Ruisui to Shoufeng

November 25, 2024

At home, I’m not an early bird. But in Taiwan, I’ve usually been waking up before 6, which is about when the sun rises. But today I slept in until 7, by far the latest yet. That’s okay, since I didn’t have a long ride planned.

Shortly after a quick family FaceTime, the wi-fi stopped working. I tried restarting the router, which is the limit of my IT skillls, but that had no effect. So that got me up and going. No more wasting time with puzzles and blogging.

I went downstairs to enjoy my tea and tackle the giant pomelo I’d purchased yesterday. My place had a shared kitchen, but no cooking implements, plates, or fridge in the kitchen - I did have one in my room. I finally found a paring knife to help with the thick skin. And I discovered that the main floor wi-fi was working, so I could go back to time wasting.

I could hear what sounded like live music at 8 am. I later decided it was some sort of studio with people practicing singing to pre-recorded music. Classical Chinese karaoke, I suppose. I won’t be adding it to my play list.

No breakfast was provided, so I grabbed a tea egg and baked yam from 7-Eleven on my way out of town.

There must’ve been some rain overnight. I didn’t hear it.

I think I got the name of the river at Ruisui wrong yesterday. A sign says it’s the Fuyuan River. Another long bridge to get me onto quiet route 193, whatever the name of the river. There is SO much water to deal with here.

I pedalled through lots of orange groves this morning.

This time there were people gathering the rice by hand. Have I just missed this step at other fields, or is it sometimes mechanized?

It seems I’m often on a designated bike route. There are lots of them. I chatted with a young guy from Melbourne who is doing Route 1. I think it’s a great thing for people who want to crank out high mileage. But I’m so glad to have had a chance to see other things.

There were more roadside fruit stands today.

I was routed into a park with a whole lot of paved bike paths, where I saw only one other cyclist.

In the Da Nong Da Fu Forest Recreation Area, this lady was wearing her waders to forage for what we’d call fiddleheads.

Have I mentioned the ditches here? They are unforgiving- it’s important to pay attention.

The cat of the day. None too pleased that I disturbed its nap in the middle of the road.

The sun was out this afternoon and it felt hotter than yesterday. So I was happy that it wasn’t a long day. A cooldown is coming mid week.

One of the ubiquitous blue work trucks making a delivery to Fruity 101, my home for the next two nights. I received a warm greeting, including bananas and oranges for my room. The owner’s sister lives in Quebec.

I was starting to suffer minor anxiety about making sure I had a train ticket north from Hualien. So I popped into the train station here in Shoufeng and got my train ticket for Thursday with the help of a nice agent using Google translate, and also supported by the Taiwan Railways website, which has a reasonably functional English version. My fare is under $10 CAD, and the bike fee is half of that.

There weren’t too many dinner options tonight because lots of the local places were closed on a Monday. But there was a busy sushi restaurant near the train station. I had very good skipjack tuna nigiri and a shrimp hand roll, plus potato salad. And a beer. Funnily, nobody else was eating sushi or drinking anything. They were all having miso soup and fried rice. After dinner I was feeling in need of something sweet, so bought a pack of chocolate Pocky sticks to eat while I watched Apple TV. What’s the plural - Pockys, Pockies, Pocki? Anyhow, they taste pretty good and the serving size isn’t too big.

It looks like I won’t need my reserved weather days, so tomorrow I’ll do a day ride without panniers, and will stay in Shoufeng again tomorrow night.

For the first time since I’ve been here, the north end of Taiwan has no rain showing on the radar. I’m feeling lucky!

Today's ride: 54 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,027 km (638 miles)

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