Banshee Rider Taiwan

Jeff is a Canadian ex-pat living with his wife and 2 dogs Tard [the little black one] and Nub [the rottie] just north of Taipei. I can't really remember how, but our paths crossed and now we were finally getting a chance to ride together.

We first went to a trail that had a serious hike-a-bike for about 15min through a cemetary. Apparantly the Taiwanese bury their dead on the mountains and Jeff pointed out a couple of human bones to me... he also had to watch the dogs cause everyone knows dogs like bones, and that would be a little creepy catching Tard running around with a human femur between his chops - "here girl go fetch"... gawh!
We just didn't have it in us for a hike a bike with DH rigs so we decided to hit our fav little spot, speedtrap, again for the next shuttle.

I was testing a new set of Funn brakes, and me and Keith always like to test anything that we spec on our bikes. Rather then just having some sales dude tell us how wonderful they are, we like to find out for ourselves.

Unfortunately the Legend wasn't out of T6 in time to build up for the ride so I had to rely on my Scirocco. I love that bike and whatever I throw at it, it just steps up and amazes me. I did however kill the fork on my 5th run and had to shut it down... Jeff let me borrow his Scream which was cool but I should have taken it easy as my front washed out during a high speed run and I got rocked - the limping is slowly going away. I guess I assumed the tires would hook up the same as what was on the Scirocco - a wrong assumption.

What was cool was to bump into John, one of the original builders of speedtrap who was over here from Hong Kong where he now lives. It's always cool to get the history on a trail and some of the challenges they had to get over to build it - like crazy machette weilding bamboo farmers!!!

Later it was off to a resturaunt/bar that Jeff likes to frequent. Steve ordered some kinda drink that came out looking like a Dairy Queen sunday... not really sure what the hell he ordered.
About a half our later on mass all these girls pile into the place and we can hear them singing happy birthday. Jeff says that we'd be rockstars if we went over there and wished them a happy birthday... Steve was caught doing more then that.

I guess the results of the election earlier that day had come in because some dude just started firing off fireworks in the middle of a sidewalk. Although fireworks seem to happen alot here for all sorts of reasons so it might not have been the election.

We stopped to have one last glimpse of Beitou before the final drive home. We'll be seeing you again but not for awhile as we head back to our respective countries.
It was another great trip and I look forward to coming back in October to learn more about this island in the east. Hopefully I'll get my shit together next time so I can visit some of my other distributors in Malaysia, Phillipines, NewZealand, Indonesia, Korea, Hong Kong and Ken down in Australia

I suppose my next trip will be Sea Otter but beyond that I'm not sure as I usually leave things to the last minute.

Tomorrow I help Gabriel pack up Markolf and Marcelos Legend Mk1's. I'll have a seperate post on that.

Oh and one last thing to Ryan... who failed to tell us where speedtrap was the many times we asked him. Ryan you know how you like Mexican food... and you know how hard it is to find here... well we found burritos and if your reading this then you're gonna be pissed to know we're not telling you where they are - touche mon a mie.