I’ve done it twice, and it’s a relatively easy climb, just prepare for inclement weather and possible altitude sickness. Both times I have climbed it, it has rained on one of the two days. The first time I stayed in the cabin at the higher elevation, and the most recent time I stayed in Paiyun Lodge. While at Paiyun Lodge, I saw several people who seemed in the early stages of hypothermia (due to the temperature in combination with the rain), and heard about people having altitude sickness and having to descend. I haven’t ever taken altitude sickness medication, but know people who have gotten it from a doctor in Taiwan before hiking as a preventative measure. I hope you get to do it! It’s pretty awesome!

So dumb…

More than just a suite: he’s got the penthouse, and took over the downstairs suite, then put in a spiral staircase to connect the two.

Unfortunately it is not a matter of recipe, but a matter of materials. The buckwheat flour used to make soba noodles is very fine, and hard to find outside of Japan where buckwheat flour is much coarser. The only option—that I know of—is to buy dried soba noodles.

It’s one of my favorites! I was taught how to make the soba noodles and dipping sauce by two different masters while living in Hokkaido, several years ago, but it’s hard to find the same quality of buckwheat flour abroad.

Yeah, it’s not amazing by any stretch, but at least—if scaled up—it could prevent SOME fossil fuels from getting dug out of the ground…and polystyrene is so easily broken up into microplastics when relegated to the landfill or discarded into the environment, so maybe recycling it in this way would reduce that aspect to some degree. PERHAPS in the combination of these two measures, it could provide a small, but overall positive, effect on the environment.

Plus, you can use the elderberries and elderflowers to make things like wine, cordials, jam, etc. Everybody wins…except for the AI tech bros.