Day 1. Rain stopped in the evening to help us have a good ride experience for today. Now I have finished the first 100km ride and cannot complain much while it was too cold. Temps was low at 9 Celsius but felt much colder due to humidity.
Since this is my first-time riding around Taiwan, I have joined a tour conducted by Giant Adventure, a subsidiary of a big bike manufacturer Giant. Almost every week they have a group of 30-40 people. From today, I am going to ride with 30 people coming from countries such as UK, US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan... From Japan, only one that is me but I found another Japanese who is now studying at Taiwan National University to take MBA program. Mandalin is picked as the primary language of this tour which I have no idea what they are talking about. Problem? Not really. What I need to do is to just follow people. Today we are going to Hsinchu (新竹) from Taipei (台北) which we expect to ride 92 km.
We rode mostly along the river for the first 40 km. For this tour, there are five support people who are driving support cars, and riding bikes with us to help navigate this fairly large group to ride safely on any occasion. They are very professional and effectively help people to ride. In this 30 people group, there are people who seem to be riding bike a lot but also there are people who might have some challenges as we go. Also, there are people like me who do not understand Chinese. It is amazing to see they safely took all of us to the hotel after 100 km ride today.
During the ride, we took a break every 20 km. The great part of being part of the tour is that I do not need to carry my luggage. And there is fruits, snacks and water at the support car. I can just focus on riding my bike. That is awesome.
Hsinchu is the city of wind - at least in my experience today. I gave up walking around the town that I usually do and finished my stroll in just an hour. There is a local stinky tofu and vegetarian restaurant where I had dinner today. A simple rice noodle was warm, and it helped bring my heartbeat back.
