Time: 7:04pm
Location: Ruisui
Weather: cloudy 7C
Today I experienced cold in its real sense in Taiwan. I didn't get going until after 10am because Lillian's friend made an awesome breakfast of French toast and cream soup (featuring edible flowers from Lillian'a garden!) for us and we sat chatting around their amazing fire place thing trying to delay going outside into the cold. Never would I have imagined that winter in Taiwan would be like Vancouver (keep in mind that there is no indoor heating here), and I am so thankful for coming back to grab windproof gloves and a long shirt the morning that I left Taipei.
The wind greeted me as soon as I stepped outside and it definitely wasn't the tailwind kind. I decided to take Highway 9 which goes inland along the East Rift Valley under the impression that it would be even windier along the coast. Honestly I don't know how much difference there was as I was literally crawling sometimes eating wind. The scenery was beautiful though with the rice fields and low clouds hanging over the mountains, and thankfully it stayed dry all day. I made detours off the main highway along Wuling Green Tunnel Bikeway, a serene road under the canopy of camphor trees, and Mr. Brown Avenue, another scenic county road closed to vehicles made famous by a commercial for Mr. Brown Coffee. Of course I had to stop in Chishang and have one of their famous bento boxes, where I found the friend from Shanghai that had biked together with us three days ago and we exchanged wind suffer stories haha.
The last 40km or so to Ruisui was much better, more shielded from the wind and lots of downhill fast sections with only one climb near the end. I crossed the Tropic of Cancer again, difficult to believe that I was supposedly in the tropical region.
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