Bikes — The crazy adventures of The Oes

One of the few big items that we shipped back from the US were our bikes. Well, just Joe and mine. The kids outgrow their bikes every year, so we didn't bother with those. But I love my bike and wouldn't trade it for any other one, so brought it with me on our flight. I've had so many memories with it through the streets of Palo Alto (and East Palo Alto, for that matter), the Dumbarton Bridge crossing the Bay, the windy small streets of Stanford, and 22nd Street in the Dogpatch, that I can picture myself in any given place or scenario and let the bike take me there instantly.

I did have a bike accident a year ago, though, so the thought of riding in a city like Taipei was terrifying. But there's a nice bike path here that lines the river, and takes you all the way down to Damsui. Ideally, it would be great to bike straight from our place to the path, but that would be too life threatening, so instead, we drove to a lot right next to the river. There's actually quite a few of these lots, in fact, they are called "emergency evacuation" points here in the city.

There's very few people on the path, and it's actually quite nice to feel the river breeze while riding. Here we are taking a break. You can see my dad's apartment across the river.

so sweaty, although you can't really tell

The toughest part of the ride is the head wind on the way back. Joe and I used to bike to work occasionally, and would need to cross the Dumbarton Bridge to get to the East Bay. We both agreed that the wind here actually is stronger than across that bridge, and boy did it make me work. "Push, Pull, Push, Pull," I kept telling myself, and visualizing my spin instructor in the States barking that up a fake hill.

I really felt it the next day, and could barely flex my hamstrings without cringing.

Phoebe doesn't know how to ride a bike yet, so we thought it would be fun for her to get a bike and try it out. So the week after Joe and I rode, Phoebe got a bike, too.

We took her to school on her bike one morning. She was pretty sweaty by the time she arrived. She's still working on it, but is getting a lot closer. And yes, she wears a motor cross helmet to protect her teeth (note my aforementioned bike accident).

That seemed to work pretty nicely, so we took the family out to the river for a bike ride the weekend after. Girls and I rented bikes (the total came out to like, $5 for an hour). I forgot to take photos of the bikes, but I did get some photos of them at the park next to the path.

so happy to get out of the city and run around.

That seemed pretty fun, and we decided that it would be pretty rad if we could actually brave it and all ride out together (from the apartment). So we went out and bought Zoe a bike.

I dig the green color. Phoebe was pissed she didn't get a water bottle holder with hers.

Since Chloe is so tall now, she could actually fit a U-Bike (this is Taipei's equivalent of the Citi bikes they have in NY), that we could rent on the corner. She's actually excited to try a tandem with me - you can rent those at the same place next to the river, so we may end up just doing that the next time.