Home at last! Home at last! Home at last!

I made it back to Kaohsiung last night at 9:30. The last two days have been both eventful and exhausting. But, before I fill you in, let me announce the winner of our contest.

First prize for Best Lodgings at a Place of Worship goes to the Taoist temple at Hseng Kang in western central Taiwan, thus proving that they are the best religion. As soon as I can save up enough money I will buy a book so I can learn exactly what a Taoist is. All I know about them at the present is that they run a four star hotel and gave me a private room with a bath, air conditioning and cable TV absolutely free. I finally watched the National Geographic Channel on someone else's dime.

On the morning of the 15th, I had just emerged from my ordeal in the woods barely escaping the clutches of the police department. Actually, I had just thanked them for a peaceful night's lodgings and went on my way. I stopped off in Hsinchu to read my email and I was thoroughly impressed with the city.

Hsinchu is apparently a technology city, the Silicon Valley of Taiwan. It is a small city teaming with fresh minds and new money. It reminded me very much of the northern Virginia/Washington DC area where so many people are working in technology related businesses. The streets were clean and orderly. Early morning traffic was intense, but you could see that all of the long lines of cars were driving into the huge technology park. At ten minutes after nine the streets were empty again.

Getting to the coast proved very frustrating. At the time, I blamed the poor signage on the west coast, as well as the inability of the average Taiwanese to tell you what lies around the next corner. And, although both of those were a factor in my frustration, I suspect that I may have contributed to the problem through my own negligence. When I got caught in the rain on my second day, my map blew away and I never bothered to replace it. Instead, I was using the map in the Lonely Planet guidebook. Not only is this map not particularly detailed, it is also more than three years old. It does get full marks, however, for being the only map that showed elevation, helping me to avoid the mountains that I so deeply love. What I was to discover was that the highway I was looking for, 15/17, did not exist up North. Instead, there is a West Coast Expressway, Highway 61, which runs down the island and ends around Taichung. Once I accepted the fact that I was to be traveling on this highway and gave up looking for the ones in the guidebook, my life became much easier.

Highway 61 is long, straight and easy to follow. The down side, however, is that it is flat and boring. I found the east side of the island to be so beautiful and interesting. But, for the most part, once I cut west at Keelung the trip was over. The scenery varied between boring and ugly all the way back to Kaohsiung.

By the time I began following Highway 61 and making good time, I was already several hours behind schedule. I absolutely had to make Taichung that day if I were to have any hope of reaching Kaohsiung by the evening of Tuesday, September 16th. The way was flat and easy, so I just pushed and pushed, skipping rest breaks and even riding in the dark. I rode for fifteen hours that day. At 9:30 p.m., I was so exhausted I just gave in. When I was about 40 km south of Taichung near a small town called Hseng Kang, I pulled into a police station to ask if they knew where the nearest Catholic church was.

When I walked in the door, I took the officer by surprise. He had been playing with his weapon and the magazine and bullets were scattered all over his desk. I actually think he was practicing quick draw techniques. When he saw me he blushed like I had walked in on him in the bathroom or something.

"Sorry," he said, very embarrassed.

He quickly scrambled to reassemble his weapon. Once he was finished, he forgot to put his toy back in its holster and he was more or less pointing it at me as we spoke. Not wanting to be rude, I sort of motioned at the weapon with my head to remind him that in addition to being a way to kill time on the nightshift, a gun can also kill people.

"Sorry again," he said, holstering the weapon.

Oddly, he didn't put the safety catch on. He reminded me a lot a small town deputy sheriff back home in the States.

"I am riding my bicycle around Taiwan," I explained. "Every night I sleep in a Catholic church and I was wondering if you could tell me if there is one near here."

The officer thought for a minute. He then disappeared into the back of the station where I heard a refrigerator open. A moment late, he reappeared holding a bottle of water in one hand and a huge jar of tomato sauce in the other. He handed me the bottle.

"Drink," He said.

Then he studied the label on the sauce.

"This is Catholic, right?" he asked, pointing at the Chinese characters on the label.

The sauce must have been a fund raising project by the local church. My heart soared. Maybe they were not only Catholics, but also Italians.

"Yes, that is Catholic," I confirmed.

The officer dialed the number on the label and spoke to someone on the other. He relayed a number of questions to me such as, "Where do you come from? Are you Catholic? How long do you wish to stay?"

It all seemed promising. But then he hung up the phone with a dejected look.

"I am sorry," he said. "That church is not a regular church. It is a home for mentally challenged children and the priest is afraid to have a stranger come and sleep there."

That made sense. But now what? After the sisters had soaked me NT$1,000 for my two nights at the church in Hualien it really hurt to get rejected by another Catholic church. Was this a challenge to my faith? Another way of looking at it was, even a home for the mentally challenged didn't want me. Was this a critique of my personality?

The officer sat me down in front of the TV with a pot of tea while he made numerous phone calls on my behalf. All of the chairs in the waiting room had handcuffs attached to them. I always carry two handcuff keys on my person, one for civilian handcuffs and one for police handcuffs. I was going to show the officer my great handcuff escape trick. Then again, I wasn't sure how funny it would be to him, especially after he had been playing with his gun as if he hoped some day to get to use it.

As much as the situation was a little weird, this was the first time that I had spent a night in a police station, and I wasn't covered with blood or reeking of alcohol.

In between phone calls, we talked.

"Are you American?" He asked.

"Yes."

"That's good," he said. "I like American things. My gun is American. It's a Smith."

He pulled it out to show me in case I hadn't gotten a good look when he was pointing it at me. He held it about half way out to me but I didn't know if he wanted me to take it. So I sat on my hands. I also noticed that he had ejected the magazine, but failed to remove the bullet from the chamber. I just kept thinking, If this guy accidentally kills himself in here there is no way anyone is going to believe me that it wasn't my fault.

”Nine millimeter," I said, repeating a phrase I had heard in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

"Yes,” he said, lovingly. "We also carry sticks. But the sticks are no good."

"Oh no?" I asked, with real empathy in my voice.

"No, they are only made of wood."

What did he want his stick to be made of? I don't think anyone who has ever been clubbed in the skull has walked away thinking, “Thank God it was only a wooden club.”

"Taiwan is not like America," he said.

I know, in America cops are trained in firearm safety.

"In America, the criminals are afraid of the police. But in Taiwan, it is the other way around," he lamented.

If it was any conciliation to him, he was scaring me.

"If I can't think of a better solution," he began. "Would you mind sleeping in the yard out front?"

"No, that would be fine," I said, truthfully.

I really prefer to sleep outside, but I just need to be in a place where I know I will be safe. At this moment, outside the police station seemed safer than inside.

"You could take a shower in the jail, if you want to. Then you could just go right outside and pitch your tent."

A shower in a jail? I've seen those prison movies. I know what happens to you when you take a shower in a jail. There was no way anyone was doing that to me unless they bought me dinner first. But I guess that only happens when you take a shower with the other prisoners. In prison movies, when the main guy showers alone, they stick him in a cell, naked, and then the sadistic deputies hose him down with a fire hose. I was really missing the nuns at Hualien at that moment.

"I found a place for you," he finally said, hanging up the phone.

My body was shutting down at this point. I was too tired. Sitting still was doing me in. I could feel a tingling sensation all through my legs and moving up to my brain. My eyelids felt like they weighed eighty pounds.
I could just sleep handcuffed to this chair. I thought.

"There is a Taoist temple in town and they will put you up for the night. How would that be?"

"That's fine." I said. "I have lived in a Buddhist temple, Taoist would be fine."

I was picturing the communal, wooden beds of the Shaolin temple and was preparing myself to go without a shower. But at that point I didn't care. I just needed to sleep.

"Good. They have many different kinds of rooms. Some are NT$1,000 some are NT $2,500."

"They have rooms?" I asked. What kind of temple was this?

"Yes, the Taoists come there to pray. But I told the owner that you don't have any money. So, maybe he will let you stay for free."

That "maybe" was scaring me. I wanted to ask some more questions, but at that moment a woman walked in carrying a sleeping baby.

"This is my wife." Explained the officer. "She will lead you to the temple.”

So, once again, I had a police escort through town. It was great. I ran all the red lights. The temple turned out to be a huge gilded hotel with impressive statues of dragons and lions out front.
It did seem to be connected to the temple next door, but I would never have called the hotel a temple. Inside it looked like any very expensive hotel I have ever stayed in.

"Room 906," said the girl, handing me my key.

"But how much must I pay?" I asked.

"You want to pay?" she exclaimed, confused.

"No, I don't want to pay. I just thought...Did I tell you I rode my bicycle all the way around Taiwan?"

"Then you must be very tired."

I took a long hot shower, washed my cycling clothes in the sink, ate two hot meals one right after the other and watched National Geographic until I drifted off to the best sleep I had during the whole trip.

From here on out I will just refer to National Geographic as "That organization who won't look at my writing."

The next morning, September 16, I prepared myself for a huge push to Kaohsiung. Somewhere around noon my front tire went flat. I had just been thinking how lucky I was to have made the whole trip with no mechanical breakdowns. I stopped in a gas station and refilled the tire. There was no hole. The tire, like my body, had just been through a lot. The sun that day was the most intense of the whole trip and I could actually smell my skin cooking. I could also hear the fluid in my brain boiling. It made a sort of crackling sound, like popcorn.

I reached Tainan around dinnertime and stopped for a double McDonalds meal. Two minutes later, my bike stopped dead. No matter how hard I pushed the rear wheel failed to turn. A quick physical inspection told me that the bracket that supported my egg crate had broken halfway through. Now the entire weight of all my gear was resting on my rear wheel. I tried to fix the bracket with string and wire ties but it was impossible. I was only 33 km from home and faced with the choice of abandoning all of my things at the side of the road or giving up the trip and taking the train home.

Doing a quick triage, I decided the only gear that was absolutely essential was my film. The photos had to make it or I would loose my sponsorship. But the thought of leaving all my books and clothing behind was too much.

"If only I had a back pack to put this stuff in, I could just about make it the rest of the way home," I thought.

Right at that moment, I noticed that the shop across the street was a camping store. I bought a backpack for NT$1,200 (money I really couldn't afford to spend) and packed up what gear I could. Most of my stuff fit. Unfortunately, I had to leave my blanket and a few other non-essentials behind. I gave the blanket to a beetle nut girl because I was afraid she would catch cold walking around nearly naked.

The ride home was grueling. My hands had been numb for several days. If I had been on Everest I would have sworn that I had frost bite. But now, with all of my gear on my back, the weight on my palms was intensified. After so many days of riding, the sensation was so painful that I can't begin to describe it. Every turn of the pedals was a chore. Twenty kilometers outside of Kaohsiung I passed a cheap hotel and actually considered spending the night.

When I finally got home, a wave of relief swept over me. I was done. I had circled Taiwan on a bicycle. The total trip was well over one thousand kilometers. On my final day, I had cycled almost 160km in a single day. That thought kept me pretty high until I had finished showering and changing clothes. When I lay down in bed, my mind was already asking, "What next?"

It looks like I will be rowing around Taiwan in February with sponsorship and good press coverage. But, this cycling trip taught me that I need to get my body fitter and much tougher, so I need to go on another expedition as soon as I have healed up. I think three weeks from now would be the best time to go. My plan will be to row 700 km of the Yangtze River, in China. But I need sponsorship. I need to get moving on that. If there is anyone out there who would like to be a corporate sponsor for the Yangtze River trip, or the trip rowing around Taiwan, please contact Malcolm or me at antonio_graceffo@hotmail.com
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This is the conclusion of Antonio's adventure cycling around Taiwan.

See also:
Part 1 - Kaohsiung to Hualien
Part 2 - Hualien to Suao
Part 3 - Suao to Taipei
Part 4 - Taipei to Taichung
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