Biking in Taiwan

II wonder when we'll go biking again. Despite the brilliant weather this week, I've been bogged down with work since I'm to cheap to say no because I want to pay for the ridiculously expensive trip to Sweden in October. No off-season prices this year, but instead a ticket price increase in excess of 40 percent. I wonder if that is even legal.

Typhoon Sinlaku that devastated central Taiwan less than two weeks ago, was followed by Hagupit and mostly rain up here in the north on the 22nd, and it is now time for Jangmi. Jangmi is growing stronger, and taking a more and more northerly route. Rather than going south of Taiwan, it seems it will now cross the island north of the Hengchun peninsula and then turn north in over China. It was originally forecast to turn even further, toward NNE or even NE and follow Taiwan's west coast. Both land and sea warnings have been issued, and winds are given as 51m/s (114mph) with 63m/s (141mph) gusts.

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Taiwan's best English-language newspaper, the Taipei Times, ran a story on Victor Major and his Cycle Taiwan yesterday. Go read it. He said his favorite Taipei day ride is Fengguizui on Wuzhishan. Here's one of my write-ups of that ride, and there are a couple more here. And here's my Google map of the ride with the Jiannan Rd section mentioned in the article.

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Typhoon Sinlaku has come and gone, but look at how she kept hovering around the northern parts of Taiwan before she finally took off. Two loops, one down by Ilan and another north of Danshui. I've seen typhoons doing one loop before, but never two.

The central parts of Taiwan received enormous amounts of rain, with several places exceeding 1.5 meters in three days.Whole hotel buildings were swept away at the Lushan hot spring resort in Nantou's Renai Township, and four bridges collapsed completely or partially. The freeway administration estimates that over 200 bridges in Taiwan need to be strengthened or rebuilt according to the Liberty Times this morning.

Collapsed bridges and roads swept away by landslides mean that biking around the island, and particularly in central Taiwan, will require some extra research. Checking a map may not be enough, since some of the roads or bridges simply may not exist anymore, or may be closed for repairs. There is very good information in Chinese about closed and open roads at a government agency that translates into something like the road disaster prevention and rescue management system (公路防救災管理系統) which is part of the Institute of Transportation under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. I haven't been able to find anything useful in English, though, so if someone has a good place for such info, please send me a link and I'll post it here.

Technorati tags: Taiwan, Taipei, typhoons, biking, and natural disasters

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Look at the picture. No biking this weekend. Taiwan is under the spell of Typhoon Sinlaku, and the rain has been pouring down: 0.8m of rain somewhere down in Yilan between yesterday midnight and this morning, and 0.6m in Taipei's Shilin during the same time. A place in Jiayi received over 0.4m between midnight tonight and 10am this morning. Winds, luckily, haven't been as strong as originally forecast.

It all started out as a super typhoon of category four strength according to the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center with wind speeds of 67m/s or 150mph and gusts at 82m/s or 185mph when Sinlaku was still out over the Pacific, but that was soon adjusted downward as it approached Taiwan.

Today's wind speeds are given as 35m/s and 45m/s by Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau (Chinese and English) and Japan Meteorological Agency, but here in Taipei there's more rain than wind. There's in fact no wind at all here in the center of Taipei right now.

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This Sunday we decided to do the Balaka road again. The weather was nice, and it's a short ride which makes it a perfect half day trip for those of us who have to work in the afternoon.

We took the MRT up to Hongshulin, where we met X at 7.30. From there, it's 10km along the Denghui Blvd and the 101 to reach Sanzhi, where you take a right to turn onto the 101 A. From there, it's 10km uphill up to the Erzihu Visitor Information Center, which is at the high point of this section of road. Continue down toward Taipei for a few km and you reach Zhuzihu.

The ride from Sanzhi is really nice. It goes up at a constant incline, but at a moderate angle, so that you are always pushing yourself without getting exhausted. And it is shaded by trees more or less all the way, which is nice when the mercury hits 34-35, although it is several degrees cooler up on the mountain.

After reaching the top, we continued down Yangde Blvd toward Shilin because we wanted to go to Tianmu and get som bread and brunch at Wendel's, Taipei's best bakery. There are too many buses and cars on the road down to Shilin, so unless you have a reason to take this road, and if you are not going somewhere else on the mountain, I recommend rolling down the same way you came, and either taking the MRT back from Hongshulin or doing the leisurely but crowded ride along the river back into town.

Halfway down the mountain, the inner tube in D's rear wheel exploded, a loud explosion. We've bought a big pump back home so we can get the tires well pumped up before we leave, and I think I used too much pressure. When she kept rolling down and applying the breaks constantly, the air in the tube heated up and expanded and so the tube just exploded. The rim was so hot that we could hardly touch it. Luckily, I always carry an extra inner tube in the bag under the saddle. I can get my DSLR, a tube, sun glasses and sunblock in there, or a lot of other stuff if I don't put the camera there.

I had pumped it up to 95-100psi, because I thought the tube was made to withstand 120psi, so that would have left some extra space for heat expanded air. Apparently it was made for 100psi, and Tim at the Giant store said you should always leave a margin of about 10 percent for heat expansion, so I should have stopped at 90 psi. I'll do that from now on.

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Taiwan's bicycle makers are doing good business this year, according to Jerry at Taiwan's best English-language newspaper. Bicycle exports to the EU rose by 11.76 percent the first half of this year, and export value increased by 27 percent during the same time period.

In addition, share prices have increased to around NT$90 for Giant and to just below NT$69 for Merida from below 70 and below 60 respectively (if memory serves), despite the fact that the stock market has taken a dive and lost over 2000 points, or around 20 percent, since Mr Ma took charge of the presidency on May 20. Wish I'd bought some Giant then...

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