Freedom to roam

Watch out mountains - here I come!

Today marks the beginning of actually seeing Taiwan in my eyes. I was able to snag this used bike used for a couple hundred dollars from a guy in Taipei. It’s less than a year old, no serious issues and will do just fine getting me to and from work as well as letting me see the area.

It was quite the task taking a bicycle on a train in Taiwan. Supposedly, you can only do so at certain train stations (Taipei Main Station wasn’t one of them) and at specific times. I was lucky to find a woman who rallied all of her coworkers to basically stop what they were doing and help me make the train in less than 15 minutes. It was either that, or I would have been waiting 8 hours. It worked out thankfully and I’m happy to say that I made it back with the bike unblemished.

I’ve started mapping out routes and it looks like I can reach the mountains in under 10 miles – awesome! From what I hear the roads get exponentially better and cars vanish altogether.

Now I just have to get my hands on a helmet, lock, clip-less pedals, and some sweet cycling tights and I’ll be on my way again. I have started planning a trip in the fall to circumnavigate the island. From what I can tell it’s fairly easy to accomplish in 10 days averaging 100km per day. Cake.

I’ll keep you posted on when that actually happens. I am trying to coordinate it with the weather; last thing I want is to be enjoying the east side of the island and be blindsided by a typhoon. Thinking August or September, we’ll see.  Too soon to tell and too little research done; speaking of which, I’m going to go do some more now. Peace.