags would be in Vancouver. I was running out of time, so I just had my luggage routed to Vancouver. As it turned out, there was a flight from Seoul to SFO leaving about 45 mins after my originally scheduled flight out of Korea (to Vancouver), and there was a convenient flight from SFO to DEN getting me home by 7:30pm. I was unable to change my flights though. Instead, I flew to Seoul, then to Vancouver, then got my flight changed so I could get home that night and not have to stay overnight in Vancouver, so I had a layover in San Francisco, finally arriving in Denver at 11pm after 29 hours of traveling and three layovers. It was rough.
No comments:
Post a Comment