Welcome to Part 2 of my bike trip around Taipei. If you are just tuning it, at his point I have already gone most of the way around the city via the riverside bike trails. Now I am venturing into a mountain with no real directions, rain beating down, quickly fading sunlight, and a dog at home whose dinner time is closely approaching.
There is a post that i've been wanting to write about Taipei road signs. At intersections they don't really tell you the road that you are coming to, instead they will tell you the road that you are on. Thankfully this doesn't seem to be the case in the city center, however outside that area, the signage seems to be backwards. Also arrows mean nothing, as an up arrow doesn't always mean go straight, and left and right arrows don't seem to mean turn. The best I can describe it is that the signs are pointing to the street, and not the direction.
So let's say that you want to go to Place A, and at the intersection you need to turn right to get there. There wouldn't be a sign above the intersection saying "Place A" and an arrow pointing to the right. Instead when at the intersection you will see a sign on the right of the road you are on, with the arrow pointing forward. this doesn't mean go forward, it is pointing at the road that you are intersecting, meaning you should turn onto that road. Confused?
This made getting to the research institute (my first marker that I’d be going the right way) a huge pain, with some turning around and some second guessing. Another problem with roads is that roads will fork off to the side, but there is no consistency with which they decide if the road you are on continues straight or down the fork. On the way to the research institute, I had to take a tiny fork to the right even though what I had been on was a huge road, it continued down this tiny fork instead of going straight and still being that huge road.
I was getting pretty worried the further I went, and it got really bad when the road came to a dead end. I road around for awhile until i found that the road I wanted actually had turned off and become an incredibly tiny alley, instead of the larger road that dead ended. After turning down this alley I saw a sign for the area of the city i was hoping to come out at, so i started to climb
and climb
and climb
Up the mountain I went. It was a great view going through the quiet mountain road, but I was in no mood to appreciate it. The temperature had dropped and the rain was really coming down, and all i could think about was when would the road stop going upwards. And this is when i got cursed...
I came across an attractive mountainside cemetery, the likes of which I have been dying to get a picture of for the blog, so I stopped to take a picture. Apparently the dead didn't like this, as the battery on my phone went from 40% to dead and turned off. The cursed picture is the one above, it was the last thing that my phone would see that day.
Basically each structure belongs to a family, and inside is usually just urns filled with the ashes and bones (yes the sometimes put the bones into large urns) of almost all the people in that family over the years. But since I didn't want to join them, I had to carry on.
So there I was, stuck in the rain, in a mountain, most likely lost, and without a phone to call anybody or the gps to figure out where to go. So i did the only thing I could do, I went over to the side of the road to pee.
After that i got off the bike and walked a bit, figuring that I needed to save my energy cause who knows how much further I had to go and how long I'd be on that mountain. Eventually I got to the top of the mountain and the road started going down. I hoped back on the bike, put it in the highest gear, and peddled as fast as I could. As if to mock me the road went back up for a bit, but then it went down through some dense trees and out into a bigger road.
JOY! I don't think i've ever been so relieved in my life. I was still very high in the mountain, but what i saw way out in the distance at the bottom was the subway station that marked the beginning of the bike trail. I was so joyful, that I got my phone out and turned it on hoping that i could have just a second of battery life so that i could take a picture of this great view. However my phone was not having it. So I looked for some signs and found out that I had to turn left and off I went.
This was great, it was all downhill, and this time I wasn't peddling, I was just enjoying the result of all my hard work and coasting down the mountain. All around me was a huge cemetery, and it was quite stunning. I eventually got to a set of stairs off to the right which I figured was a short cut all the way down the mountain, through the cemetery. I was tempted to take it, but I figured I should continue to coast down the road and enjoy my success.
At this time I was already composing this blog entry in my mind and trying to think if this was the best day i'd had in Taiwan, and if not, which were the better ones. But It wasn't long until I regretted that decision not to take the stairs. the road I was on went straight, but there was a tiny little road off to the right. I looked at the signs, and going straight was for places I had never heard of, yet the tiny little road couldn't be the right way. I thought about this decision for awhile, and eventually I went to the right.
Two reasons, 1. somebody had put up a handwritten sign of the place i wanted to go with an arrow pointing straight. I had come to learn that this didn't mean continue straight on the larger road, rather it was pointing at the smaller road that was intersecting it, as if to say “this is the road to take to go to this place.” 2. If you remember the picture I took a few days ago of the entrance of this road, it had some big pillar next to it. Well this tiny road had that same pillar next to it, so i went for it.
This road also got intersected a lot, causing me to stop a few times, and there were no signs at all. Each time I decided to just keep going straight. I figured as long as I was going down, it was a good thing. I eventually started smiling uncontrollably as I could see the picture of the entrance that i had taken a few days before, and I came out that entrance and onto the big road. It's actually a good thing that I had gone to scope out that entrance before, as there were signs to point towards it, but not any signs pointing back to the river, and you couldn't necessarily work backwards to get there.
Anyway, i don't know if it was the rest I had taken coming down the mountain, or just the adrenaline from finally being safe and knowing where to go, but I was flying. I followed the nice flat river road west (but without a tail wind unfortunately) the whole time in the highest gear possible, just cranking along. I got through this stretch of trail in record time, and was back to where I had started the loop. I just had to go a bit longer to the exit for my home and through the city a bit to get to my apartment, but i was too giddy to care.
When i got to my door I didn't really feel tired. back when i had been going east into that evil wind along the northern part of the city, for the first time in all my bike trips I felt like I wasn't enjoying it and wanted to stop, and was day dreaming about being back home. But when I got to my door i felt that I could go on for many more miles. But that always seems to be the case, I'm full of energy, up until I take a shower and then my body just shuts down and doesn't want to move at all.
So I made it back and the sense of accomplishment is immense. And now looking back it seems like a great adventure although at the time, at certain points I was less than thrilled or a bit worried. I'm not sure if I will ever do it again as there are other "better" mountain roads to do, and still other parts of the riverside to explore. But i'm extremely happy to have done it.
Before I sign off I want to thank a few people. I want to make my friend for having to cancel our plan. The way we would have gone through the mountain is definitely the WRONG way to do it. That way is super steep going up, while the way I did it is much better as it's a gentler incline, over a longer distance. The second is the lady at the subway station who helped me. I will have to get back there one day to tell her that i made it safely. I could tell she was worried that she was sending a foreigner out to get lost in the mountain and never heard from again. And last but not least, i'd like to thank my friend who gave me her very old phone that she stopped using years ago. I always figured it would be nice to have a backup phone, and from now on I will bring a second phone with me when i go into the mountains for a ride!
