Today my dog and I finally got around to doing the 6.5 mile hike loop the other way around. It was perhaps more of a work out for my mind, as at every intersection i had to turn around and think about which way did i come from when i was going the opposite way last week.
That being said, I failed horribly once when I did go a wrong way. Then to make it worse, instead of turning around, I decided to take another offshoot trail as I figured it may loop around to the trail I should be one. This stupid idea just had me walking the wrong way on a very slippery trail going who knows where. I eventually turned around and went back, cursing myself for not realizing that if a trail is slippery, than it probably means that not many people use that trail, so it can't be the right way. In my defense the temperature was over 90 so i'm going to claim that the heat and exertion affected my brain.
More interesting than my hike though, are the people I see on the trail. First things first, everybody else who is out hiking is over 50 years old. There are a few younger people, who actually jog on the trail, all decked out in their jogging attire. But I am the youngest person I've seen, whenever I go hiking on the weekdays.
The contrast in attire between men and women is quite interesting. Some men will actually walk in short shorts and without any shirt, basically trying to be as cool as possible. But the women will wear long pants, long sleeve shirts, hats, and even a mask (usually a handkerchief) and gloves. It's as though they would rather die from heat than let once inch of their skin get a tan.
But who takes the cake of outrageousness is the lady in the picture above. It might be hard to tell, but she is not wearing any shoes. She was hiking barefoot. But before you think this is strange, about ten seconds before I saw this lady, I saw a guy walking the other way who also was hiking barefoot. Seeing them both in quick succession, two people who have no connection to each other but both going barefoot, kind of made me think that i was the crazy person for wearing shoes.
I really wanted to ask her why she wasn't wearing shoes, but any Taiwanese person will admit that older Taiwanese women are not the...uh...friendliest of people. One Taiwanese friend compares them to the witch in the woods who tried to eat Hansel and Gretal. In my own hikes, I can say that 90% of the men I pass will say "hi" to me and smile, only two of the women ever even acknowledged my existence. So I decided to leave this lady alone and secretly take her picture from a safe distance, lest I be eaten.
