A great thread to revive Nuit.
The cycling group did about 110-120km this past Sunday in Taipei/New Taipei/Keelung. We started in Song Shan and headed up to Wu Zhi Shan Peak and had coffee at Star City. We got very lucky and the roads were starting to dry so we got patches of wet and some patches of dry on our way up. Even luckier was the peak was not foggy and we got a good view at the top.
We crossed over to Feng Gui Cui and descended into Wan Li from there. We met some other cyclists on TT bikes on the way and they quickly lost us. About 5km out from Jin Shan, some of our party members were starting to lose their legs and get hungry. Luckily, we had already planned a pit stop at a breakfast shop in Jin Shan. There’s hundreds if not thousands of breakfast shops in Taipei, but from what I’ve seen and tried, nothing beats the Mai Wei Deng麥味登 shop in Jinshan. If you’re curious, it’s at the corner of Ren Ai and Zhong Xiao 1st Road.
After about an hours worth of rest and refilling our bottles, we headed towards Xiao You Keng via Yang Jing Road. Along the way, we bumped into a teammate of ours stopping to put on his wind jacket. Both parties were happy to have some extra company. He was happy to have company, he said he probably would’ve stopped multiple times due to boredom if he didn’t have someone to chat with. The hour long climb brought us into 15C and windy temperatures at the peak. We had a visitor from out of town and his first time up into Yang Ming Shan, so after some rest at the saddle, we rode into Xiao You Keng visitor center to do some touristy things. This is also where I finally found that computer!
To save some dignity and strength, we opted not to take the steep hill up towards Leng Shui Keng and descend towards the National Palace Museum. Instead, we took Yang De Blvd down into Shilin and took the riverside path home.
All in all, it was a cold and breezy morning when I left home at around 6:45AM. After a 20 minute warm-up. I was glad I didn’t wear that extra base layer, but could’ve used it at the peak of Wu Zhi Shan and Xiao You Keng. Glad the weather is cooling down so we are able to do long rides without having to worry about heat! Not too happy that the bike needed a very very thorough cleaning of the mud that accumulated on it, very tough when all you want to do after a 100km+ ride is…nothing.