I decided this morning that I needed to get some exercise into my day before typhoon Fung Wong hit. It turns out I had plenty of time - it's almost 8 pm and there's hardly even been any rain. Anyway, I headed off to bike around Lotus Lake but found it less than ideal in actually getting any exercise. I kept getting distracted. There were fruit stands lining the north end of the lake and it's really hard not to buy bananas and papayas even though there's already plenty of fruit at home. I really liked the look of the watermelons but I couldn't fit one in my bike basket.

There was also all the art along the bike path that cried out to be noticed:

I also need to stop and smile at the Dr. Seuss-like jellyfish trees:

(It's as though the trees figured that the humidity was always so high they might as well have the root system above ground since there's probably as much water there as there is underground.)

I also found an overpass to explore. It was actually a hill that required me to shift my gears on the front hub. That doesn't happen very often since this city is so completely flat. But the overpass did give me a good view of Kaohsiung's Big Dig:

The city is working to put all of the train tracks underground. These are the trains that take you from Kaohsiung to the rest of the island, including the high-speed train that gets you to Taipei in less than two hours. 

Right now crossing the tracks is pretty inconvenient since only a few of the roads that run perpendicular to the tracks have crossings. It's also ugly and Kaohsiung's new image is all about being and looking green. The plan is to make the old tracks into a long park with tree-line bike and walking trails.  It should be really nice when it's done but right now the construction is worse than the trains. Hopefully it'll be done before we leave.