Miscellany...

Here’s a bunch of stuff that I wanted to pass along - nothing at all earth shattering, simply things that have caught my eye of late ‘round here.  And there's one thing that really belongs with the stuff from Australia, but I’m too lazy to put it there!

Not sure if this is a training route laid out by the Lobster Triathlon Club or what, but whatever it is, I like it...

There's plenty of 'Chinglish' on signs around, but this one really stood out to me, what with the fish and chicken and organic footpath and all.

I don't know who these big blow up dudes represent, but they lived in the park near our apartment for the last week or so...rather impressively huge.

Saw this on a ride and had to take a picture...

This was a really cool installation at the MONA Museum in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

This was at the Taipei Bicycle Show... It's not as bad a name as it might seem, I think.  Since if used properly and often, pretty much any bike is an assizing technology, right?

Summer in Oz...

“We’ve got a few days in Sydney, then we’re off for bike touring in Tasmania - where the weather forecasts look pretty cold and possibly wet too... perhaps when it comes to cycling in the Southern Hemisphere around Christmas - less South is a good call?” These were somewhat prophetic words at the conclusion of my last post.

Based on temperatures alone, yes, ‘less South’ would have been a good call.  It snowed on us on December 29 in Mt Field National Park in Tasmania.  True we were at a bit of altitude, but not that much, only about 4000 feet, and it was in the high 30s or low 40s F at the hotel down at lower elevation.  

Austral Summer bushwalk!

We had a great time wandering Sydney in the days preceding Tasmania, mostly fine weather and we had a blast visiting museums, hiking up and over the top of the arch of the Harbor Bridge, and all over town and out in the Blue Mountains. 

  

On our way to a professional soccer game,  we saw a huge flock of fruit bats - fruit bats are enormous by North American standards - imagine a squirrel sized body and probably close to 2 foot wingspan.   The urban wildlife in Australia is wonderfully exotic to our eyes: spoonbills, hooked billed kinda birds, parrot type guys and cockatoos all give your average pigeons and seagulls a run for their money.  (Unfortunately I don't have any pictures that do much justice, so you'll have to just imagine or fire up your Google thingy to find some, sorry!)

We got to Tasmania at the same time as our friend Ross,

Ok, so this is actually later in the trip, but this was a great photo of us all....

built the bikes and had a nice day wandering about in Hobart after we built our bikes.  The following day we headed off for a hike with our bikes and gear behind the car in a trailer.  Day 1 we had planned to ride out of Hobart to a hotel near Mt Field National Park.  But our wonderful Hobart host, Gavin, suggested that we really should all drive up together to do this hike instead.  We wouldn’t miss much in terms of riding - a good portion of the day was going to be spent on the roads in and around Hobart getting to our first stop.  Plus, we’d get a chance to see some high alpine vistas that we weren’t likely to get in that area.   So that’s how we ended up in the snow.  It was beautiful and memorable, to be in the driving snow on our Southern Hemisphere Summer Holiday.

The cycling was wonderful - very quiet roads, wonderful people we met in all of the towns we stopped in, amazing and varied scenery. 

Our travels took us out to and back from Strathgordon on the only paved road (dead end) for many miles around - the whole of SW Tasmania is essentially wild.   Several days we rode for hours and hours without seeing a house, a business or anything at all save for wilderness around us.  We got all the way out to the West Coast to a town called Strahan, after traveling through Queenstown, which could have been in the Colorado or Utah - almost from central casting for ‘mountain mining town’.   Our final stop was Cradle Mountain National Park

An iconic view from Cradle Mountain... this is on all the postcards, posters and calendars, we got to see it ourselves.  The funny part is that this boathouse is actually quite a bit smaller than you'd guess, not for model boats, but not for regular sized ones either.

and we took a day off the bikes there to do a wonderful hike.  We ended our bike travels in Devonport and rented a small van and drove back to Hobart.

The weather was mostly cool to cold temps, and a few days of rain on and off, some mostly on, and one day entirely ‘on’…the bonus was that that day was really cold and windy too!  

One of the highlights of the trip was on that very cold, rainy, windy day, a family stopped at the top of a pass with their camper van and offered us hot coffee and some shelter from the rain and cold.   We felt a bit bad as we made a wet mess of the interior of their van, but they were cyclists too and said they felt compelled to stop.  We learned that they were staying at the same campground as us that night, and we had a cabin reserved there, so we invited them over for dinner - it was a family of 5 in a small van camper, so I think this was a welcome break from the confines of their rig.

We hiked the next day and were able to meet up with bike tourist we met a few days prior.  Esther is a very kind and nice woman traveling solo all over the world by bike.  She left her home in Vancouver BC headed for Scandanavia, cycled through as much of Russia as her visa would allow, then on to Mongolia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Victoria, and from Australia she was bound for Portugal and Spain.

The shorts and short sleeves were still a few days hence, after a bunch more cold and rain!

  We had extra space in the cabin so she stayed one night with us and we all rode together to Devonport the next day which was big fun - and, the first day on the whole trip where we were actually warm on the bikes - as we went down in elevation and as the weather warmed up as well, we ended up doing the last 10 miles or so in short sleeves and shorts for the first time vs all the layers we’d been wearing most every day previously.

Echidnas ahead.

Visit to the body shop ahead....

I just love that they describe Wombat's movement as 'trundling', pretty accurate when you see them move..

The wildlife we saw was all so cool - wallabies (small kangaroo like creatures), actual kangaroos, wombats, possums (very different than North American possums), what we think was a Tasmanian Devil in the distance, and my favorite of all, the echidna.  Echidna are hedgehog/porcupiney marsupial anteaters, slow and rather ungainly as they move, they have two main defensive plans it seems:  One is to roll up in a ball and rely upon their spines for protection,

An Echidna ball....

the second, probably less effective, but highly comical plan is to simply hide their face (perhaps on the human infant theory of “if I can’t see you, you, of course, cannot see me”)

An Echidna, perfectly safe since he can't see us any longer ...

  We saw a lot of them along the road, and this second defensive posture was nothing but a riot to see.   We learned from an Aussie that they were completely docile and quite safe to poke, so we realized that that was probably a great band name and in turn, created, with Gavin’s daughter’s help, the design for tour t-shirt:

Wombats are startlingly cute and surprisingly big, while they can be nasty and ‘bitey’ and scratchy (well, probably more accurately ‘slashy’, they’ve got big claws), I feel like they’re sort of behind the curve for Australian wildlife, most all of which has at least one, if not several ways to kill you.  So I’m considering a Kickstarter campaign to design and outfit the wombats with helmets mounted with lasers or something.  I’ll work it out and let you know, but the ones we saw looked a bit bummed that they had nothing really frightening to work with.

I had to put both of these on here just so you get a sense of scale with the (adult) humans in background.

Talking with Aussies about the local wildlife was fascinating - we had pretty much the identical experience as Bill Bryson describes so well in this quote:

“Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.” 

― Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country

The thing that got added regularly to discussions we had similar to Bryson’s spot on observations, were questions about bears…as in “yeah, we got a lot of deadly animals here, but you guys have bears up there”… sure North Americans need to be cautious about bears occasionally, but this pales in comparison to how much more frequently Aussies can encounter the aforementioned deadly things in Australia.

After we completed the bicycle portion of the trip, we had the chance to spend a day or so in Hobart, visiting an amazing art museum and getting out for a great hike out along some spectacular cliffs above the ocean.

Our wonderful host and guide, Gavin way, way above the ocean below.  We hiked all the way out to the end of the point visible in the center background.

We closed out the trip with a few days visiting some friends in Melbourne which was much warmer than Tasmania and great for some time at the beach, and some wandering in the city proper through the botanic gardens and a great museum.  Then back home to Taiwan after an amazing trip!

All's quiet on the Eastern Front of the War on Christmas....

.... 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.

Sorry, it's not even a 'humblebrag'.... (updated)

.... 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.

Another cool bridge

Little Guys of Korea

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.

Belated Happy R.O.K.-tober!

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.

How can you be in two places at once....?

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.