February 14, 2005

Home at last

I'm back at the place I call home anxiously awaiting my flight outta here. I will fly to Singapore tommorrow and I can't wait. I've just about got all the loose ends tied up except I need to finish packing and send a box home tomorrow. Now I'm off to a friends house to take their money (we play alot of poker) and post some pictures on this site as well as email some pics to Cateye http://www.cateye.com which are hopefully good enough for them to use.
What I am about to start on hasn't really sunk in yet, I don't think it will until I step off the plane tomorrow night in Singapore.

Posted by tyler at 12:27 PM | 1 Comments

February 07, 2005

Sleepus Interuptus

Feb 7th

Early start on the steepest mountain road I have ever encountered. I wanted to take the paved road to reach the north cross-island highway but was turned back because of landslides that destroyed the road this past summer. I've ridden both roads before and I like the paved one much better. It rolls along a mountain side through tunnels and over some beautiful bridges. I didn't have much food or water for the next section but I knew there was a town waiting for me some 20 km and 1000m in elevation away. When I rolled into town there was a group of locals standing around a shop and I got a hero's welcome and an invite to drink with them. Usually I'd say it's never too early to start drinking while one is on vacation, but I already felt a little euphoric so I declined, citing the need to eat and guzzle down a few litres of water while they broke out the rice wine and had a good old time.
Unfortunately my feeling of eurpohia truned to an unpset stomach and a sudden rush of tiredness. That night after I finally got my hammock set up and was settling down for the night I was rudely awoken by a local aboriginal man who was looking for firewood for the BBQ that they were setting up 10 feet from me. I got out and chatted with them for a bit and was invitied to do something with them, but I didn't know what exactly they wanted me to join in on. A few minutes later I sat there with about 20 young family members from a nearby town that felt the need to get away from the parents for a few hours. I quickly became the star of the show- signing autographs on arms, posing for pictures and eating myself stupid. As it turned out I was only 9 days older than the guy that had almost shook me out of my hammock, so I quickly became "ge ge" (older brother in chinese) while he was "di di" (can you guess? younger brother).

Posted by tyler at 12:25 PM

February 06, 2005

yi ger ren ma?

The title for this entry is chinese which means "Are you by yourself?" A question that I was asked constantly on my recent trip across Taiwan and I will no doubt be asked many times over by the time I roll in England.

Feb. 6th

I had a pretty late start this morning b/c of packing up. I should have been ready on Friday afternoon but I was suffering a horrid hangover and then I went out again on Friday night. Saturday was mostly wasted away with recovery. It was probably good that I didn't make the first day a big one. I ended up doing just 65km but climbed a 1400m pass with zero pushing. The fog was horrible, down to 2-3 m at times. The worst shore diving I've ever done had better visibility than that. I rode with a 44 y-old from Taoyuan whose name I never learnt. I am very happy to be out of the house and on this training/testing ride across Taiwan.

Posted by tyler at 12:11 PM