96.5 km today (reverse engineered, my odometer reset part way through the day). Farther than I expected, not as far as I would have liked.
I left Checheng by 7:15 a.m. Thomas and Jaden hadn’t gotten out of bed yet, but they were up. I wished them good luck and told them they’d catch up with me later (which they did, at kilometer 22, a brief hello and then they zoomed off).
I mostly climbed the first 38 km of today, resenting each brief descent.
The final descent lasted only 11 km. While my maximum elevation was about 517 m, the GPS shows 1888 m of climbing today. I was glad to see the eastern coast.
Instead of making a reservation anywhere last night, I had decided to simply keep cycling forward, and each time I reached an area with accommodation I would decide whether I wanted to extend to the next one. In the end I’m about 15 km short of reaching the next large city of Taitung in Sanhe.
Today, shortly after encountering a caution sign for monkeys, I ran across a whole barrel of them. I had several monkey encounters today, although they really didn’t want to be photographed.
Most of the coast today was flat, with three long shallow climbs. Beautiful views.
I saw in the news last night that the Chinese have increased their flyovers of Taiwan. Along the coast today I saw a number of tanks practicing maneuvers.
About 10 km outside of Sanhe an Austrian cyclist pulled up beside me to chat. But his day ended in Taitung and had a ways to go, so after a while he continued on. I had booked the accommodations only a few km before.
I had sped up to keep up with the Austrian, which burned what little reserve I had left. When I reached Sanhe I was wiped. But as always a shower and something to eat recharged me. Not that Sanhe has much in it. I ate dinner at an actual restaurant.
