Biking Taiwan: Northern Cross Highway – Beihen August 2009

August 25, 2009 | Filed under: Biking | Posted by: Michael Cannon

I headed out 6:30 Saturday morning for another long bike ride. This time from Linkou down to Sansia to meet up with Jeff Miller, Michael Turton, Zeb the son and Chris MacDonald. Chris is the newbie for a weekend ride and it was great to have him along.

After the Sansia meetup, we headed up into the hills towards Baling. Along the way, we stopped quite a few times for restorative photo breaks and tasting goodies along the way.

Saturday evening we stayed again in Baling at the CYC or CFC hostel. It was quite pleasant to get into Baling dry and warm versus soaking wet of two months ago. We feasted upon grand wine and food that evening at a local aboriginal restaurant before an early lights out.

Sunday morning found us trekking up 8 kilometers upward right out of Baling. There’s basically no break till you hit 1140 meters. With a few minor ups and down, you come to the Mingchun park area and that lets you know that with only another 30-40 minutes of riding, you’ll be heading down hill for the next 20 minutes.

Be sure your brakes are solid, tires pumped full and empty your bladder before heading down because you’re not going to be slow by any means. I took most all corners at 30 kph and hit 45 kph on the straights. Do stay on your side of the road and the oncoming traffic does like to not drive like sane folks at times.

After a bit of a down time in Yilan for new tires, I’m not riding 700c x 23 front and 700c x 25 rear, we raced north to Waiao to catch the descending sun and fun on the beach. It was the last night of the summer Yilan rain festival.

Along the way, we lost Chris and Jeff to their heading home by the trains out of Yilan, but we’ll pick up another rider in Waiao, Nathan Miller.

I was bummed a bit for not getting in another weekend over there in Yilan. Oh well, next summer, I’ll rent a flat in Tucheng and ride over more often for fish, sun and surf.

Sunday night, we headed up to Tucheng for dinner as there’s no real place to eat in Waiao after dark. The food was great and even the 7 inch tall dog on a counter didn’t discourage big beers going down the gullet.

Monday morning was a slow start. I finally found someone slower and more tired than me getting going in the morning. Oh well, Nathan can certainly out pace me on the road. So lack of sleep wasn’t an issue for long.

We got into the south side of the tourist train tunnel too early at 8 AM and waited till 8:45 AM for it to open. While the long break was nice, it only put us farther into an already hot day. Nathan and I were dripping like crazy already from hard riding and our butt imprints were left wherever we sat.

After toodling through Fulong and along the beach bike paths we picked up the pace and eventually headed our separate ways onto home.

I came back via 2 alternate near 62 just east of Keelung. 2 alternate hooks into 5 through Taipei, which turns into 1 through Xinchuang which I turn south onto 106 for. With a final hill climb, I get home.

Oh soo very tired, thirsty and hungry. Only 15 hours or so of riding, 285 kilometers and 4,940 meters of climbing. No riding for me today, but tomorrow’s a new day.