.... well not really. We get lots of amplified, cheesy versions of carols done in Asia-Pop stylings, and it sure isn’t visually ‘quiet’ either.
The video here is our apartment building, sorry it's kinda blurry, but I can assure you, it's cheesy crystal clear too. Last year we had a simple light display saying Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - it was nice and in keeping with the understated interior and exterior design of this building... This year.... not so much....Taiwan is given to visual overload pretty much any time - LED light manufacture is a major industry here - and they get slapped all over buildings, bridges, sidewalks, vehicles, you name it. But around Christmas, they step up their game when it comes to the lights. This is our second Christmas here... interesting to experience it again. I'll write more about it in a separate post.
Coming off a Taiwanese summer, this year feels way colder than last year did - if only from the shift in relative temperature - when we got here fresh from the US last year, to us, 58 degrees F was warm. Not this year. We went for a ride today and were bundled up more than I’d like to admit. In Portland, during or after the winter, 58 degrees was cause for shorts and barely a jacket. Here, just the opposite. And I have to say, being so close to the Taiwan Strait, it’s a bit like San Francisco - ambient temperature seems warm enough - until you go outside into the cold humid wind - surprisingly bone chilling. From Taiwan, where ever you are, whatever the temperature, whatever you celebrate, I hope you get to do so with good food, good cheer and peace.
.... no this is a full on, unabashed, unadulterated brag... For the moment at least, I think I’m pretty cool, and I’d love to tell you about why (we’ll be back to my regularly scheduled mostly humility soon). Don’t worry, it won’t devolve into total narcissism - there’s still room for some self doubt and coulda woulda shoulda in there too.
It’s called the Taiwan KOM Challenge... KOM standing for King of the Mountain. It’s a ridiculous thing - a bike race that starts at Sea Level and rises to 10,744 feet at the finish. Oh and there are a few descents along the way so you end up climbing a few hundred meters more. Total race length is 105 Km...65 miles. ( there are tabs for route map and elevation profiles of the race if you down towards bottom of linked page)
The first 18K are ‘neutral’ meaning the race hasn’t actually begun - there is a pace car leading the field, keeping control of the peloton. So those first 18K are flat along the beach. Right after you turn West and start heading up the race route, the actual climbing starts, the flag drops, and race begins.
The race route is up Taroko Gorge - a very, very deep, narrow marble stone gorge. So it’s 87 KM or 54 miles to finish at 10,744 feet of elevation. Not *so* bad if it were evenly spread out, but the lower elevations are quite civil in terms of grade - which is good and bad, easier to climb = good. Faster to stay with the group = bad. Group consisting of pros (including Tour DeFrance level pros, Asia Tour pros, elite locals and finally schlubs like me) is also good and bad. Riding with pros just sounds cool (not that I saw them too much beyond at the start line) = good. They’re pros and freakin fast riders = bad and painful pace to match.
So you want to stay reasonably in contact without blowing up... which I did, until the time when I didn’t (which was a good thing - I found my pace, which was wise cause the overall winner finished about 69 minutes before me - not a pace I would or could hope to maintain, trying to do so would be bad). I found a great pace for me and it was ideal in that it was faster than a bunch of the people who fought to stay with the lead group and did so longer than they should have. That caused them to move backward - so I had my favorite thing of all on a bike - a constant supply of people to chase down. Perfect motivation.
While the grade is pretty civil, to keep a good tempo is still very hard work. And this climb is so much longer than most, including all of the marquee climbs of the Tour De France, the Tour of Italy or the Tour of Spain. It is punishing just for length of time you are going up. Eventually you come to a really nice descent, which is also good and bad. Not climbing for a while = good. Descending on a twisty road closed to traffic = good and fun. Knowing that you have to regain all of that elevation that you just lost (200+ meters worth) = bad.
Plus after the descent, the average gradient kicks up a few notches. Still not gruesome, but getting worse, coupled with the increasing fatigue, it starts to get memorable. Then you hit the small ‘town’ of Dayuling, which is the start of the last 10Km or so.... This is where the race gets really interesting. Not only is it getting high enough in elevation that the air is getting thinner, the road starts to climb for real - averaging 9+% in many places, with a few kicks into the teens, and one .3km stretch at 27% grade. Thankfully there are a few short flats and one actual gentle descent in the final KMs, but it then kicks back up for the last 1Km to make sure you really got the point about this being a hill climb.
I was battling cramps in both my legs, but was able to keep it together to finish inside of my rather arbitrary goal of finishing in the top 100.... I was 98th, in a time that was very satisfactory.
On the road, you are able to track your age group competitors based on their race numbers. All of us in the 400’s were in the 45-50 group, so I knew who I was battling with amongst those I could see - I wasn’t sure who all was farther up the road of course.
As motivation, I was riding as though anyone with a 400 series number was the difference between me being on the podium at the finish for my age group. A while after the I finished, I learned that the guy with a 400 number who I watched finish just about a minute before me was the last podium place for our group - at that grade our speeds were not that high, so I was quite close in distance but still a minute away on time.
I know it’s likely tedious listening to how satisfied I am about this race - so here’s a moderating dose of doubt and questioning - I'm left wondering if I knew in definitive terms in those last few Kms “hey, that guy up the road is the difference between you on the podium and him up there”, would I have found any more energy to chase him down? I’d like to think that maybe I would have, but I also like to think that I’d already wrung all I could out of myself.
Near the start of the barricades, probably 100 meters from the finish line. This camera angle exaggerates the grade, but not by too much!
It sure felt like I gave all I had after I crossed the line - which was really the biggest victory of them all to me. It sounds trite, but I have finished races where I felt frustrated that there was still more in the tank - no fun. This time it didn’t feel that way, who knows if there was a bit more that adrenaline might have contributed to chase that one last guy for 6th place, but despite that wondering I’m content and really satisfied with my first go at this race. But I followed my plan for the race really well, and that's always a bonus too. I’m already looking forward to next year.
On top of the racing, this is a stunningly beautiful area of mountains and gorge. Julia and I have been through the gorge both driving and riding a few months back - unfortunately as pretty as it was both of those times, it was also quite rainy.
For the most part, this time up was clear and amazing views. There are also numerous places where you can see the road far above and far below you... which is both good and bad. Seeing how much you’ve already climbed = good. Seeing how much you have yet to go up = bad. As you can see from the photos of me, the finish is above tree line. The vegetation up there is called dwarf bamboo I think, it's pretty cool to see. And true to form for the times I’ve been at the top of Wuling, it rained and was cold. No rain the whole way up during the race, fortunately, but moments after I crossed the finish line it started raining. The area at the top where the finish is located is quite small, so we had to head down the Western side of the mountain to meet up with our transport back to Taichung... so it was about a 3Km descent in the pouring rain. One of these days I’m looking forward to finishing a race here in Taiwan without freezing being involved - which is always ironic given the normal heat and humidity down lower in elevation. Fortunately it didn’t rain for too long and I had warm, dry clothes to change into.
For any who reads this who rides - you should train up and come join in next year or in 2015, it is an unforgettable experience.
And finally, the finish line... not yelling, just trying to breathe!
Updated 11/12/13 - One other bit of context/info, Mt Wuling, where this race finished is the same mountain top that I raced to and mentioned back in August here, only that time we started on the West side of the mountain and began around 480 Meters of elevation... same mountain, same finish area, but very different race. Also here are some more cool photos I came across....
One of many memorable bridges on the Taroko Gorge road
I'm pretty sure this rockslide got a whole bunch bigger between April and November. I think there was one there when Julia and I drove through back in April, but I don't think it was this big - and there have been a number of typhoons and earthquakes since then. From the looks of the hillside, there are always going to be rockfalls here - it would take an incredible amount of work to shore this up to stop the falls... not that the Taiwanese road engineers aren't up to the challenge to give it a go.
They've got them all over the place on this side of the planet....
I think this is the Korean power company's mascot, he shows up on all of the street level transformers.
Dunno, maybe it's just me, but this sort of diminishes the badassitude of the ROK-hard soldiers at the DMZ when you make a Little Guy statue out of them. And I don't mean to jest about their soldiers - the real live human ones at Panmunjon appear to be about as hard as you can make a human. After some attacks by the DPRK guards, the ROK upped the martial arts proficiency and fitness requirements for all guards with that duty.
Don't get your tentacles caught...cause if you did, someone is likely to dip them in sauce and eat them. I know I did.
Don't be a boozy crab?
This thing is about 10 feet tall, and there's one located every few hundred yards along the beach in Haeundae. I couldn't help but think of the character from the 'Doonesbury' cartoon, "Mr Butts", I think is his name, sort of different message than the character, but similar look.
Not a Little Guy as such, but I just loved this sign... I should have asked one of Julia's Korean co workers if this actually says 'Don't hit this wall' or just 'caution' or whatever. Either way, it's an important message for anyone unclear on general concepts of physics.
Julia had some meetings in Busan Korea and a few days prior to the start of them was Taiwan’s National Day (October 10), which meant that she had a few days off... so we decided to take advantage of the timing and spend some time in Seoul and Busan.
Seoul is a pretty amazing city. It’s huge and sprawling, with high hills and the Han River through town. We lined up a tour of the DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone separating South Korea from North. On the bus there, only a short distance out of downtown we got onto an expressway along the Han River, and there the barbed wire fence and guard towers began - the DPRK (North Korea)...(Isn’t it great how so many of the communist countries went out of their way to add ‘Democratic’ into the name of the country?)... has sent numerous infiltrators into Seoul via the river, hence the fences and guards. Seoul sits about 40 or 50 km from the DMZ.
The DMZ tour itself was pretty amazing and sobering. We toured one of the 4 infiltration tunnels that the ROK has discovered (there are many more suspected to exist), and Camp Bonifas, named after one of the two US soldiers killed by DPRK soldiers in an axe attack back in the 70s. The gate at the entrance to the camp says ‘In Front of Them All’ and that couldn’t be truer, given their proximity to the DMZ, and the numerous attacks and provocations the DPRK has made over the years since the end of the war... whoops, that’s wrong - technically the war has not ended, it’s just been suspended for nearly 60 years, but hostilities are obviously still just under the surface. The tour took us to Panmunjon, located right, smack in the middle of the DMZ.
Panmunjon - The US soldier in the foreground was our tour guide for this part of the tour. The building in the background is the DPRK... actually beyond the middle of the light blue building is the DPRK...all the other soldiers on this side of the blue building are ROK soldiers - the guys with white bands stand watch with fists clenched for 2 hour stints, note the number that are partially shielded by the buildings - not for dramatic effect, but due to the long chain of attacks and other provocations by the DPRK - I guess when you have nothing to lose, you've got nothing to lose. He's very hard to see in the this photo but there is a DPRK soldier at the top of the stairs who spent much of the time we were there checking us out with binocs.
This is actually a photo of a photo on display in the visitor center, but I had to include it as it shows the DPRK guards in a rather telling orientation. Note that both here and in my photo above (taken from locations only a few meters apart) the ROK guards are positioned facing the enemy to the north. However, the DPRK guards are positioned either entirely towards their own people, literally and metaphorically, with the guy at left, or at least halfway facing their own country and halfway facing the South. Just like how many of the old Iron Curtain defenses were aimed pointing back at the citizenry they were alleged to be 'protecting'... same drill here I guess.
There are buildings located such that they straddle the border, used for meetings between ROK and DPRK, generally overseen by Swiss and Swedish military officials, all under the terms of the agreement from 1953. We had a chance to enter one of the meeting rooms used - it has a meeting table oriented so that the middle of the table is across the border, so to stand or sit on one side puts you in the ROK, and the other in the DPRK, so of course we had to go to the DPRK side. The DPRK had only one soldier stationed outside, he spent a bunch of time watching us through binoculars.
Kinda blurry, but here's Julia in the DPRK... table at bottom left of photo is meeting table that is oriented with middle at border, so she's a few feet into North Korea right there.
After bopping around Seoul for a bit, we headed to Busan via Korea’s high speed rail line. While they both list a top ‘cruising’ speed of 300Kmph (186mph), in Korea, they actually run at or near that speed for extended lengths of time - here in Taiwan, they seem only to get to about 285Kph or so and then for relatively short stretches.
Busan is also a huge city, but the spot we were staying, right along the beach in Haeundae is a really cool little enclave in its midst.
I’m looking forward to getting back to Korea to explore some more - I think a bicycle tour there may be in the cards for 2014? We’ll see.
We’ve only been away from Portland for 9 months now, and the rate of change is evident - new buildings, new bridges etc. I was reminded of the things I miss about Portland and Oregon - the people - friends and just random people on the street - they’re mostly comfortable and familiar, engaged and energetic. I miss the food, beer, wine, restaurants, grocery stores with righteous local kale and fruits and so forth.
Away from the city during Cycle Oregon, out in the boonies, there was profound silence, stunning darkness and night skies that I don’t think are possible anywhere in Taiwan due to population density and general haze. Fall is just starting - you can see it and feel it. I don’t think there’s going to be much in the way of fall leaves in Taiwan and the shift in the weather is likely to be a great deal more subtle - going from stupidly hot and humid to somewhat less hot and humid? We’ll see and I’ll report back...
But while I was noticing all of the things I miss about Portland, I was also struck by the fact that I was far from home. Taiwan is now, and for a while at least, fully home - we *live* there. I was missing friends, missing the things that make it interesting, captivating and ever so occasionally frustrating - missing the noise and the lights and the scooter and road mayhem (seriously!). I miss our apartment, and the view that we get from 22 stories up, I miss the food there (it’s different, but good), missing the jungle like vegetation, missing the challenges of navigating a foreign language and culture.
I found myself chomping at the bit to get back to it and back to work on all of these new things - new work, new language, new culture, new home all the while feeling the pull of all that I miss and love about Portland and the larger Northwest.
It will be interesting to see how and if this all changes over time - it’s all still so new for sure - 9 months isn’t that long. Perhaps come my 2014 trip back for Cycle Oregon I’ll sing a different tune, we’ll see, and I’ll let you know how it feels a year later.
It is also interesting to consider the fact that I’m writing en route to Eastern Pennsylvania, where I lived from age 8 - 18. Given that time of life, most people would identify that location as “home”. Despite its good points, and the fact that family members are still there and close by, I don’t really feel like I’m going ‘home’ as such... It's certainly ‘home’ in the familial sense, but beyond that, not so much. I guess me and that area just never really ‘clicked’. I don’t type that with disdain or any kind of sneer - I don’t feel that I’m better than that place, nor do I harbor any ill feelings but I guess I feel that I don’t ‘fit’.
From a very early age it just wasn’t a place I saw myself staying - and in hindsight, my whole time there was a giant countdown calendar to when I could leave for points beyond, though I loved so much about where we lived - great woods to roam, good hills for sledding, a creek to play in during the summer - you name it, overall a great place to be a kid.
I feel fortunate to have lived a bunch of different places, and I’m grateful that I grew up in a family that moved around a bunch as a result of my dad’s career. I had it much easier than my brothers and sisters, I didn't move but once that I remembered, but I grew up in an environment open to new vistas and change. As a result I have welcomed the opportunity to experience new places and make big changes. And the time in Taiwan has been the biggest shift of them all thus far - and for that I’m also grateful.
It’s been fascinating following the politics of Taiwan, there’s a bunch of interesting stuff going on at the moment. Loads of controversy about a new trade pact with PRC that appears to me (and many Taiwanese) to be yet another sell out of Taiwan and its independence, and sovereignty to the PRC. There’s also a contentious effort to build another nuclear power plant, intra-party intrigue in the KMT, and the death of a soldier as a result of abuse by superiors.
There have been numerous mass protests about these issues. Ma Ying Jeo, the president is very unpopular and seems to be leading by decree, and the police have been pretty heavy handed at times dealing with protests. Reading about this all I’m reminded regularly that this is still a *very* young democracy. I was nearly finished with college when Martial law was finally ended, and they are clearly still dealing with vestiges of same. Even more fascinating to me is that the KMT is the ruling party here... and the KMT was *the* (as in, only) political party during the whole of Martial law. After all that happened during their reign (repression, massacres of dissenters etc) I’m astonished that they get any votes. Why in the US, that’d be, oh, I don’t know, like a bunch of neo-Confederates allying with remnants of the KKK to attempt to rule the US House of Representatives.....er, well, reality seems to have interrupted my attempt at metaphor, sadly.
When we first arrived here, I couldn’t help but notice how common surveillance cameras are at intersections. These are not red light cameras as such, nor speed cameras (they have those too, but elsewhere).... no, these are run of the mill, collecting video of everything and everyone going by kind of cameras. They’re on major streets, minor streets, in the cities, and in the middle of nowhere as well.
A minor road, with camera....
And here's what it surveils?
After being here for a while, I hardly notice them anymore. But reading about all of the NSA spying on American citizens and the lying, obfuscating and general attempts to minimize what is really going on, I couldn’t help start noticing them again.
I had a thought that I hadn’t seen anyone else share regarding US government spying and the larger changes in the US since 9/11. So I wrote the following and posted it on Facebook:
Almost 12 years ago America’s authoritarian betters said that terrorists hated the US for its freedom. So maybe it’s all been Aikido-like redirection since then? I mean if you piss all over the Bill of Rights and destroy those freedoms then the terrorists have nothing to hate any longer and no reason to attack, right?
Brilliant plan, except for the destruction of freedoms that were beautiful and noble in ideal if sadly not always fully and fairly applied to all. It seems we’ve dropped the pretense to nobility and decided they just don’t apply to anyone anymore. Hey look equality! Whoo! USA! USA!
And for anyone thinking that the BS of the last 12 years has been necessary or helpful, I think Ben Franklin said it best: “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
There were some interesting comments, including a question from a guy that asked what things I saw as being affronts to our rights. He stressed that he agreed with me, and though I believe he has a number of political views that differ significantly from mine, I didn’t get the sense he was just trolling me. So I responded with the following in answer to his query:
Most all of the First Amendment (separation of church and state, freedom of speech - “we need to watch what we say” said Ari Fleischer, how about ‘free speech zones’... I was under the mistaken impression that the entire country was a ‘free speech zone’, freedom of the press, freedom to peaceably gather (which is largely true only if you don’t mind pepper spray and baton blows to the head), the Fourth Amendment (NSA, TSA), the Fifth Amendment (Jose Padilla, Guantanamo, due process violations and seizures in the ‘War on Drugs’, targeted, extra judicial killings of American citizens), the Sixth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment (people held indefinitely without charges, torture, months of solitary confinement for no justifiable reasons for Bradley Manning, Jose Padilla and others). One might reasonably suggest elements of the Ninth Amendment especially if you are inclined to think that the founding fathers imagined a right to privacy (a reasonable inference given the content of the other Amendments and their writings, I would say).
I believe there is a case currently in process with real Third Amendment issues regarding the police demanding to occupy a private home to surveil a neighbor, so we’ll add that one in as a ‘maybe’ as I haven’t researched it to say for sure.
While not in the Bill of Rights, I’ll throw in another few key ideals pissed upon, like separation of powers, the idea that voting is a right not to be infringed upon for base political gain. And lastly the increasing militarization and ‘us vs them’ policing practices of so many police forces across the nation.
So yeah, it seems they’re really mere suggestions at this point, especially if ‘Terrorism/scary brown people/drugs/poor people/others we need to silence’ come in to play. At this point it’s all kind of a ‘Quaint Notion’ if you will... bonus points if you know who used those words in reference to what*.
Our modern technology affords us the chance to be very unprivate... like posting all of the above on Facebook, or writing a blog?! In my case, very few people see it, but it’s available for anyone with an internet connection. I’m being pretty public and to a degree surveilling myself for all to see. And yet the most crucial piece of all of this is that I’m choosing what to share, not having the NSA decide what I’m going to share (ie **everything**).
Technology also affords the opportunity to gather, store, sort and access tremendous volumes of data. Not that long ago you could walk around a place like Taiwan and see all of the surveillance cameras and think, with some justification, that they can’t actually be storing and monitoring all of this footage. Now, storage is cheap, searching using facial recognition is possible and getting better all of the time. When we consider other types of surveillance, searching databases of calls and emails is even easier and more focused.
As for the NSA, we’re living in an electronic fishbowl, where virtually everything you do electronically is likely being accessed and stored. It’s really interesting to think back to how we viewed East Germany’s Stasi... it appears they had nothing on the NSA... and I don’t think that’s a particularly hyperbolic statement. We keep hearing how the NSA has oversight (like a rubberstamp FISA court system or Congress) and trained professionals (at private contracting firms), and that they’re only looking for ‘Terrorists/bad guys’ (but it is curious, sad and painful, how the definition of Terrorist/bad guy seems to continually grow and expand. Besides the obvious loss of privacy from surveillance, here’s a fascinating article that details other pernicious effects such surveillance has: http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/aug/26/nsa-gchq-psychology-government-mass-surveillance
Sadly the US government has done a lot of awful things both to Americans and others through the years. Despite these things, it seemed to me, from my very fortunate, white, middle class upbringing, that there were at least efforts made to live up to the ideals the country was founded upon. It is clear that they have not been applied equally or always consistently, but yet they remained and endured as an ideal (again, it seemed to me). But viewed through the lens of the last 12 years, I can’t really say that anymore - we’ve lost something and we need to work hard to get it back - not just to the rather imperfect place it was before September of 2001 - we need to work to get the US to *really* live up to the ideals upon which it was founded - and make those beautiful words and ideas real and lasting.
Learning Chinese is a big and actually fun challenge. It’s a tonal language, so that’s almost totally foreign vs English. While it adds that rather large hurdle right off the bat, on the plus side, it is devoid of verb conjugations and so far, grammar is pretty straightforward as well. Word order in sentences generally tracks with English with only a few exceptions. I’m able to function in an extremely (and I mean extremely) rudimentary fashion for some simple shop transactions, taxi rides etc. We had a bit of a gap in our classes as we switched teachers. Our first teacher was ok as a teacher, just not so good as watch/alarm clock user. The new teacher is far more punctual and a great teacher to boot. As a result of the switch in teachers, we started using an updated edition of the book we were using with teacher number 1. The new book is a great change - easier to use, more clearly laid out and all around better. Though we’ve barely scratched the surface and have so, so much more to learn, it feels like we’re on a good track.
From language to bicycles and mountains....
I just did my first bike race in Taiwan - it was a hill climb. In the US, most of those that I’ve seen or raced are basically uphill time trials. That is, riders starting individually and racing against the clock essentially. Though you are on course with other riders, it’s usually spaced out to some degree. Yesterday's race had a helpful abundance of people up the road ahead of me to chase. The race here was sort of a hybrid - mass start, race if you want, or simply participate for completion if you prefer. The start is in age group waves to ease the crush of the 1800 people participating, but timed individually via a chip in the race number, so though one could start many minutes after others, you were timed based on when you crossed the start line (basically like most mass start running races these days - love that technology).
It is a gargantuan climb - we started around 500M of elevation and 56Km later we finished at 3275M...I was pleased to finish 3rd in my age group as best I can see (I was registered in error in a different age category than I actually fall under), but in any case, I’m happy with how I rode regardless of where I finished. Julia and I drove up this road back in April, and got some photos in the fog/haze, and they hardly do it justice, but here's the best of them, just to give you a taste for this mountain. It's well above tree line and in the winter it can be snowed in up here - giving a marked contrast to the subtropical jungles below.
This photo was taken from about 3Km from the top, the road is on the diagonal cut visible on the far hill. Finish line is in the saddle visible just about center of picture, just to the left of the clouds obscuring the peak.
Yesterday it was crystal clear as I was climbing, and the views were so good, I *almost* stopped to take some photos, but decided against it. Sadly it was all clouded over coming back down, so no dice for good photos then. Speaking of stopping along the way on the climb, there were several riders I saw stopped by the side of the road taking a smoke break. Maybe these guys were more participant than serious racer types - who knows, but in any case it’s a bit surreal to see a guy all kitted out, with an expensive race bike, stopped by the road taking a big drag on a cigarette....
And, for more thematic disunity, here’s a set of basically unrelated photos, to give a bit more of a glimpse of our world here...
This seems to be some kind of admonition against chopping your coworker's arm off, but I could be wrong about that.
I get the sense that the water drops on the left and right aren't confident swimmers. Middle guy enjoys a dip more I think...
A pretty standard view on my rides around the area... these are actually small mountains compared to many nearby!
Down the block from our apartment.
This is a taken from a park near our apartment. The block where the park sits was supposed to be a convention center, they began construction excavation, and for some reason funding vanished, so they were left with a giant hole. I've been told that they city held a design competition to decide what to do with said hole and this sunken park with a big pond was the result. It's got nice walking paths and a teahouse/cafe. The typhoon back in July raised the water level in the little lake by a considerable margin.
....ok, well, that's not actually true at all. I don't roll like this, and I haven't seen a single person roll like this here. Honest Mom, I'm much safer out dodging scooters than jumping off buildings on my bike - the building thing would end very badly for me. We so don't roll like this here that they had to bring this guy all the way from Scotland. His name is Danny MacAskill, and the things he makes look easy are so incredibly hard.
I share this with you since it was all shot here in Taichung, and this video gives you a little flavor of the city. A number of the locations for the video are new to me - after seeing this I want to hunt them down and check them out. The neighborhood where Julia and I live makes a fleeting appearance, but it's not worth trying to hone in on it as it's really just a split second view of a nearby building. But this does give you a glimpse of the road scene and some cool parks and other vistas around Taichung, all with a healthy dose of unbelievable bike skills.
It’s Saturday July 13 around 11AM Taiwan time as I type this. The typhoon force winds and ‘extremely torrential’ (Central Weather Bureua’s wording) have subsided here in Taichung. Now we’re down to run of the mill high winds and really torrential downpour.
Taiwan gets hammered by typhoons pretty regularly, so they’ve got preparations down to a bit of a science it appears. I went for a bike ride yesterday and noticed all of the work underway. Most obvious were construction sites with their literal battening down of the hatches. Many skyscrapers under construction here have fabric wrapped across the scaffolding surrounding the building. It was amazing to see an entire 20+ story building with all of the fabric furled and secured. Same with the giant vinyl billboards all around town - all furled and secured. It made sense to me yesterday pre storm, but after experiencing the wind howling, and the building shaking, and the windows bowing nearly all night long - it all makes that much more sense!
Here are some photos and video....
The coming storm
Around 9AM Saturday July 13, 2013
I think I've got this correct that this was the rainfall total at that time for the area around Taichung... 480mm is over 1.5 feet of rain... at 7:38AM Saturday.... I wouldn't be at all surprised if there has been another 6 inches that have fallen since then.
So after earthquakes and a typhoon, I guess all we’ve got left to deal with is a plague of locusts, or a rain of frogs and perhaps a possible sharknado?
As we ride around Taichung, more and more wonderful roads keep turning up.Not that I feel like we’ve seen them all by any stretch, but just when I think I’ve got a handle on a particular area, I go on a ride with others to that same area, or go explore on my own and then get exposed to a whole new network of roads.It’s big fun to see how things connect up and be continually surprised at new vistas.The only tough part at the moment is the heat.Haven’t seen any leeches though, so that’s nice.
Both Julia and I have been doing a bunch of great riding. She rides to and from work several days a week, usually with some colleagues. I often join in for one or both ways of the ride, which is big fun.
As I type, we’re watching the Tour de France on TV. This is always one of my favorite 3 week stretches of the year, and in past years when it is finished, I end up having some measure of withdrawal. I think some of that used to spring from the fact that we didn’t have that much cycling on TV to watch. Curiously, moving to Tai ewan has allowed us to see a great deal more pro cycling on TV. There’s much to love about Eurosport Asia coverage - not only the Grand Tours, but the shorter stage races, Classics, and significant one day races, so it’s a wealth of amazing cycling telecasts.
We also have a place to go watch all this coverage with others similarly addicted - a great coffee shop called Caffe Terry. It’s a coffee shop that is covered up in cycling memorabilia, tables made of bike wheels, shod with tires etc. Terry’s a great guy, a strong rider/racer and also a bike builder. They make really good coffee and food, and have a wide selection of beers available too. http://taiwanincycles.blogspot.tw/2010/11/caffe-terry.html
I’ve always been interested in transport issues and specifically how bicycles can be integrated into a transport network, so it’s been fascinating to notice Taiwan and Taichung’s efforts to support cycling. Unfortunately the Taiwanese too often miss the mark in my opinion - the overall thrust of the local efforts can be summed up in this one photo... (it’s not Photoshopped, honest, come visit, I’ll take you there to see it).
We’ve only been here for 6 months now, so I cannot really comment too much, but if you’re interested, I’ll direct you to a great blog whose writer can speak far more eloquently than I on this topic, plus he’s got some other staggering photos
There are some really nice rails to trails that have been built around Taichung, and some nice signage designating cycling routes on existing roads, so it’s not all for naught, but there are far too many misses as well. To me, cycling could be a viable addition to the larger transportation infrastructure here. Much of the city itself is flat, ideal for actually getting around by bike, but most all cycling infrastructure efforts seem to focus on recreational cycling, as with the aforementioned rails to trails and cycling route signage. Hopefully this will all change with time.
The link above on Caffe Terry is also from the blog Taiwan in Cycles.
I owe Andrew, the blogger, a big debt of gratitude. Right after we learned of the possibility of Julia getting a job over here I immediately started doing some research about what it would be like living (and riding here). Taiwan in Cycles is such a great and wide ranging resource and it really helped me wrap my head around aspects of Taiwan and Taichung life such that I could imagine living here. It certainly wasn’t the only point of information to our decision making process, but it sure helped!
Have I mentioned that Nike takes really good care of us here? After 6 months, we qualified for our first R&R trip and they help pay for us to get away from it all here... we thought it would be restful and relaxing to go to the jungles of Malaysian Borneo to trek and mountain bike... and it was. It was also eye opening, as travel often is.
I knew about the jungle deforestation going on around the world and I imagine you do too. But in the last few days there have been reports of Beijing level pollution hitting Singapore, from.... wait for it... slash and burn jungle deforestation in neighboring Indonesia. We didn’t get any of that as we were a long way away, but what we did get was a rather heartbreaking view of nearly 200kms through an uninterrupted swath of former jungle that has been turned into plantation after plantation of palm trees for the production of palm oil
It’s obviously providing jobs and money there, which is no small thing, but as is often the case, the real money goes elsewhere it appears. And while the locals get jobs, they also get to be totally deforested, and the plant and animal habitat vanishes. Palm oil is a major ingredient in snack foods, cosmetics and increasingly, bio fuels, which is all frustrating to no end when you see the results of these plantations.
I know I’m simplifying a complex situation here, but it does seem like it should, in the early stages of the 21st century, be possible to develop an industry like this without cutting down everything in sight - we’ve seen this movie and we know how it ends - how about leaving some habitat and corridors for wildlife?.... I just don’t buy the bogus binary construct about about jobs vs ‘the environment’ (as though ‘the environment’ is something other than the planet upon which we all live and depend), or that there aren’t jobs to be had by more responsible farming/extraction etc...but who can stand in the way when there’s a dollar (or Ringgit) to be made? To the Malaysians credit, they are trying to protect some areas, but it sounds as though it’s an uphill battle every step of the way. We visited one protected preserve, and sure enough, there’s a semi recently built planation that abuts the preserve, 30 miles from the nearest main road, across a treacherous dirt road for access.
So in the interest of all of the cool animals below... and the rest of the planet, here’s another thing I would ask you to watch for on ingredient labels and avoid. Palm Oil, Palm Olein, Palm anything basically...
Ok, I’ll descend for the soapbox now...
Julia found a new tour company based in Lahad Datu called Bike and Tours www.bikeandtours.com. They were highly rated online and they worked with us to create a cool itinerary that included time cycling as well as trekking in the jungle. You can see where we were on this map:
We flew into Kota Kinabalu on the NW side of the island, changed planes and immediately headed for Sandakan for the start of our journey. After a night in Sandakan, we headed by boat, east from Sandakan up the Kinabatangan River, (not named, but shown on map heading south towards Sukau). From there we headed to Imbak Canyon for two nights (also not shown, but I think it is somewhere generally around the ‘H’ of Sabah on the map.) From there we combined riding and driving to work our way towards Lahad Datu, and then on to Danum Valley Conservation area for a few nights We travelled by mountain bike and truck to get between locations. All of the riding and much of the driving were on dirt logging/plantation roads. We did several trips on the river to see wildlife, including at night with the aid of a powerful searchlight. In both Imbak and Danum Valley we hiked in the jungle - though in Danum Valley, we saw more wildlife right at the rest house where we were staying. The folks who run the tour company are great and we had a wonderful time with them. Accommodations ranged from very rustic to slightly less rustic to really nice in the guest rooms that they also rent in their home in Lahad Datu.
Hiking in an equatorial jungle was good fun, if incredibly hot - the ambient temperature and humidity were both quite high - this was compounded by wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts much of the time - to try to keep down the amount of blood loss/malaria risk from mosquitoes... and microscopic black flies, and best of all.... leeches!... When I first heard mention of them from our guide, I thought he said Lychees, which are now in season and for sale on the side of the road all over Taiwan right now, and I thought “Great! I love fruit...” Imagine my disappointment to learn that he said leeches....you can’t even eat those... or you probably shouldn’t. Seriously, they were fascinating, tenacious, clearly quite hungry, and everywhere. It wasn’t too big of a deal, but it was novel. Sing along with me won’t you, to the tune of The Steve Miller Band’s ‘Jungle Love’... “Jungle Bugs are driving me mad, making me crazy, crazy, etc etc”...
Like any good jungle, in addition to small bite-y things, there were bigger chompy things like crocodiles,
cats of varying sizes and bears, along with gore-y, trample-y and stomp-y things like boars,
elephants and small rhinos... sadly, it sounds like there are only a very few of the native rhinoceroses left (rhinocerii?) - it appears they are heading for extinction, 30-40 known alive and we were told that breeding efforts in protection/preservation effort are not going well. See plantation deforestation/habitat loss rant above for what appears to be a large reason for their demise.
We saw a wide range of different primates, silver and red leaf monkeys, long tailed and pig tailed macaques, proboscis monkeys (astonishingly unusual creatures when it comes to appearance... beside the nose, they are also naturally pot bellied) I’m thinking one of the other primate species could make a killing with nose jobs and liposuction for the proboscises (proboscii?). My favorite of them all were the orangutans, which we learned literally means People (orang) of the Forest (utan). I think I feel a measure of kinship with them as a result of having freakishly long arms myself. It is so cool to watch all the different types of primates moving through the trees. Video doesn’t really do it justice.
Besides the animals, the trees of the rainforest were amazing, several different types of trees with buttresses of roots for stabilization, others with literal supports that appeared to be rooted as well that were located away from the trunk and supporting branches, vines and all nature of other really cool plants. We didn’t really see any, but the area also hosts a variety of different meat eating plants.
The sounds of the jungle, particularly in the morning, but really anytime was pretty amazing to hear.
For animal geeks following along and scoring this trip at home, here’s a comprehensive list of animals we saw:
Crocodile
Pygmy Squirrel
Proboscis Monkey
Orangutan
Long Tailed Macaque
Pig Tailed Macaque
Red Leaf Eater Monkey
Grey Leaf Eater Monkey
Several types of Kingfishers
White Hornbill
Wild Boar
4 types of Owls
Eagle
Monitor LIzard
This lizard was probably 6 feet long
Many different Egrets
Civets - (small cat)
Mouse Head Deer - which is aptly named, sort of looks like a sci-fi movie experiment gone awry
Some other more traditionally sized and appearing deer, pretty similar to white tails in the US, but actually darker/greyer coat color
Giant Cicada
Tree Frogs
Leeches - Tiger and Leaf
Supersized Centipede type thingy, supersized Pill bug/potato bug, supersized earthworms of several types
Amazing big butterflies, and spiders
And a horde of very grateful (at least I hope they appreciated the meals), black flies and mosquitos
