Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Up at 2:30 AM again and starving. The jet lag is not “sliding” towards normality like it usually does. At this rate, I won’t get on a normal sleep cycle until we leave.
I had the instant noodles I purchased at 7-Eleven. One thing I love about instant noodles in Taiwan is that some of them contain actual fresh meat. And by “fresh,” I mean basically canned, like those meat products from Brazil that come in pouches. You empty the meat pouch into the noodles when you add the boiling water and the other ingredients. It was a decent 2:30 AM snack.
You can tell when something is popular in an area in Taiwan because it dominates the retail space. Restaurants are always ubiquitous, but in the village near our hotel, bike rental shops were everywhere, and they’re all hungry for that sweet, sweet tourist money.
The question is, how do you pick which one? I suggested the one with the cute dinosaur.
Last evening and again this morning, as we walked or rode along the bike path, we noticed that about 50% of the bikes were eBikes, but nobody was pedaling them. They were all running throttle only. This offended my eBiker sensibilities, but I thought, perhaps, because Taiwan is a scooter-dominated society, maybe they just think of eBikes as small scooters.
At 190 cm, finding a bike that fits me can be a problem, and while not a perfect fit, they had a brand new eBike that we could make work. It looked more like a small motorcycle, but it was a bike. Chuwan was much easier to fit, and she got a bike that looked just like the dozens we’d seen on the trail. It wasn’t exactly a two-person bike, but I had a seat on the back, presumably for a child to ride along.
The bike path around Sun Moon Lake is broken up into two sections. 12 km is a dedicated, free-standing path, and 17 km is mixed-use with automobile traffic. This makes a total of 29 km around the lake, and since its all relatively flat, it should make for an easy eBike ride.
Then, the disappointments began. “Oh no, these eBikes can’t ride all the way around the lake. The batteries won’t last.”
“Besides, you’re not supposed to take them on the 17 km part of the path.”
I looked at the bikes, I looked at the size of the batteries, and I put 26 years of experience with Taiwan in full gear in my head, and I told Chuwan, “That’s fine.”
Because (A) OF COURSE, these bikes can ride 29 km on a single charge, and (B) no one ever obeys rules in Taiwan. We were going around the lake, and we wouldn’t tell the guy. If we got “caught,” we’d just look mildly embarrassed, say we got lost, and apologize. One thing worried us, though: We didn’t have a phone that we could dial up for help, just in case something did go wrong.
We set off anti-clockwise around the lake, back towards our hotel, and we soon learned why no one was pedaling their eBikes.
My bike was fine. In fact, it had a helluva kick to it. On my Rad eBike back home, when I’m riding leisurely, I often drop into PAS 3. This bike’s PAS 1 felt like PAS 3 on mine. It had a kick, as did the throttle. How much kick? I don’t know because the speedometer and odometer didn’t work. Did the battery gauge work? How was I to know? It never went down a single segment. Sometimes, it was clear that the cadence sensor got stuck, either on or off. The only thing that would free it was to gun the throttle. I was beginning to worry that this bike couldn’t make it around the lake on a charge.
Chuwan’s bike was a different story. Similar to most of the other bikes being rented, with its odd two-seat but only one set of pedals design, the reason no one was pedaling was that the pedals were set too far back from the front seat. It was simply difficult and uncomfortable to pedal, and if you tried sitting on the back seat, you couldn’t reach the handlebars. It was throttle all the way for Chuwan, and we knew the battery would never make it around the lake like that.
When we hit the visitor center, the path continued. We suspected that this was the beginning of the 17 km “no go” zone, but it was well-delineated, and we continued on. In places, we returned to dedicated bike infrastructure that took us far away from the road, but finally, we came to the stairs.
In Taiwan, in the mountains, there are always stairs. Lots of them. Steep ones.
These cement, damp, and moss-covered stairs also had a ramp next to them. This kind of ramp is used for walking bikes upstairs; however, the sign said to carry your bike up the stairs. It also forbade eBikes from going up the stairs.
My concern wasn’t going up but coming down. I was not convinced we could safely walk the heavy eBikes back down the ramp without losing control of them on the slippery cement. Nonetheless, I walked up the steps, which twisted out of sight, to see what I thought. At the landing, I saw that the steps continued up and up, and I knew we had reached the end of the ride out.
We could still return to the village and head clockwise in the other direction. By doing that, we’d fully travel the 12 km stretch in both directions for a 24 km ride.
About 2-3 km before we reached the village, I felt strange as my left foot pedaled. It felt strangely elliptical, but before I could figure out what had happened, the left crank arm fell off the bike. I found all the parts, but with no tools, the best I could do was bang the crank arm back onto the shaft. The bolt that held it in place had stripped and couldn’t be hand-threaded back on. I ran the bike back to the shop on throttle only.
We probably could have gotten a replacement bike or a partial refund, but we’d had fun and didn’t feel the need to push anymore, so we returned the bikes and headed out for lunch. Lunch, for me, was another 7-Eleven hot dog, and we parked ourselves at an outdoor table to eat.
Where we chose to eat made us regret our bicycle rental choice. We sat right in front of a large Giant cycle center. Giant is the Taiwanese brand of bikes, and while their lower-end models are manufactured in China, their high-end bikes are still made in Taiwan. Not only was this a full bicycle service center but also a showroom of some of the most gorgeous bikes I’ve seen in years. They both sold and rented bikes and eBikes, and even the rentals looked like they gave each one a complete hand wash and tuneup after every ride. I wish we’d spotted them first, but their location was absolutely crap.
If you’re ever in Sun Moon Lake looking for a bike rental, look underneath the 7-Eleven at the main bus terminal.
We went back to the hotel, and not for the first time, we took a gloriously long soak in the tub. This time, it was daylight, and the view from the tub was magnificent.
In the evening, we grabbed a couple of the hotel’s bikes, rode into town, and found a restaurant advertising Japanese-style pork cutlets (tonkatsu). We had dinner there. After
After dinner, we rode back in the dark, without lights. That was a bit harrowing, but the path was reasonably well-lit in most places.
