Kaohsiung, Friday
After 4 flights and 27 hours of travel, we made it to Kaohsiung, Taiwan late last night. I flew from Portland to San Francisco on a domestic ticket, then picked up my bags and met the rest of the team at the international terminal to check in for the remainder of the trip. From San Francisco, we flew to Tokyo, then to Taipei, and then on to Kaohsiung, on the southern tip of Taiwan. As I type, it's 8:00 in the evening on Friday here and 4:00 Friday morning back home. My body is very, very confused.
We went out for a two hour ride this afternoon to try to loosen up and get over the flight. I just felt like sleeping the whole time. It was nice to get a look around, though. The air quality here is terrible. The roads are completely dominated by two-stroke scooters, which I'm sure has plenty to do with the haze in the air. There are more scooters than cars. I expected to see more bicycles on the streets, but there aren't many. The roads are semi-anarchic; scooters and cars make turns when and where they want. When they want to turn left, many of the scooter drivers will cross the road early then drive the wrong way along the curb. It didn't make for a very relaxing ride.
Afterward, we went to a restaurant about a block from the hotel for a late lunch. None of us could read the menu, so we had to order by pointing to pictures. Jeff ended up with beef tendon soup. I got what I think was pork over noodles with a stinky broth soup on the side. I don't think I'm adventurous enough to explore much more of the local quisine.
Racing begins for us on Sunday with a criterium on the city streets. So far, I haven't seen any indication in town that the race is even happening. I'm curious to see what kind of spectator turnout there will be. After the race Sunday, we'll transfer to the next town and keep moving every day until we hit Taipei the following Sunday. If the length of the flight from Taipei to here last night is any indication, we have a lot of ground to cover. I still really don't know much about this race. I'm not used to being so uninformed.
I'll keep updating this site throughout the week. I've also added the RSS feed as someone requested. See http://www.dougollerenshaw.com/blog/atom.xml or http://feeds.feedburner.com/dougollerenshaw
Here're a couple pictures from today. That's all for now.
We went out for a two hour ride this afternoon to try to loosen up and get over the flight. I just felt like sleeping the whole time. It was nice to get a look around, though. The air quality here is terrible. The roads are completely dominated by two-stroke scooters, which I'm sure has plenty to do with the haze in the air. There are more scooters than cars. I expected to see more bicycles on the streets, but there aren't many. The roads are semi-anarchic; scooters and cars make turns when and where they want. When they want to turn left, many of the scooter drivers will cross the road early then drive the wrong way along the curb. It didn't make for a very relaxing ride.
Afterward, we went to a restaurant about a block from the hotel for a late lunch. None of us could read the menu, so we had to order by pointing to pictures. Jeff ended up with beef tendon soup. I got what I think was pork over noodles with a stinky broth soup on the side. I don't think I'm adventurous enough to explore much more of the local quisine.
Racing begins for us on Sunday with a criterium on the city streets. So far, I haven't seen any indication in town that the race is even happening. I'm curious to see what kind of spectator turnout there will be. After the race Sunday, we'll transfer to the next town and keep moving every day until we hit Taipei the following Sunday. If the length of the flight from Taipei to here last night is any indication, we have a lot of ground to cover. I still really don't know much about this race. I'm not used to being so uninformed.
I'll keep updating this site throughout the week. I've also added the RSS feed as someone requested. See http://www.dougollerenshaw.com/blog/atom.xml or http://feeds.feedburner.com/dougollerenshaw
Here're a couple pictures from today. That's all for now.
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