Product Review: Tacx Lumos Lights and Continental Force

Tacx Lumos Bike Lights:



Like most people I work regular hours for a living and that means I have to do most of my serious training at night.

Taiwan can be a frustrating and dangerous place to ride during the day, and at night you have to be even more careful. Good lighting and visibility is essential to surviving each ride unscathed.

For the past several years I had been using a Cat Eye bar top mounted light with strobe and solid beams pairs with a couple of blinkeys on the back.

The worst thing about the Cat Eye was that several times during a ride, I would have to slow down and re adjust the strap to keep it from dangling or dropping off the bar completely. No matter how tight I would fasten the damned light, a little rough pavement or bump on a bridge, would send it illuminating my shoes.

I went into T-Mosaic and saw the Tacx bar end mounted lights and was intrigued. I finally broke down and bought them. After a few nights out with them, I think I like them pretty okay.

They are bright. They are solidly mounted to the bar ends and run on AA batteries. Each side shines front and rear with a blinker if you ever remember to use it. These are all good points.

I don't like the lack of a strobe. It is easy for me to imagine a vehicle misjudging my distance if they aren't sure way type of vehicle I am. I remember one foggy night I was driving through Sun Valley, Idaho. The road was covered in a dusting of snow and the highway covered in fog. I saw a bunch of lights up ahead and wondered what all those cars were doing up there. I suddenly realized that I was about to ram the back end of a semi trailer. The point is: Lights can be deceiving in the dark. A strobe is a good clue that you are a bike.

I am also trying to get used to having something beyond my normal bar ends. A couple times I have turned off the lights by resting my hands on the very ends of the bars.

The last quibble is that the AA batteries rattle when you hit any type of bump and it makes the ride a bit noisy.

My left light has quit working after maybe three night rides. It will turn on if I remove the light and jiggle the contacts, but that only lasts for a moment.

Overall, this COULD BE is a very good product for night owls. I still see lots of room for improvement. Better engineering would be a start. Remounting the button to the outside might be better. Adding a strobe function would make this product a easy choice if it can be robust enough to handle real world riding.

It feels like a beta product, but it is not ready for the consumer.

Update:

About 6 weeks ago I brought these lights back to my LBS. The owner was kind enough to send them in to have the engineers look at the problems. Nobody has heard back from Tacx. I was issued a new set on the LBS owner's dime.

When they break... I will be looking elsewhere.


Continental Force Tire:



I am still, and have been for a long time, a huge fan of the Continental 4000 GP tire. It is an excellent performance tire for racing and fast training.

Sadly, when my tire died, I had to face the fact that Taiwan is always in short supply of my trusty 4000 GP. The superior 25c model is even more scarce.

I needed a tire and went with the Continental Force. I chose the force for its performance profile, and for the fact that it is 24c. I thought this would be a good replacement when paired with the 23c 4000 GP on the front.

The tire feels very firm. At first it made my bike feel like one of those old alloy Cannondale biked of the 90s. After a while the tire felt very smooth and a very good roller with plenty of tack on the road.

I have not had it long enough to rate the wear, but so far, this is a very nice performance tire. Very racy.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

Central Taiwan Cycling Health WARNING: Seasonal Burning

Smoke from Changhua fields


Last night, as I was charging through Caotun halfway through my Wednesday night training ride, I felt my chest tighten and it became harder to draw a solid breath of air. 


At first I thought I had overcooked in my effort and I paused at 7-11 for a water in the A/C. 


I knew I was out of shape, but everything seemed to be going well. Until that point I expected my legs to cramp up before my lungs. 


I started to recognize the feeling of an allergy induced asthma attack and I was traveling without my inhaler or antihistamine. Doh!


As I blew my nose into a complimentary 7-11 napkin, I became keenly aware of the smell (and taste) of  smoke. 


That is when it dawned on me that I had charged full speed into burning season. This is the time of year when farmers burn off the rice husks in their fields and prepare for the next crop of rice. The practice pollutes the air with thick smoke and creates a potentially dangerous situation for those of us with asthma or other respiratory problems. 


If you have allergies, asthma, or any other respiratory problem that could lead to a medical emergency, be sure to keep that in mind when choosing your routes for the next couple of weeks. Also be sure to carry everything you need if you have an emergency. 


I finished my ride at about half-speed, and not after spraying the roadway with two dozen snot rockets. My throat was a bit sore and I had a pounding headache. Feeling much better now. 


Ride safe!

Team Neko To The Rescue: Thanks Again!

Last Saturday I went on another longish ride out toward Nantou as I claw my way back into shape after a 2 month hiatus. There are days when one or two things conspire against you... and there are days when it seems everything does. 


On Saturday, it seemed lots was going wrong. 





I had intended to ride down past Mingian, and then loop back to Nantou via the Route 139, which, if ridden in its entirety would be an amazing ride. This is the second time I had tried to find the Route 139, and often, the view from the map is vastly different from that of the roadside. In my mind's eye, I thought I knew where to go... and I did. The problem was that there is a jumble of roads in the area and I managed to find myself on the wrong one. By the time I realized I would be missing the Route 139, it was too late and I had already wasted too much energy to go back. 





Instead of chewing up grit on a mouthful of nasty hills in the hot sun, I was looping through the shady avenues of the leisurely Route 152, which has become something of a novice route for city slickers visiting the town of Ji Ji and rent bikes on a lark. 





The Route 152 is pretty and pleasant. 





It follows the old banana rail lines around JiJi and within 30 minutes I was plopped back on the Highway 3 headed home.





I rode up the Highway 3 looking for any roads that might show the promise of adventure and as I was passing a 7-11, I felt my rear tire deflate. 


"Damn!", I thought to myself, "Well, at least I am in front of a 7-11. It could be worse." 


I parked my bike and went in for a popsicle and a little A/C before getting down and dirty with changing a flat. 


Once I got everything changed, I hit the road back. After riding less than a kilometer, I felt the road getting soft under my rear tire again. I got off the bike and located a tear in the rubber of my tire. It seemed the high pressure was forcing the tube through the hole causing it to explode. 


Just as I started walking to the Circle K that was just on the other side of the bridge to repeat the flat ritual I had just completed minutes earlier, a number of riders from Taichung's Team Neko stopped by to lend a hand. I explained the problem and it was as if a team of race mechanics had descended on my bike. I gave them space and I was back up and riding-- albeit a little soft in the rear to avoid another blow-out. 



I recognized several of the riders from Caffe Terry, and I decided to hang with Neko for the remainder of the ride. I figured it would be like riding with a mobile bicycle shop. Lots of people with pumps and tubes if anything went wrong.


The group had well over twenty riders, so it was nice to take advantage of the draft. The pace was quick at the front, but not too fast, about 35-38kph. Occasionally the studs of the group would launch off the front in a bit of fun. For me, I was just happy to get a tow home. It was also nice to have one of the only metal bikes in the middle of a bunch of beautiful carbon bikes.


Neko is Taichung's default group ride. They are well organized and always doing something different on both Saturday and Sunday. They also do weekly Wednesday night rides. You can't miss them with their jailbird stripes and cat logo. I see them all the time, but have never had a chance to ride with them before Saturday. Anyone is welcome to join Neko, so they attract both the hardcore racer and the cycling novice. A beginner could learn a lot from these guys. 


There schedule can be found HERE. Sadly there is no English option. 


I bumped along with the group all the way back to Taichung with 20psi in my rear tire. When the group split up and several members finally landed at a cafe, I thanked them for the help and in allowing me to crash the party. 


This is very much the spirit of cycling in Taiwan. People are very supportive and always ready to lend a hand. 


Thanks again Neko. 

Cycling Tour of Taiwan Video

Here is a great little video of a couple of guys on a Round-Taiwan tour. They seem to have picked a pretty good route and taken the time to capture it on video. The sped-up effect is one of my personal favorites.

Taiwan's Soft Diplomacy: Cycling The World To Make Space For Taiwan

A pair of child's overalls from 1978 with an ROC flag and the slogan, "I Love China/Chinese". This provides an excellent example of how these Chinese Nationalist symbols were used to reinforce KMT party ideology in children. The symbolism was a performative means through which Taiwanese located on the periphery could attempt to satisfy their ethnic burden and benefit from drawing closer to state power. The ROC flag is still a very important symbol in every school.




The CNA via Taiwan Focus brings us an interesting article on a Taiwanese cyclist who will embark on an extended bike tour to highlight Taiwan's difficulty in negotiating an ambiguous national identity.

Teddy Liao, who prefers to be known as "Taiwan Floatman," will wear a T-shirt printed with the Republic of China's national flag and perform "human flag" maneuvers in which he makes his body parallel to the ground while holding a pole at famous scenic sites in various countries. 

Liao, 28, who has sold his bike shop in central Taiwan's Taichung city, told CNA that he's motivated to quit his job and travel in this unusual way because he is patriotic and is concerned about Taiwan's unique international status. 

The island of 23 million people is not recognized as a country by the United Nations because China considers it a province to be reunified one day.  

As a result of Beijing's objections to Taiwan being treated as a country, Taiwan is often barred from participating in international organizations that require statehood or using its official name -- theRepublic of China -- at international events. The ROC moved its seat to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to the Chinese communist party.  

Despite the warming ties between Taiwan and China, Taiwan is still not allowed to show its flag at international sports events, and thus many patriotic Taiwanese people or athletes make a point of showing Taiwan's flag in the audience sections or on the stage of sports competitions or other events. 

What may be the most interesting aspect of this article is how Mr. Liao's trip not only accurately expresses the level of confusion and insecurity the current national policy of demurring ambiguity creates among its citizens, but also in how Taiwan's status as an unresolved post-coloniality has resulted in a confusing juxtaposition and reconfiguring of national identities and symbolism.


The debate over Taiwan's representation is not only being waged between the People's Republic of China (PRC/China) and Taiwan (Republic of China/ROC), there is also vigorous debate within Taiwan over the state of the nation.


Form Taiwan's earliest contact with the ROC, the relationship was defined as one between the centrality of the ROC state apparatus and the Taiwanese periphery. To gain access to the state's monopoly on power, Taiwanese were expected to move closer to the state center by adopting the state ideology of Tridemism, also known as Sunism after the writing of the Chinese ethnic nationalist writer, Sun Yat-sen.


Tridemism is based on the principles of Nationalism/Populism/Patriotism, Democracy, and Public Welfare. Sun Yat-sen believed the Chinese people were racially superior to the other peoples of Asia and, only through these principles, could rise up and become the masters of the "Yellow Race".


Sun's ideals were brought to Taiwan by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) following WWII, which operated as a mirror to the Japanese colonial government it had replaced. The symbols of patriotism and nationalism were regular deployed to array out the nationalization program with the aim of transforming the Taiwanese people into Chinese. 


This process put an incredible burden on Taiwanese to adopt idealized modes of behavior to satisfy the KMT state's requirements of patriotism, while the KMT maintained a gap between the civilized center and its degraded peripheral peoples (Taiwanese).


The ROC flag has remained a confusing and controversial symbol of Taiwan as it is based upon the KMT party flag, brought to Taiwan from China in 1945. After 40 years as a single party authoritarian state, Taiwan's transformation to a democracy failed to transform many of the former symbols of the pre-democratic regime and its failed neocolonial, China centered programs.


In the article above Mr. Liao expresses his desire to display his patriotism in the face of China's belligerence by displaying the national flag-- a flag that is often suppressed by Chinese efforts and also by the complicit acts of the ROC's own representatives.


It is not clear if Mr. Liao is a strong supporter of the constitutional ROC, the Chinese Nationalist state that still maintains a China-centered outlook, or if he has come to associate the old symbols of Chinese nationalism with the modern, democratic experience of Taiwan.


It Taiwan, it is commonly recognized that the ROC flag is not a neutral representation of the nation, but tightly associated with the KMT; a party which still officially seeks to realize its pipe dream of seeing Taiwan as a part of some "Chinese" entity. This would make Mr. Liao's efforts seem almost counter productive.


Many Taiwanese who support a formal declaration of independence steer clear of the old symbolism that is tied to the type of ethnocentrism that was used so effectively in maintaining the social cleavage between those who identified closely with the KMT state (and were the beneficiaries of their close relationship) , and those who did not.


As the majority of Taiwanese reject any type of Chinese identity in recognition of the realities of Taiwan as their center, the deployment of old symbols imbued with new meanings will likely continue and become more common as Taiwanese inch toward a "Taiwan consensus"driven from the bottom up. For many Taiwanese, there seems to be a type of dissonance between the Chinese centered history and experience of the ROC and the Taiwanese historo-political experience, as if the history of the ROC in China has been imported wholesale, reconfigured, and re-imagined as if it had happened in Taiwan. 


What Mr. Liao may represent with his bike ride, is the possibility that a Taiwan centered nationalism has supplanted the China-centered model to become the predominant grammar for discussing the national expectations and aspirations of the Taiwanese. This bike project also betrays how the KMT and PRC policies of containment deployed against Taiwanese nationalism have produced the opposite of the desired effect.  

Around Liyu Reservoir (Route 52-3): Back To The Drawing Board

The View From The Top


A few months ago I could see the riding forecast and it looked poor. Our daughter was born in December and I took about a month to let my legs recover. Then my mother arrived for two weeks to see the baby. Just as I started to come back from about three weeks off I got sick, and then the weather went bad... and then I had a ride or two.... and then the weather went bad... and then my dad arrived for two weeks... and then the weather went bad... and then I got sick... and then the weather went bad... and then I did the Northern Cross Island Highway... and then the the weather went bad... and then a typhoon swept through Taiwan...  and before I knew it, I was a couple months out of shape. 



Crossing Into Dongshih


The weather this past weekend looked excellent for riding and I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to throw a leg over the top tube and start clawing my way back into shape. 


I worked out an plan with Dom A. with the understanding that I would be using the ride as an easy warm-up to begin my training to get back to my former level of fitness; a level of fitness that once allowed me to chew up climbs and distance with relative ease.   



Fight


Dom seemed to have other plans. He delighted in showing off his superior fitness and form as I struggled to find any form... of my previous...form. 


I was sapped from the get-go. Dom was riding circles around me. Ouch!


Aside from the obvious lack of exercise, I hadn't really had much for dinner and my last serious ride occurred before the heat and humidity of summer had fully taken hold. Those conditions combined with a hilly route and a return headwind all converged on the day in a perfect storm of ego popping cycling madness. 


Dom seemed to relish the opportunity to launch up ahead at will and completely disappear into the horizon. I quit trying to play catch-up and just tried to play "turn the pedals". 





Typhoon Damage


Dom was feeling so much better, that he overshot the turn to the Route 52-3 (Xinli Agricultural Rd.)


The road was in rough shape after the typhoon, and was littered with all sorts of mud and debris for some technical riding. I didn't mind the fact that it kept the pace to something I could manage.  





The road dips and curves along the northern edge of the Liyu Reservoir in a pleasant mix of short climbs, easy flats and a couple good dives through some picturesque orchards. 







Aside from the typhoon slurry that was spread all over the tarmac, the road is pretty smooth... until is reaches a steep gradient that starts to look like someone's insanely steep private driveway. The road is rough and in desperate need of local construction funds. At times my rear wheel spun out on some type of road hazard or another. 







Then things got really nasty. 


The entire climb pitches up at over 20% and on a couple of occasions my front wheel lost contact with the ground.



Steepness


I dug in with a full tank of Everything I Had Left and chugged to the top.


The drop down the other side took concentration and careful attention to a good line. It seemed that each corner had become a slippery mud bog, more for the likes of a 4x4 or a swamp buggy. To take one of those corners with anything less than a straight line would have spelled a crash in an instant.


Despite the technical challenges, much of the road is a thrilling ride of undulating blacktop along forested ridge lines, above deep gullies, through low tunnels of uncut yellow bamboo. 


Being forced to slow down forces you to take in the stunning spectacle that otherwise would be missed. 








The road ends at the foot of the Liyu dam. As we rolled out onto the flats, I could feel my inner quads beginning to cramp. Each pedal stroke aroused the synapses into prompting another round of acute cramping. 


Dom just rolled away out of sight into the headwind and there was little I could do to catch up. I finally waved him home and plodded along in agony as I fought cramps and a very stiff headwind all the way back into Taichung. 








Not Only Is Dom's Patience Wearing Thin


By the time I threw my mud caked bike into the elevator of my apartment, I was still horribly cramping and just completely destroyed. I had nothing left except the notion that this was just the beginning of my campaign to get back into top form.... The first day of my comeback. Now I just need to remember to keep it purposeful and methodical to avoid any stupid injuries. 



Maybe I'd Be Faster On This?




Also:

Check out Michael Turton's great ride over Yangming Shan.

Taiwan Represents At RAAM

I hope Taiwanese will come out to recognize Fu Sheng-chieh, the Taiwanese rider who made his first attempt at the Race Across America (RAAM). The RAAM is a brutal weeklong slog from Oceanside, California to Annapolis Maryland.


Fu has repeatedly used this opportunity to highlight Taiwan. Upon leaving for California, Fu wore an iconic T-shirt which read, "I am a Taiwanese".


Although Fu has only garnered a DNF in his first attempt, there is no reason he could not become the next Jure Robic. 


Well done!