The Bad and The Beautiful: An Awful Ride Through Wonderful Places

 Taichung Cycling Path

Yes, I am still blogging.


These few weeks have been a bit rough for this blogger, with weather problems followed by a chest cold as the weather shifted from rainy to humid. Now, my father is in town visiting, so my riding will again be curtailed. 


I was finally able to get out for a ride on Saturday, and I decided to complete the route I had initially attempted the previous week. I thought I could roll from Taichung to Zhushan (竹山) and then up the 149甲, turning on the Yunlin Route 158 back toward Gukeng (古坑) and Douliu (斗六). I had even contemplated climbing home over Bagua Shan if I was feeling energetic. 


The whole route is about 160km through some really great tea growing areas. Too few cyclists ever explore these incredible roads, so it is always a pleasure to soak it all in from the saddle. 

As I sped through Wufeng, I stopped to take a look at one of those imposing monuments to the era of Cold War ideological posturing that feels anachronistic and out of place to anyone who has spent any time  with their ear to the ground in Taiwan. The KMT emphasis on "China" seems to betray the party's own insecurity and acknowledgement of Taiwan's own lack.

The roadside monument was arranged in 1989 between two local Lion's Clubs. These private organizations have often acted as a means to conduct unofficial international diplomacy between Taiwan and other countries. 


In 1989 Taiwan (The ROC) and South Korea (The ROK) maintained a united front against Communism in East Asia. By 1992 South Korea officially switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing as the representative of China in an act of realpolitik. In response, the ROC organized a "spontaneous demonstration of anger" outside the South Korean embassy, which involved stone throwing and other acts of orchestrated violence directed toward the Koreans. Taiwan enacted punitive sanctions and severed direct air links that would remain a point of negotiation between the two countries for over a decade. 


This demonization of Korea is also the genesis of much of the animosity many Taiwanese direct toward Koreans. I don't know how many times I have heard a Taiwanese tell me how much they don't like Koreans because of X,Y or Z. Still, these old hurt feelings haven't done much to deter younger Taiwanese from becoming the top international consumers of Korean pop idols and soap operas. 

Everything was pretty easy on the morning. I happily slipped along the roads into the hills. 

I always love passing the tea gardens along the Guo River. It seems they are always filled with people picking tea, as if they are doing it for my benefit. 


These are lower elevation oolongs, but they are hand picked, so the quality should be pretty good. 

Just where the tea gardens spread out at the top of a little climb, I took a right turn over the hill to Douliu. 

I kept a good pace up into the hills, but I could hear a worsening noise from my bottom bracket. I also may have pushed myself to go too fast over the hills. I was trying to be both ginger with the pedal mashing, but also dig into the climb. 

When I finally crested the hill, I felt completely spent. 


I haven't felt this bad in a long time. Maybe I still had too much fluid in my lungs. Maybe too much time off the bike. Maybe poor fueling. Maybe the bottom bracket was causing me to work much harder. Maybe the headwinds and crosswinds took the piss out of me. I really don't know what it was. 


We all have these days. We know what we should be capable of accomplishing. We have done much harder rides. This should have been cake. I shouldn't have been watching the hours slip by. Sometimes it happens and we have a bad ride. We are not immune to riding like crap. The mighty Thor Hushovd from Team BMC unceremoniously bowed out of the Giro d'Italia last week after a poor start punctuating a poorer season.  Some days you just suck. 

I continued plodding along at 20kph. I had nothing in my tank. I couldn't summon any more energy to move forward against the wind. The snapping the popping in the bottom bracket got louder and more annoying. 


I was in a state of shock. I hadn't been through such a humiliating experience in years. It was as if my legs had gone on strike. 

Finally, at Caotun, after 140km, I surrendered. I called for a ride home. My bottom bracket was a mess and so was I. There was no sense in prolonging my suffering. The will to push forward was gone. 


Better luck next time. 

The 137 to Davale and Back (151km)

In preparation for a lengthy post I have in the works, I decided to push my luck with the weather and make a loop through Douliu in Yunlin County.

I started out having to change my inner tube as the patch I had used last week was slowly leaking. I replaced the tube with another lying around... only to discover it was the leaky tube from Thursday (Lesson: get rid of leaky tubes). I changed the flat less than a kilometer from home and continued on my way.

With all the delays I decided to save time at the expense of a little fatigue by going straight up the Highway 74, which does a direct shot over Bagua Shan, in Changhua. My goal was to hook up with Route 137 on the other side and ride down to an area near Er Shui, which had been known as the village of Davale during the period of Dutch colonization and administration.

I found the area I needed to find and met some locals. After an enlightening discussion with several people, I headed out past one of the few recreational bikeways I really like. The Ershui Bikeway is actually a really nice trail that goes around the base of Xiang Shan to Mingjian. It follows the old railroad through some great farm country.

I still had some work to do on my bike-top ethnographical tour and so I headed toward Douliu 斗六.

In Douliu I cut through town and made my way down Taiping Street; a street of restored Japanese era buildings that has been turned into a shopping district with little boutiques and shops.

What I really enjoyed about this street is that it was a restoration and not a project where they replace the originals with a facsimile and then sell tourist goods.

Aside from the uniform signs outside the shops, the facades were painted and restored to give a glimpse of how Douliu may have looked during the 1920's and 1930's.

The most remarkable part is that these old buildings were allowed to continue to function as living retail space and not as tourist kitsch.

For more on the restoration of Japanese Era Taiwan, you can read an earlier post here.

As I left Douliu, I had to investigate another site under the bridge to Dounan. Nearby a work crew was busy harvesting potatoes.

It was soon time to turn into the wind for a long ride up the Highway 1 back home. Despite the effort, the going was slow. I had to just bear down and take the body blows from the headwind.

Closer to Changhua a very light drizzle began to fall making the ride more unpleasant.

With my research done for the day, I crawled through the door a little worse for wear.

Still, I am looking forward to putting this post together. It should be pretty ok.