{"id":5249,"date":"2026-03-17T03:35:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/?p=5249"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:51:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:51:54","slug":"260317-the-unusual-ups-and-downs-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/260317-the-unusual-ups-and-downs-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"260317-The unusual ups and downs of life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

I mostly climbed the first 38 km of today, resenting each brief descent.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Most of the coast today was flat, with three long shallow climbs. Beautiful views.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “260317-The unusual ups and downs of life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5258,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions\/5258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}