up to in Taiwan over these past couple of months.Its been a lot of work-work-work but I still get out on the weekends and luckily have been able to plug into the local mtb scene which is totally awesome.
Since i like to share... if you're an industry type that gets over here regularily and wants to partake in all the Taiwan has to offer I suggest you contact Victor Major on his new site www.cycletaiwan.com . They have a fresh forum and we're all trying to get the word out that you DONT need to be holed up in a hotel room, and that there are some great places to ride and a lot going on so contact him or hell even email me. There are some great rides both on road and off both DH and XC.
So anyway let me share my first installment.
Big thanks to Giant Bicycles over here for sponsoring a mtb series. It was kinda fluke that I found out about actually. I found out a local, Alan who runs a local bike dealership, was buying a red wildcard and was going to be racing it, which started the little hamster in my head to get on his wheel and try to figure out what was this all about. After much haranging of ppl who can read chinese we found there was a race series and I went about signing up.
It was me and Ryan from Astrix bikes that ended up racing and the weekend before Keith and all of us went to practice the course... see tearing
up taiwan.The day of the race we decided to head down early even though we weren't on deck until around 2 o clock. Leaving at 9am we arrived 2.5 hours later in Daija, which is just north of Taichung, and grabbed an early lunch at McRaunchies where Ryan realized he lost his wallet. No biggie I got cash and can spot him, but he was still a little miffed and searching through the van realized he not only forgot his wallet but all his pads too. GAWD ryan you tool!!!
So do we drive back?? yep. So in the end I didn't get to even see the actual course and arrived just in time to 5min later get my start... it was a total rush.
The course was a freaking mudfest of epic proportions, it was not only flat but super slow and my choice of a hardtail was a good one. It was the kind of course that would see Jeff Kabush put the boots to the likes of Sam Hill considering the XC guys rode the same course in their XC loop - why are we having to wear all this gear again??Anyway it was just great to get out, and even though it pissed down rain, the course was slow, and I only got 4th place due to a well timed stick in spokes that I had to spend time yanking out, the race had tons of people come out and watch, it was super well organized [except for No Shuttling so you had to push your bike back to the top] and its just damn good to ride your bike for any reason at all.
I made this killer mud fender out of a apple juice bottle. My contemporaries from Whistler will know what this is all about... and how well it actually works.Thanks to William for coming out and taking pics. Some how he missed my run tho so I don't have any of me [guess i was just going too fast hehehe] but he did capture the "I forgot my Sh*t" culprit as he busts around a tree.
Anyway thats it for now.
I'll have some more coming up in the next few days of dragon boat racing, another DH race that MORE then made up for ease of this course, and there is a jump jam happening next week which I'll be going to before i leave for Canadaland the following day.
