How was your ride today?

That all makes sense – thanks again.

I had a pretty mellow and laid back weekend ride where I saw no more than 200m of elevation gain. The weather wasn’t on our side, so I was perfectly fine with a slow pace on the river.

fsdafsdfaSSSS

The Merida store over in LuZhou had a test ride event, so a few of us headed over there to support a friend who was affiliated with the store.

An FB check in got us a a few goodies and we got to test ride some pretty expensive bikes. Highlight was definitely riding the Feng Chun Kai, Taiwan’s top male cyclist’s bike. Merida Reacto Team Edition with Shimano Dura Ace Di2 9170. No clue what the wheels were but that thing was light and cost about…4.5x the amount of my bike. Pitty they weren’t allowing us to put on clipless pedals.

IMAG0506

I topped off the day by visiting the Rapha store to get my 11/11 shopping on. The store was offering 25% off its entire stock. So I went to go pick up something I had been wanting to buy for a long time.

IMAG0515

I see you took Chongyang bridge. Does that bridge have a ramped bike lane, or do you have to ride with the motorcycles?

Scooter lane. Nonetheless, I believe I saw a pedestrian walk alongside it. Just no on-off ramp to the riverside, only stairs.

Early in the day it’s ok, but I have taken it going back to Taipei and it did get a bit packed going back. The worst part is there’s a roundabout on the Shezhi side. Some scooters take it too slow, some take it extremely fast. No in between.

Rode from Zhongshan through the city to Xinyi A8 today to grab the keys from my wife at work, after closing the apartment door and seconds later realizing I had stupidly left the keys on the counter.

After grabbing the keys, I went out to Xizhi and up Xiwan road to Wuzhishan. It was raining steadily the whole time so I got pretty darn soaked through. The nice part is no obnoxious loud motorcycles or tricked out cars on that road when it rains.

Threw on my new wind/rain shell when I got to the top (thanks @ranlee) and took a very slow, wet descent back down into Neihu. Then along the riverside back to Zhongshan.

Not a bad ride overall, notwithstanding the grandpa in a Camry who almost hit me on Xinyi Rd and then got out at the intersection to tell me to ride on the sidewalk. Uh, no dude, sorry, not doing that. It’s 2017 and cyclists can legally ride in the street in Taiwan (I assume…?).

There’s a few things you don’t mention on the forums.

  • Making it obvious you work illegally (or giving advice to work illegally)

  • Scooters (and/or how they do not obey any traffic laws)

  • If bikes should ride on sidewalks.

  • POTUS (or any of his other nicknames)

I buy your rain jacket for you and the next you do is wreck my time on Xiwan? Worst friend ever.

I probably wouldn’t have beat your time without the rain jacket… so, you’ve just made a small tactical blunder, that’s all.

You think it’s my first day here?

It was the anticipation of having the rain jacket to put on that gave me that extra little boost.

I can do this all week.

My little ride up Xiding Road last Friday before work. All alone that day. Some of the regular crowd from Xiwan Bike Club that goes up the mountain every day was gone, others figured it would be too wet, etc. It was just perfect, actually (ended up being bright and sunny all day). I’ll probably do the same this week when we get a break in the rain (tomorrow?).

P_20171110_071654_vHDR_AutoP_20171110_071656_vHDR_Auto

Last Friday?
That was summer for one day … Grabbed the opportunity as well to ride to Shimen.
Watch it, summer returns again from tomorrow till weekend, will try to do it again …

P_20171110_090451

P_20171110_111538

P_20171110_112459

1 Like

I think @mad_masala was wondering how you can get down there via the riverside network.

Any tips?

Was that not tackled looooooong time ago?

I took the day off yesterday to celebrate. Instead of treating it like a normal day off, sleep in, get up, eat, do laundry, lounge around, play video games, I decided to get up at the ass crack of dawn and head out to cycle.

I have been short of a personal best on a major route in Taipei for awhile. So, I wanted to prove to myself, age is just a number!

fsdafsdfaSSSS

I met up with @okonomiyaki and two others. It was agreed that today was race pace so we would go at our own pace. After 20 mins of climbing the first peak, I realized I was on my own for the remaining 60km or so. I felt bd for leaving the guys behind, but I was determined to break that ugly PR of mine…

Mission Accomplished.

Nice. And here I was all proud of my little 6k run this morning. And I also got up at the crack ass/ass crack of dawn (but anything before 6 now is dark and so feels ungodly early).

My alarm went off not too long after 6AM and I was all…“fuuuuuuuuhg” why am I doing this to myself. It wasn’t bright out when I first rolled out of bed and it slowly got bright as I headed out the door.

On a work day, no way I’d get up to do this route and go to work. I’d definitely do something a bit lighter, but I feel like if I woke up that early, I gotta do something extra. Otherwise…it’d be a waste.

A day like today a normal person would go to the beach.

You don’t turn 30 everyday though. :wink:

I wanted it to be a different kind of bday.

A riding one!

Happy bd btw.

1 Like

Another year and another epic ride to finish the season.

This past Sunday was the Neverstop Yangjing 3peaks Challenge. The challenge race in which there’s a 110% chance of rain on race day…every year (with the exception of 2014).

I woke up and heard no heavy rain…so it was just enough to get my ass out of bed and out the door at the ass crack of 4:45AM. Riding out of Song Shan and up towards Tian Mu, the roads slowly got dryer as I went south west and then north. The race started at Tian Mu baseball field and at first light…we could see Yang Ming Shan and it was clear that we were riding into the rain.

I bumped into @okonomiyaki early on the coast and then again on the final climb. We went at it and helped each other get up the final climb to at Xiao You Keng and both finished with a little bit over 4 hours race time. In these conditions, quite a feat.

fsdafsdfa

With comparison to the last time I rode in these conditions 2 years ago, Sunday’s ride was much much more wet, but luckily, it was warmer throughout the entire ride.

To sum it all up, it rained…a lot and I am happy that I kept my disc brake bike. Best decision I’ve ever made. I felt completely safe going down the descents at my normal speeds. Only downfall was I was going “too fast” and sunglasses were clearing up, so the light drizzle felt like bullets hitting my eyes. Not my idea of fun.

No other pictures this time…it was too cold at the finish to snap a pic of…anything. Not that there was much to see.