July 10th

July 10, 2021

a birthday ride with g

It's not the high temperature, but the sticky humidity that makes being outside so hard. While it's 35°C-ish, it feels more like 40°C. Apart from a couple of short rides into town, getting out on the bike has just been unappealing for the past week. Today, however, duty calls.

My friend g is another year older, so I'm going over to Taoyuan to help him celebrate. Cycling to where he lives is particularly unpleasant and it's best to simply hop on a train for 10 minutes, then pedal for another 10 through town to his neighborhood.

A commuter train that accepts bicycles leaves at 9:42 and I get to the station with over 15 minutes to spare with a plan of getting a coffee, but the shops inside the station are locked up.

Usually on Saturdays, the station's concourse is buzzing, yet there are only one or two other people around. Weird.

The cost of my ticket and one for the bike comes to NT$23. That's about 75 US cents. Bargain.

Wearing a mask in this heat is not fun - cycling in one even less so - and while I have a plastic cage that keeps mine away from my face, it's inevitable that sweat forms during the ten-minute ride from the station to a Louisa Coffee shop rendezvous near g's home.

He's sat outside when I pull up, but with the roller shutter of Louisa still down. Clearly it's not going to open today for whatever reason.

Thankfully there's a branch of Cama just a block away and that's where g leads me and we stand around outside in a bit of shade afforded by a small tree and drink our iced lattes. Obviously our masks come off and we chat about the possibility of being fined around a US$100 if a police car were to cruise by and spot us. They don't have to issue a warning.

My canvas shoulder bag contains a few gifts - including about 10 cycling photos that I've framed and they now feel heavy. Some were taken in the past 12 months, with the oldest being from 2005, back when we toured the north of Vietnam. Before heading off for a ride, we pop up to his place to drop them off.

The route g takes me on to get to his apartment includes a rough path through a wooded area. He knows he's lucky to have such a green space to use so close to home, here in a seriously urban part of Taiwan... one of the most densely populated countries there is.

It's nice to be inside with AC and a fan wafting cool air over us while we enjoy cold glasses of water. The view from his 7th floor window is one of tree-covered hills that form a horizon and is where we'll be riding very shortly.

Having another iced coffee appeals, so we decide to go back to Cama.

There's no rush.

After also buying toasted sandwiches, we ride off to find a shaded place along a nearby cycle path to eat brunch - or maybe lunch - al fresco.

A cycle path that alternates between a wooden boardwalk and poured concrete runs along what was once a railway track. The metal rails are still in situ beside a lot of it, but it's not obvious if this was an industrial line or a passenger one. It heads out towards the west coast.

New apartment blocks tower over the route, while the odd warehouse and remnants of smallholdings and allotments are nestled in patches of land in between.

The trees that have been planted are still saplings and don't provide any shade yet and the benches spaced here and there are totally exposed to the sun, so we keep riding for 10 minutes or so until we reach a shallow river, where old banyan trees keep the path in shadow.

My tuna and cheese melt doesn't take long to get demolished as we sit on a stone bench and look at long-legged birds watching for fish in the river's foot-deep water. From the continuous disturbance on the surface, it looks like it's well stocked and they don't go hungry.

Across the path is a six-foot wall covered in graffiti, some of which is a lot better than others, but it's mostly quite naive. Initially I take a photo of Taiwan's flag that's been crudely painted, but soon spot other pieces that look more photogenic and focus on a large skull with the English word 'Drifter' forming its mouth. 'Ra Ra' is written beside it and it's certainly different from what you see in Western cultures.

The riverside path doesn't last long and we hit a road and follow that. I spot a sign saying this is Route 1 and the wide strip has a raised meridian but after a few minutes g points to where we have to cross over and start climbing on a side street.

We ride along and g points out what he says are 'pylons' but which I call traffic cones. He's been taking photos of ones which look a bit odd, having been appropriated or adapted.

It's not long before the houses dwindle and we're cycling between stepped paddies that have a slightly golden tinge to them, with the rice looking almost ready for harvesting.

The road is narrow. It's a lane with a gentle incline and red lines painted down its edges.

It's hard to believe we're so close to a main city centre. There's no traffic.

The clouds part and when the sun is out it feels uncomfortably hot and it's not long before our masks get pulled down.

My hands now slip on my twist-grip gear changer and I pull out my mitts from my bar-bag and my mind goes back to the first time I wore such things, on a ride in the far north of India, heading up into the Himalayas.

Up to that point - in the late 1980s - finger-less mitts had struck me as unnecessary, but I'd bought a pair and opted to try them out when that part of the hand between thumb and forefinger began to feel a bit sore from gripping the bars. The comfort was instant and since then they've been an integral part of my cycling wardrobe.

The lane veers into a wooded area and starts to seriously climb. The shade is welcome, but the humid heat is intense and have I to pause to cool down. My mask gets pushed inside my bar-bag. What are the odds of a police vehicle coming along?

We both walk up the slope for a few minutes and then cruise along an undulating section that runs beside a walled-off military base, somewhere that g says is still manned, but we see no sign of life. The high wall is topped with shiny razor wire.

He's explored the whole area and found concrete bunkers tucked into the hillsides and points to where they are, but they're hard to spot, what with the slopes being so overgrown.

We T into a road and turn left onto what g tells me is Route 11. It has double yellow lines down the middle and curves repeatedly.

Cars and scooters pass us a couple of times a minute and we get a glimpse of Taoyuan's sprawling skyline when the road starts to drop down something like 200 metres in elevation. It'd be nice to take a photo, but there's too much obstructing the view and a recreation area that provides a great vantage point is currently blocked off, so we just zip down.

After turning off onto a side road, g leads me back to his place and after parking our bikes in the basement, we have cold drinks and natter for a while.

Trains back home are frequent, but not all accept bikes. As luck would have it I only have to wait 15 minutes for the 15:04 and as before, there are only a few fellow passengers. While this is a 'bike train' there is nowhere designated or designed as a place for bikes, so mine just stands right in front of me.

I don't stop on the way home and the only photo I take is one of a guy riding a cheap bike. He has a wide straw hat on and it looks like his bike serves as his work vehicle.

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 450 km (279 miles)

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