Round-the-Island Trip Day 1: It Started Raining the Moment I Left! And I Got a Flat on the Very First Day!?
Round-the-Island Trip Day 1: It Started Raining the Moment I Left! And I Got a Flat on the Very First Day!?
I’m not sure exactly when I started loving cycling, but back when I was studying in Taipei I would often go ride along the riverside parks. That’s actually what set this round-the-island trip in motion. But I have to be honest — I had never attempted a bike trip this long before. Still, never having done something doesn’t mean you can’t give it a shot, right!
So, after a bunch of research and planning, I decided to set out today. Now let me share the whole emotional journey with all of you!
And of course, to keep the overall value of these posts from being too low, every single day I’ll share little tips that I think might come in handy for any of you fellow folks who want to cycle around the island! So let’s get started!
At first the plan was to set off from home~ But in the end, since I decided to go through this whole thing together with everyone, I deliberately traveled to another county to start (to protect myself), beginning in a place where I knew no one and nothing.
Today I rode a little over 100 kilometers, though in some spots I forgot to start my Mi Band, so a few stretches of the route are a bit patchy. As for my plan, it goes like this: I decided to set off right away whenever there was sunlight, because my eyesight is pretty bad, so for me riding at night is basically a suicidal move. Each day I ride about 10 hours, keeping my pace as slow as possible — after all, this is the very early stage of the trip and I can’t go burning through all my energy!
Cycling-Round-the-Island Tip: Planning Your Daily Mileage
When planning your itinerary, you can choose to alternate long and short days. The advantage of this is that you can adjust the pace of your trip at any time — if you find you can’t hit your target distance while riding, you can balance it out on the shorter day. The second approach is to average out the mileage across each day and set rest days, which makes it less likely that one overly long day will leave you with no energy for the days that follow. The downside, though, is that it’s easy to misjudge your own distances, which can end up adding more days to your trip.
I went with the latter — averaging out the mileage across each day — because I have to hurry back to school in Taipei to do my assignments, so I adopted this method. It actually went pretty smoothly at first, riding about 30 kilometers in fits and starts, but after that things just kept going downhill.
Honestly, I really did not expect to get tired this quickly, because in the past I could ride about 50 kilometers in one go. It was because I now had a pretty heavy backpack on me — kind of like running with added weight — which seriously dragged down both my speed and my energy. But I still had to keep trying, right~ I’m not going to give up that easily!
By around the 50-kilometer mark, a whole flood of “just give up” thoughts started popping into my head — wondering why I was torturing myself like this, and what doing this would even prove. But you know what? I’d known all along that this would happen at the start of the ride, so right at the beginning of the trip I went and announced it to the whole world like crazy, leaving myself no way out, because I know full well how much I care about saving face — once I’ve said something out loud, I absolutely have to push through to the very last step.
And so, step by step, I slowly pedaled toward the finish, stopping to rest pretty much every 5 kilometers, and finally arrived at Huwei Township. Looking back now, though, it was pretty dumb of me, because Huwei is already kind of in the mountains, so I actually spent even more time taking detours to reach my lodging.
Personally, I thought the scenery along this stretch was pretty nice — it went from the bustling city to one paddy field after another, and then turned into fish ponds. It was actually quite pleasant to look at, but every time I passed a farm I’d catch a big whiff of chicken and pig manure, which kind of ruined the mood.
Also, I’d always thought Google Maps was super useful, but today it tricked me right away. The whole day I got chased by dogs who knows how many times, and I have no idea how many “mosquitoes” I passed. It really seems to specialize in sending me down back roads — even when a back road means going the long way around, it kept forcing me to take the detour anyway~
And then… right as I was about to reach the finish… I got a flat tire! Seriously so lucky 😅😅. All I could do was slowly coast over to a repair shop. At least I was still on the western half of the island — does that count as good luck or not?
Alright, I’ll wrap up the update here for now! Thanks everyone for reading. Every single day I just crash and pass out the moment I get to my lodging! If you want to see my progress updated in real time, I post on my personal IG, so feel free to go check it out!