Like Riding Through a Car Wash

What’s it like cycling through a tropical storm? It’s like being in a car wash with your bike (not that I’ve ever done that).

It was raining when I left Riusui, the first real rain I’d experienced in ten days. What I didn’t know then was that when Typhoon Fung-wong was finished wreaking havoc in the Philippines, it would spin in the South China Sea, before picking Taiwan as its next victim. And what seemed like just a rainy day was about to become much more, as the outer bands of the storm began impacting the island.

Storm clouds followed me throughout the day

I put on a plastic poncho, which I don’t know how effective it was. My shorts still got soaked and my shirt still felt wet. And I wore sandals, so I didn’t care if my feet got wet, though having wet feet for seven hours gets uncomfortable after a while (as is putting on wet sandals the next day). Thankfully, with the temperature in the mid-twenties, the rain wasn’t cold.

At Gaungfu, I crossed a temporary bridge at Matai’an Creek (when the water gushes from the mountains, this ain’t no creek). The span across the river is four hundred metres., and the temporary crossing is in place because less than two months ago another typhoon caused a barrier dam to burst, sending fifteen million cubic metres of water surging down the river in thirty minutes, which took out the six-lane bridge. I would later learn that the temporary crossing washed out not long after I passed through.  

In Guangfu, where a bridge like this one was destroyed by a typhoon in September.

Eighty-five kilometres of rainy cycling was enough, and I ended my day in Xincheng, where I found fantastic accommodation at the Taroko Mountain View B&B.

The rain kept up through the afternoon, and the pools of water in the grass outside grew and grew. When evening came, I wanted to go out and get some food, but I knew I’d get soaked. I asked the inn’s owner if he had an umbrella I could borrow.

He didn’t speak English, but he made the action of putting a spoon to one’s mouth. I nodded. He then pretended to drive a car. A few minutes later, I was in his car, and he drove me to a small restaurant to get some takeout. I returned with a delicious bowl of beef soup and noodles, some pork, and rice.

When I checked-in, his twenty-something daughter (who spoke English) asked where I was going next. When I told her Nan’ao, on my bike, she seemed surprised. It would mean cycling the Suhua Highway, which connects to Su’ao eighty kilometres to the north. Look up Suhua Highway and two words pop out—scenic and dangerous. In cycling forums, some suggest taking the train through this section, while others say it can’t be missed. It’s one of those two-lane, twisting, up and down, clinging to the cliffside kind of roads. Scenic and dangerous seem like good adjectives. To be fair, a few years ago, a series of tunnels were built to take much of the traffic off the old road, but still there are times where the two roads intersect and share the same space.

Me leaving the Taroko Mountain View B&B and looking spirited moments before getting soaked by the rain and wind

In the morning, and with the storm becoming more intense, I decided not to chance the highway. The thought of getting caught in a landslide or meeting the grill of a transport truck in shit weather was too much, even for my adventurous-nothing will go wrong spirit.

I took the train an hour north to Su’ao. It was on the train, where I met a lovely Dutch couple, who too were with bikes, having also given this section a pass.

When a storm arrives, safety trumps adventure

At Su’ao, I didn’t want to leave the station. I would have happily curled up in a corner and slept there instead of finding my hotel fifteen minutes away with sheets of rain and storm winds bearing down.

After waiting for a while, and realizing the weather wasn’t letting up, I went for it. A short distance on, I found myself in a residential area. I pulled out my phone and confirmed I went the wrong way. Back at the train station, I had to choose between two directions. I went one way, which turned out to be the wrong way. I turned around and it was like someone had turned a wind machine on full and then decided it would be fun to add a fire hose to the mix.

As I attempted to remember the directions to the hotel, ten days of sweat residue that had built up in my helmet was now pouring down my head and stinging my eyes. I tried to ease the discomfort by rubbing them with my finger.

I found my hotel, and rain like I’ve never seen continued to pour from the sky. In the evening, I went to the 7-Eleven around corner. The street was flooded above the ankle and walking through the water, I had to hope there wasn’t any uneven ground. Inside the store, water came from the ceiling like a waterfall.

The next morning, the sun was out, which made the previous two days seem like a dream. But the storm wasn’t quite finished with me yet.