Death An Expected Part of Cycling?

It is the holiday season again, and this is the time of year when I conduct my annual White Elephant gift exchange. Every year there is at least one student who tries to fudge the rules and cheat just a little bit by giving a second hand gift, or having mom go out and choose something stupid.

The rules are very clear: 1) Buy a gift valued between NTxxxx and NTxxxx. 2) Choose the gift yourself. 3) Choose a gift you wouldn't mind getting yourself.

These simple rules outline a sort of Rawlsian idea of Justice as Fairness and I can often use it as an example to teach some very basic ideas about justice, law and following even the little rules.

I will choose some examples in society where people try to "cheat" just a little bit and decide to break a small rule, that can have dire consequences. I usually choose construction codes and traffic.

Yesterday, a couple days after this explanation, one of my students returned from a one-day absence and I asked where she had been. She had been at her aunt's funeral. Her aunt was only 38 years old and had been riding an old bike to one of the markets.

Someone had decided to blow a red light, because they were in a hurry, and killed her aunty.

As a cyclist this really strikes a nerve. I am even more upset when I think about how the government spends money on cycling tourism over making an overall riding environment that is safer by enforcing the laws and managing safe bikeways.

I am sure this is "bad voodoo", but here is a sample of just some of the stories that have been circulating over the past month or so from the English speaking press.

Taiwan's traffic situation is much worse.

• Texas Cyclist seriously hurt.
• Washington County cyclist killed in Oregon crash.
• Hawaii Pacific cyclist killed on bike.
• Hit-and-Run Driver Let off.
• New Zealand Woman gets life ... of self-haterd after killing three cyclists.
• Aussie Drunk Kills Cyclist.
• Five New Zealand cyclists killed in one week.
• 15 yo. Vancouver rider in serious condition after being struck by a car.
• Cycling brothers killed in collision.
• Seven Italian cyclists killed in head-on collision with a car.
• Dead cyclist gets... a memorial.
• Dead cyclist's family gets... settlement.
• Widower rides century for wife killed by car.
• Baltimore family gets cash for cyclist's life.
• Cyclist injured in collision with a van.
• Cyclist hit, driver flees.
• 5 cyclists die in five days.
• Boy almost becomes 6th victim in recent spate of cycling deaths.
• "Dad's Army" Cyclist Killed.
• Riders stage tribute to fallen rider in Redlands.
• Driver gets 90 days in hit and run.
• Louisville man guilty in cyclist's death.
• Los Altos woman killed on bike.
• Vancouver cyclist injured by car.
• Injured cyclist eager to trade millions for his old life.
• No charges brought in Montreal cycling deaths.
• Dead cyclist identified.
• Cyclist fatally doored in Harlem.
• 
  
• Another cyclist from club dies beneath auto.

Hill Tour of Nantou County:183km and 2268m of climbing

Taichung From On High

After an uncharacteristic week of cold and rain, the weather looked promising for a long weekend ride. I really felt like I needed get a punishing single day ride under my belt if I was truly going to climb back into form... and climb I did.

The plan was for a solo-ride over five or six good hills between Taichung and Nantou counties. I really preferred to solo this ride as there was a high possibility of failure and I didn't want to drag someone down with me. Only I could answer the age old question: When a cyclist fails in the forest, does he make a sound?

Friendly Riders

I started by climbing out of Taichung City up the notorious 129 from Dakeng. The death-spiral takes you up to a plateau overlooking Taichung and Fengyuan cities. The weather was cold, but relatively clear and sunny. I had a bit of a sore throat and post nasal drip that just made the first hour a pain. I decided to carry the Camelbak on this trip to reduce water stops and to have a little extra space to stuff food and clothing.

My plan had been all about pacing and thinking about the ride in parts rather than as a whole.

I easily spun up the 129 and practiced carving into deep corners on my way out to the Highway 21 between Taichung and Nantou counties. I have always been a bit of a puss with corners, but a little practice had gone a long way in giving me the confidence to attack them with a little more grit.

View From the Top of Highway 21

By the time I hit the Highway 21, I knew I had been taking things relatively easy and had done it much better in the past. I tried to convince myself it was a controlled speed, but I also feared it was all I had. I felt better as I passed a small group of riders who were climbing the 21 with fury. I hung back and chatted them up and then finished my ascent. I ticked another peak of the day's menu and was still feeling good. The mountains looked like a multi-layered, translucent stage backdrop, with each set of mountains floating behind the rest to give the illusion of depth.

View Toward Mountains

The descent down the Highway 21 is always a thrill. I didn't push too hard and continued my work on corners. I tried to pick a line and stick to it.

As I was coming out of the village of Guoxing, I was just cresting a steep, little hill before the junction with the Highway 14, and I noticed a couple uniformed men with reflective stripes on their jackets and a few people milling around on the side of the road.

I immediately assumed a temple procession would be coming by as there were placards of faux garlands posted up around the adjacent school. I stayed alert for the train of tour busses packed with pilgrims or for the palanquin parade to weave down the street.

It is truly amazing how life can pass so quickly and we can hardly remember most of it. At the same time there are some images that may pass in just a second and we can recall every stirring detail.

As I approached the uniformed men, they looked listless and ill. There was frantic commotion in the betel nut field below the road as a half-dozen people were bent over the flames of a blue-smokey fire as they frantically flipped spirit money into the heap of burning paper..

I passed at 30kph, but I could clearly see the shape of a body lying under a pristine white sheet about 5 meters away, amid a hundred thin trunks of betel nut trees.

The sheet covered most of the body except for the a pair of booted feet and two ashen yellow hands, palms upturned with fingers half-curled. The image reminded me of the old Frankenstine movies with the monster under the sheet waiting for the reanimating jolt of electricity.

He may have been hit by a car or had a heart attack in his field. Maybe he fell into the fields in a drunken stupor and the cold night air got too him. I will probably never know.

Just as that man's life had so quickly passed... as did I.

Valley

Despite the unexpected dead body at the side of the road, I continued along my route on the Highway 21. There is a short climb that offers the most magnificent views of a tight river valley that seems to sit at the bottom of a punchbowl. I always enjoy riding through this valley, but I can do without the climb out to another plateau above Puli. I was feeling a little tight in the legs by this point and the road that bombs into Puli is worth any climb. I made it to tick the third peak off my itinerary.

Sprouts

The plateau overlooking Puli is a bounty of agricultural beauty. The red soil and symmetry of the crops is a sight to behold. After a good climb the flats were just what the legs asked for.

Plateau Above Puli

All too soon I came screaming down the mountain to Puli, where I restocked and had a quick coffee.

Sun Moon Lake

From Puli the Highway 21 starts a long, steady ascent toward Sun Moon Lake. That stretch of road sucks. Cyclists are pushed off to the sides of the road, which are littered with rocks, sand and glass.

Just as I was getting to the point where the great 131 splits off to Shuili, I felt my back end getting soft.

Argh! A flat. A piece of Taiwan Beer bottle was lodged in my tire. Luckily I was right in front of a 7-11 and quickly set out to change tubes. In a matter of seconds I was another tourist attraction. About 6 or 7 people had gathered to watch me change an inner tube, each offering their own commentary. Come one, come all... watch the white man fix a flat. it is Sun Moon Lake after all. It and everything was put on this Earth for YOU!

That 7-11 didn't have a pump, so I had to use my CO2, which I don't trust very much. I had one misfire and the other worked. I think this incident turned the tide a little as it threw off my rhythm and cost me some valuable time.

Posing

Sun Moon Lake is a Tourism Mecca in Taiwan. This is not in doubt as the caravans of tour busses make an endless loop around this Japanese era reservoir, that was once a much smaller lake.

Chiang Tower

In the distance I could see the tower that popular mythology claims was constructed by Chiang kai-sheck in honor of his mother. In reality, it had less to do with the love for a mother than a rabid hatred Chiang harbored for the Japanese. The tower occupies the space that once housed Sun Moon Lake's shinto shrine.

Just What We Need... More Cable Cars

I took the East side of the lake, as it has fewer attractions and trinket shops. There was more climbing around the lake than I had anticipated. It seemed it would be a loop of gentle rollers, which were beginning to feel like mountains on my legs.

Just Pave It

Above The Lake

Finally, after battling traffic and rubberneckers for half the lake, I made my way to the Tsao/Ngan village, which actually resembles the flavor of a Native American casino. Years ago I had lunch with the "head family" of the village which was a position the KMT government invented to gain some greater influence over the area. The "chief" and "princess" talked to me for some time about their influence over the tribe. The "princess" still recalled her glory days of dancing for Chiang Kai-sheck. Not all the Tsao think so fondly of the former dictator or their local patrons.

Nantou 63

From the Tsao village the 投63 climbs up above the lake and the quiet, treelined road is a welcome respite from Disneyland below. Now, between the 131 and the 63, there is absolutely no reason to take the Highway 14 to Sun Moon lake.

Xinyi Township

Coming down the 63 is a simple thrill. There is nobody there. It is just you and some hulking mountain peaks.

An Odd House

I followed the 63 all the way down to the Highway 16 in Xinyi Township. There were a few minor climbs. I made my way out to Shuili and not much further beyond that my energy started to wane. It seemed I was pedaling squares all the way back home.

Choushui River

The cramping hit at Mingjian and it was all I could do to push forward. My original plan had called for me finishing over the 136 if I had had the time, but I was glad I didn't attempt it. It would have been a disaster. I need a few more of these long, punishing rides before I can do all six peaks on a loop through Taichung and Nantou counties. I have ridden better and plan to get back to that point.

Chasing Skirt

Final Score:

Distance: 114mi/183km

Elevation: 7438 ft. 2268m

Time: 8hr 22min.

Calories Burned: 6443

Duchamp, Modern Art and The Bicycle Wheel

I was just having a little discussion about art and Marcel Duchamp, the French avant-garde artist who was highly instrumental in ushering in the modern era of art, which transitioned art in all forms from an emphasis on technical artistic creation and production-- the artist's skill at painting, sculpture, drawing-- to the conceptual with an emphasis on the artist's framing.

"The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."--Marcel Duchamp

This shift opened the doors for pop artists like Andy Warhol to explore concepts of mass production and cinema, especially exemplified by Warhol's 1964 film Empire, which consisted of 8 hours of still footage focused on the Empire State Building (I am sure the concept of thousands of individual frames passing one after the other on an unmoving object at 24 frames per second was especially titillating to Warhol's fixation with the "factory").

I was thinking of Duchamp's earlier works and came upon his 1913 work, The Bicycle Wheel from his Readymade Series, which brings this discussion into the realm of my blogging and thinking about the bicycle.

"The Bicycle Wheel is my first Readymade, so much so that at first it wasn't even called a Readymade. It still had little to do with the idea of the Readymade. Rather it had more to do with the idea of chance. In a way, it was simply letting things go by themselves and having a sort of created atmosphere in a studio, an apartment where you live. Probably, to help your ideas come out of your head. To set the wheel turning was very soothing, very comforting, a sort of opening of avenues on other things than material life of every day. I liked the idea of having a bicycle wheel in my studio. I enjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoyed looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace. It was like having a fireplace in my studio, the movement of the wheel reminded me of the movement of flames" --Marcel Duchamp

My friend Matthew sent this wonderful piece from his iPhone:

I'm at lunch reading about the re-alignment of West German art during the first ten years after 1945; the year considered the zero hour of the new german history for obvious reasons. German art houses and museums, for a time, displayed modernist art (or as it was known ten years prior: degererate) and quietly put away the neoclassic paintings previously sanctioned by the Nazi party.

This lead me to think about something that Dennis (an illustrator friend) used to always say about Duchamp ruining art for illistrators by re-aligning the art 'argument' to the artist's choice and intellect rather than the produced painting and skill of the hand.

I'm lead to wonder if in reality the change from illustrative/representative art was primarily caused by a need to disassociate from the Nazi party (read here any previous powerful state party that had a hand in the disaster of the world wars) and it's past representative icons of its ideals and a need to show acceptance for the dissenting art, which was primarily abstracted, and the ideals for which that art stood.

Duchamp, it seems, may have been the one to define and announce a trend that was already coming to be the world over.

Abstraction was a step in a process already heading Duchamp's direction.
The more I think of Duchamp the less I think of him as a catalyst. Now I think the emperor was already struting nude in front of his citizenry, Duchamp just revelled in being the first to point it out.

In essence, Duchamp was simply doing what he was best at; supplying the frame to a movement that was readymade by the process of experience.

Dreaming is Free

Maybe you dream about bikes sometimes too. I thought I would share mine.

I just woke up from the most dangerous dream.

I dreamt I walked into a bike shop with my credit card and paid $USD7000 for a fully custom titanium frame fully built up... and then on my way out of the store I considered how I was going to explain it to my wife.

Then I woke up both disappointed and relieved.

Dressing For Taiwanese Winters

The weather over the past couple days has reminded me that you can freeze your ass off, even in Taiwan. No matter how often I get to rub in our great biking weather to my friends in North America, or Taipei for that matter, I still have to face the fact that we do get some cold spells from time to time. Fortunately, it doesn't stop me from riding.

When I ride in the mountains or on colder days in Taiwan, I found the best strategy is to use layers. Sometimes the temps fluctuate enough on a ride to strip down to short sleeves, or wrap up for warmth. Packability is key to choosing the right gear. You should be able to stuff everything in a jersey pocket.

The single most important factor for Taiwan's cold temperatures is wind. The winter wind really makes all the difference. Therefore, I use a really great Castelli windbreaker. It is amazing what a thin layer of windproofing can do to keep you warm. Often, that is all I need over a jersey. My wife likes her Pearl Izumi windbreaker as well. Hers is florescent yellow for visibility.

Both jackets keep a low profile to prevent unnecessarily creating drag. The last thing anyone needs when cycling head into the wind is any more resistance.

For really cold days I use a Craft base layer that is amazing. It is thin enough to see skin through the fabric, but it traps warmth. Totally recommended. It hugs the body, so it will not bunch up or rub. I just wear it right under my jersey.

Some other weapons against cold are my arm and leg warmers.

The Adidas arm warmers are cheap and work well. The Assos leg warmers stay in lace and really haven't warped since I bought them a couple years ago. For the coldest days I just slip the arm warmers over the sleeves of the base layer.

The rule for helmets is you always pay more for less helmet. I guess I paid a lot because I have quite a breeze that blows over my head when I ride. Therefore, I picked up a couple hats of different thickness. The thickest hat is my Nike thermal skull cap, but I have another one I got at an outdoor store that is really nice too. The important thing is to make sure they'll fit inside a helmet. Your helmet may fit fine as-is, but put too much hat in there and it can be uncomfortable.

The last adjustment I make for the cold is a pair of long-finger gloves. I got these Assos gloves that are actually summer gloves, but they work fine on Taiwan's coldest days. They are great for those in between days where it is freezing in the morning and then warm in the afternoon.

That's about it. You don't need much, but just enough.

First Annual Taiwan Bike Festival Wants A "Do-over"

Taiwan's government has announced on their "International Service Portal" that, essentially, the First Annual Taiwan Bike Festival was such a smashing success... they are going to hold the exact same event again next year and have thus announced plans to hold the second First Annual Taiwan Bike Festival in 2011.

You read that correctly. Next year will be considered the "first" one and the 2010 festival is being called a "trial event" that doesn't really count. Sorry attendees. Luckily next year's event will be held in the month of November to coincide with my twelfth 25th birthday.

Among this year's successes that helped the Sports Affairs Council opt for a do-over was the October scheduling, which put the event at the tail end of typhoon season and resulted in several events being cancelled as several of the world's top cyclists waited in their hotels for conditions to clear.

... and there's more...

Here's the whole thing:

"With so-called LOHAS trends and environmentally-friendly ideals sweeping around the world, bicycling is gaining ground on driving to become one of the hottest forms of exercise in the 21st century. In order to promote cycling, the Executive Yuan’s Sports Affairs Council plans to invest NT$4 billion to pave cycling paths around Taiwan. Cities like Taipei and Kaohsiung have been setting up bike-rental services around MRT stations and popular scenic spots since May, 2009 and are encouraging visitors to take full advantage of bikes for city sightseeing.

To meet the goal of transforming Taiwan into a“cycling island”, the Tourism Bureau held a Taiwan Cycling Festival from Oct. 16 to 24 in Hualien and Taitung. As part of this event,internationally-renowned cycling teams were invited to Taiwan to join the “Taiwan Cup” road race. Other highlights included road races for both professional and amateur bicyclists, plus a triathlon, consisting of cycling, running and swimming, which was open to all participants. Thanks to the successful results of this year’s trial event, the Tourism Bureau plans to designate 2011 as the first official year for the Taiwan Cycling Festival, and organize large-scale related events in the second and third weeks of October, 2011. The goal will be to align the race route with bountiful tourism resources and attractions in Hualien and Taitung, enticing more foreign tourists to Taiwan."

The full article is only two paragraphs, but there is a lot to dig into.

I covered just some of it here. I think the article above really helps illustrate some of my points.

The first thing I would like to draw attention to is the extravagant use of the term LOHAS. The term has become a buzzword in Taiwan's domestic marketing with little action to back it up. LOHAS or Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, encourages the wealthier and more educated classes to be willing to spend more on "green" living.

Taiwan's government is clearly focused on pushing cycling touri$m, or rather, Tourism's ability to generate construction and development profits over real lifestyles of sustainability.

The promise of more concrete for bike paths rings empty when riders are asked drive their bikes out to ride them. The claims that Taiwan is becoming "Bicycle Island" sounds like something from Fantasy Island. With the narrow focus on only tourism, Taiwan's cycling infrastructure is like a new subdivision of big, fancy houses that are not hooked up to a sewer line or power grid. We currently have islands of bike trails that connect to nothing and very little investment pointed toward making those connection that might make those systems valuable to society.

They are always eager to throw NT 4 billion into concrete, but can you get there by bus?

Bears Love Hualien: Cash Makes A Weekend of Travel, Romance and Cycling A Reality

I am sure the title of this post is going to attract attention from sectors of the internet that don't necessarily concern bicycles, but I thought I should share the photo-montage Cash Huang of T-Mosaic Cycles put together from his recent trip to Hualien.

I just love that side of the mountains.



Th thought I should also mention that when Ernesto Colnago, arguably the father of the modern road bike, was in Taichung, he stopped by T-Mosaic and personally signed every piece of Colnago merchandise from hats to bikes.

If you are thinking of making a Colnago purchase and want a little something special, stop by T-Mosaic and take a look. This doesn't happen often in these parts.