After having spent two wonderful days with Phoebe in a Kaohsiung city full of Sunshine and memories, it was now time to proceed on my journey. I woke up early - as I always do - prepared my bag, double checked if I had every thing and went outside. The day before I had a Time Trial handle bar installed in the Kaohsiung Specialized bike shop. It would be utmost convenient for the long stretches of road on the western coast. I double checked with the hotel manager to see which direction I had to head out to. I had to follow the Minzu street and just keep going straight forward. I would find Route 1 just like that. And he was not lying...
The strech of road through Kaohsiung city and the Greater Kaohsiung Area was everything but a walk in the park. I felt like a mail man in a small car, driving from mail box to mail box, constantly stopping and waiting and never getting any speed. Ok, I admit it was around 7:30, so I was cycling in the city during rush hour, but still... This really started to annoy me after one hour. The consequence of this was that in one hour, I had only cycled 15 km, and I normally do around 28-29 an hour. This started to improve when I exited the Kaohsiung zone and I found myself somewhere between Kaohsiung and Tainan.
This is where I refound the tranquility which I had been longing for. I was now able to enjoy my all new TT handle bar. I noticed that instead of 28-29 my speed was now around 34-35. If I really pushed it, I could even get a 38 out of it. I did this for approximatley 40 minutes. With few intersections and low traffic (rush hour had passed), I was able to really enjoy this part of the trip. But then, all of the sudden, the thing I hate most happened: I had a flat tyre in my front wheel. However; this was no ordinary flat tyre accident. Normally you feel that your tyre is flat because the bike starts displaying heavy resistance. But this was like a mini-explosion. I hit something at high speed and I heard my tyre explode. The air was leaking at high speed. I knew immediately what was going on, so I stopped immediately, before smashing into the hard concrete. That would have been an abrupt end of my trip.
I walked to the side of the road and started working on my bike. First get the wheel off of your bike, use your tools to separate the outer tyre from the wheel, remove the outer tyre (I saw a very big hole so I was positive I seriously hit something, I think it was a stone). Then I took a new inner tyre, which I had with me. I Always travel with 3 spare tyres, just in case. I filled it with a little air so that its shape could merge together with my wheel. Then I inspected my outer tyre to double check that it was fine. I saw no signs of needles, or holes or whatsoever. I put my outer tire on my wheel and started adding air. I had a special pump with me, which unfortunately took me around 10 minutes to figure out how it works. When I did, I just had to test my arm muscles and and fill it up with air. Obviously it is impossible to add 100+ PSI (6+ bar) with a manual pump. But I had no choice: I started cycling and I stopped at the first Family Mart I came across. I thanked my lucky stars when I saw they had a pump, compatible with road bike tyres. I filled it to 110 PSI and that was the end of my tyre issues. All things considered, I still lost an hour with this and that was what was bottering me. Oh and did I mention I had very, very dirty hands? Cycling around the Island leaves a lot of dirt and debris on the bike and I got messed up in the process :-)
No more time to loose: I hit the road and started cycling. The road signs told me that Chiayi was within 30km, so I wanted to hit that first, before I made another stop. That road went pretty smooth and I was there in less than an hour. Let me tell you why I highly regard the name "Chiayi". When I studied Chinese in Taipei in 2011, there was a very famous novel, called 那些年我们一起追的女孩 by 九把刀. The story was in Chiayi and I wanted to visit it ever since. Today was that day. But I did not know I would not have the chance to enjoy this.
Right before I entered the city center of Chiayi, I saw the sign "Alishan Mountain". This is like the number one mountain of Taiwan and I really wanted to check it out. When I stopped in a 7-11 nearby, the clerk told me that a Typhoon was approaching really fast and that there was no way on earth that I could go up there now. I thought he was just being another kind yet overcaring Taiwanese. But before he even finished his sentence, it started raining. Did I say rain? I meant a heavy downpour, a precipating heavenly fury that raged over the city of Chiayi as if there were no tomorrow. I was litterally stuck in the convenience store. Within 30 minutes, the Streets were full of water. The water level must have been at least 30cm.
There was another cyclist, a Taiwanese with good English (even though I never speak English with Taiwanese) skills. He told me that this was a Typhoon and that it would be around for days. He told me that, in my case, it would be better to head back to Taipei first and then come back to finish the trip later. Having already seen the impact of a Typhoon at my arrival, I believed his story and we decided to go to the train station. But we first had to visit a local bike shop to get a bag that would allow us to take the bike on the train. By the time we made it to the Railway station, we were soaking wet.
