TheNHBushman.com

Photos by MJ Klein

Wow, what a glorious day it was today.  The sun was shining and no threatening clouds anywhere.  I put on my sunblock, strapped on my helmet and gloves and went for a nice ride on the trike.  Today I decided that I would take my D80 and shoot more photos than I normally do.  I found that I don’t mind riding with the camera around my neck.  For those of you who are visiting from other countries, you’re going to get a nice view of what it’s like to ride in Taiwan.

But that’s not all.  Since I had the GPS running, and the GPS was also recording a track log, I used GpicSync to geotag all the photos from my ride, so they work with geotag-aware sites such as Flickr.  So, clicking on any photo will take you to the photo’s page on Flickr, where you can then view it’s position on the map.

UPDATE: For some unknown reason, some of the photos in the blog did not link to their Flickr photo page.  I’ll try to correct this but I cannot find the reason for it.  The same exact procedure was used to post every photo but a group of them in the center of the article did not link.  Weird.

I broke the Nikon out around 30 minutes after I took off on my ride.  This is one of the roads that I ride on in the Sinfong area on my way to the coast.  I was heading in the same general area as I had done in a previous ride, but I took a different route on the way back.

These street shots are nothing special, but I’m familiar with them and some of these places represent personal milestones along the way.

Look at the sky!

Today was perfect.

This is one of the intersections where you can take either the left fork, or the right fork.  I took the right and kept going straight.

I had to stop because this car was backing out of the garage shown to the right.  An elderly gentleman was waving the car on and out into the roadway, acting like a traffic cop.  When the car was out in the middle of the road, he stopped is waving and went around to the front of the car.  The driver didn’t stop though, and backed into a truck that was parked on the roadside.  That dimple in the bumper is the result.

I’m approaching an intersection that I’m always cautious of.

That is the “Chen Shan” woodworking store on the right.  I like the store, but seeing it reminds me to be aware.

There is a group of stray dogs that live at the OK store.  Whenever they see me, they run after me, barking.  Some of them seem very aggressive and I’m always prepared to strike back at them.  Today there was only one dog and he was asleep.  Fortunately the trike is nearly silent and he didn’t wake up.  About 2 KM back I was chased by one dog already.  I gave him a good solid blast on the air horn and he went running for cover.

Like my previous ride, I took a left and went to the mangrove park area.

One of our famous bike path signs embedded in the road.

This is the “red tree” area that we’ve blogged about before.

Passing under the new route 61.

This time, I parked the trike and got onto the walking bridge that goes across the canal.

The Taiwan Straight looked absolutely gorgeous today!

Looking East towards the highway.

A wide-angled shot looking toward the ‘Straight.

There wasn’t enough shade for me to park the trike under.  But I wasn’t planning on being there very long anyway.

I continued down to the water.

This is the beginning of the bike trail.

I went out to the edge of the Taiwan Straight and parked the trike again.  This ship was crusing the ‘Straight.

This colored brick work goes on and on….

Today I checked out a couple of shelters to see if they were suitable for having a beach party.  More on that later!

A view of Hsinchu city.

This is not the bike path, but the road along the coast.

Soon, I took a turn and got back on the bike path.  This is a beautifully forested area near the coastline.

In a moment you’ll see that I’m heading for the dead-end.

But now that I know it connects to the older part of the trail,

I can get on the trail from there and continue around the dead-end.

At times the old trail gets pretty rough!  A guy on a scooter came from the opposite way and I had to pull over to let him pass.

You can see where we are on the GPS.  I moved the equipment around a little bit so one of these days I’m going to have to do another update on the trike cockpit layout.

This is the end of the old trail.  Ahead is unexplored trail.

Same position, view to the right.  That’s highway 61 at the light.

I decided to continue down the unexplored trail to see where it went.  I found out: someone’s house!  I did a quick turn around because I remembered passing that house before on the highway, and I heard quite a few dogs barking.  I didn’t need them chasing me.

I took that trail to the right and crossed highway 61.  This is a typical bike trail in Taiwan.  Bikes are supposed to travel in that tiny lane, even if it’s on the wrong side of the road with reference to the direction of travel.

I turned left onto a section where I had a run-in with someone’s dog a few weeks ago.

That mutt was nowhere to be seen today, though.  These kinds of scenes are quite common in Taiwan.

Bike trail sign points me to the left.

Then I took a right and,

out onto a road that crosses highway 15.

Someone is building a pretty nice house on that road.

This is route 117 heading in to Hukou.  Home is about 10 KM from here if memory serves.

Winding my way down to the turn into Hukou.

I wanted to head into Hukou to get something to eat.

This is a milestone turn-off that leads to the downtown of Hukou.

Today I was going to take a slightly different route though.

I came to this railroad crossing as I made my way across the tracks an into the main area of downtown Hukou.

But the train had other ideas!

My first stop at a railroad crossing on the trike.  When you’re sitting there on the trike and all exposed, you can really feel the power of the train as it passes!

One cool thing about Taiwan’s railway crossings is that they tell you the train direction.  That’s not the direction that the train is coming from but rather the train’s actual direction of travel.

I snapped this photo as I passed the tracks.

Finally, I pulled in at a restaurant across from the train station.

This is a very hastily framed shot of my lunch, 1/2 eaten.  Those are boneless duck feet on the left, and dry noodles.

This is the Hukou train station.  Hukou has some very beautiful women and they pass through this station a lot.

Now I’m on the way home.  There is a huge government construction project going on, and the fences go on forever.  No one seems to know what it’s all about though.

Heading back on the final 5 KM.

There is a gentle down slope that’s welcome after a long ride.

One last hill to climb to get back home.

I’m about 1/2 up.

Rounding the summit and on the straight and flat.

Left turn,

through the tunnel,

and we’re back in the Hukou industrial area.

Thanks for reading.  We hope you liked taking this ride with us, and check out the geotagged photos on the map.  Please leave us your comments and a rating below!

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