Saturday is a fast training race with a group that features some climbing. Sunday I ride by myself and the goal is 4-6 hours with as much climbing as possible.
The ride starts off at near sea level in Tainan County. This is where rice comes from, BTW.
The ride has about 20km of flat as I head towards the mountains. This gives me a good warm-up. This is a typical Chinese Gate.
After the warm-up, I cross over into Chaiyi County and the climbing begins.
I'm headed to the one on the bottom. That is up and over 2 mountains and then back again.
After 20 minutes or so of a 2%-4% grade, the real climbing begins around this left hander. I can also get my first peak of what the weather might be for later in the day.
This is part of a series of switchbacks that gains just over 500m in 5km. The pitches are between 10%-14% with the 'level' sections around 8%-10%. This climb is a good indicator of how I will feel the rest of the day.
Part way down the descent on the other side and I get a GOOD look at the weather ahead. Not too bad but there could be trouble. I don't mind the rain on these rides. It's 30C+ so I don't get cold on the descents. It's more about what condition the road might be in. More on that later.
I continue down the other side. The last time I road up this I was being chased by some ratty old, smoke belching, mud spewing, trucks driven by Whisbe drinking, Bin Lon chewing truck drivers on their way to lunch.
This was where I got my first good look at the trucks. Yikes!
More mountains. Does this ever get old? You can see several ridges in the distance. Some have roads, some don't. The roads that are there are tattered and small. I like those best.
I hint to all the Jr. Geologists as to how the mountains here were formed. In some parts of the country there are entire mountain sides with their layers exposed like this.
Part way up the second (bigger) climb and you can see the road, in the distance, where I took the last picture.
This is the real problem with rain in the mountains here. This was mostly cleared away last week after the typhoon. It is a small slide but it is still blocking almost a full lane. You need to be careful during descents. You can come ripping around a corner and come face to face with one of these.
This is a slightly bigger slide. Apparently it blocked the road completely just around the bend. I never got to see it though, as this was a far as I could get. It is about 5km from the summit. This means I lost this 5 km, the descent, of few ridges after that the turnaround and the climb back up. I was a little pissed but this is par for the course here. The worst part was that I usually get water and a coke at the turnaround. Not today. I was pretty low at this point so I had to sip a little less until I could find suppliers. No biggie.I'll come back next week and see what damage was really done.
This part doesn't look too bad. The road is still there so I think it is just about clearing away the debris. A bigger slide will take the road out entirely and they will have to re-build it from scratch.
So I doubled back at this point. I got home, got cleaned up and went to lunch with the wife and son, Grandma and Grandpa, the wife's big brother and his family.
Good food and good times.
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