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24 August

Kerb your enthusiasm

Sorry, just had to steal the Taipei Times subhed for the title. The TT today runs a story on yet another Taipei City failure after the ridiculous ongoing story about the Neihu MRT line (two different train systems on one and the same line!): the Dunhua bicycle lane. Read it here. I've been meaning to rant about for the last month or so, but never got around to doing it. For NT$100 million (US$3 million), it is completely useless. For example, It runs on the road between traffic and bus stops, which means that buses constantly stop on it. All the lines are in concrete instead of painted on the road, so it feels like riding on cobble stones. At places it is about 0.5m wide. Drivers stop on it constantly to get out of the car and run some errand. They should have widened the sidewalk and put the bicycle lane on the side walk, off the road, or done nothing at all. A total waste of my tax money.

Bike lane

A bus stop. The bicycle lane runs along the side of the road on the green concrete pavement inside the black and yellow curb (which at random sections separates the bicycle lane from the car lanes) that ends just ahead of the two taxi cabs. Then the bicycle lane turns red and runs between the bus stop and the bus lane, with the text "Pedestrians first." After the bus stop, it turns green again and becomes a bicycle lane where bicycles are supposed to have the right of way. All text and lines are concrete so the ride is all but smooth, and it feels more like riding on cobble stones.

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9 August

Rain

Morakot came and went. In the 60 hours between 2009/08/07, 00:00 and 2009/08/09, 12:00, she dropped well over 2 meters of rain in several places in Jiayi, Gaoxiong, and Pingdong counties. Worst off was Weilaoshan (尾寮山) in Sandimen Township (三地門鄉), Pingdong County, with 2495.0 mm. Haven't seen any of the reports on all the landslides and flooding, but at least the area around Taimali on the southeast coast and parts of the southern link were completely flooded, apparently destroying several hundred meters of both highway 9 and the railway. With these huge amounts of rain, there must have been landslides blocking and destroying roads all over the place, so biking in the mountains may be difficult for a while.

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6 August

Typhoon Morakot

MorakoNo biking this weekend. I had another ride with Noah planned for tomorrow, but that plan went down the drain together with the rain brought by typhoon Morakot. The winds will probably not get here until tomorow, as the typhoon is currently forecast to make landfall at around 2pm tomorrow. It's currently moving toward Yilan County at a speed of 16km/h, making 22 revolutions/hour. Winds are reaching 38m/s at the center, with gusts topping 48m/s. That's pretty strong.

I hope it brings lots and lots and lots of rain. There's been so little rain this year that there is talk of another round of water rationing, and a typhoon could alleviate that situation. It's no fun to be able to get a shower only every second day when the mercury hits 35-36 degrees.

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3 August

Fengguizui revisited - again

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D crosses the Fengling Bridge at the foot of Five Finger Mountain

Another day with great weather, so we decided to go get a cup of coffee and some fresh fruit juice at Fengguizui (風櫃嘴) on top of Five Finger Mountain (五指山). Great views from the coffee table, and you always wonder what the very talkative and happy boss will say this time. In other words, a perfect place to while away an hour or so after having climbed up to 600+ meters.

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Taipei from a distance


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D works her way up a hill on the mountain


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The view makes it all worth it. We always end up spending an hour here, sipping our coffee, taking in the view, drinking the very generous servings of fruit juice and talking to the boss


Facts I have covered this route in several earlier posts. Here's a map of how to get there from the Keelung River Park, here's a road description, and here's a description of how to bypass the Ziqiang tunnel and ride over the first mountain instead of through it.


Bike route 266775 - powered by Bikemap 

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2 August

Bike paths revisited

In the Taipei Times today, we ran Julian's translation of the article about bicycle paths that I commented on the other day. Read the whole article in English translation here.

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Small Xindian loop

The weather has been wonderful the past few days, and today we finally had time to get out on our bikes, together with Noah. We decided for a leisurely ride down to Xindian and along the Xindian River to Xiaokeng (小坑) I think it is called, a ride we have done several times lately.

Xindian

Xindian sits in the middle of the lush green hills surrounding Taipei as we return to the city from Wulai

Facts: An earlier post can be found here, and another one here

Bike route 265307 - powered by Bikemap 

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1 August

The bicycle: a near perfect machine

The near perfect machine

Perfection

"They are near-perfect working machines ... They are silent and durable. Tires apart, a well-maintained bicycle will last indefinitely. It is not quite something for nothing since neither nature nor commerce allows such a transaction, but it is pretty damn close ... here is a rare example of a concept so nearly perfect that radical change will never occur.

There's been a lot of links to bicycle-related articles over the past few days, but I just had to share this one in case there really is someone out there who doesn't read the Taipei Times (or the Guardian, where this syndicated article originated).

This article reminds me about the book Around the World on a Bicycle by Thomas Stevens who cycled around the world in 1887 (!), the first person to do so. Links to downloading it from the Gutenberg project can be found in this old post.

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