The Longest Mountain Bike Ever

By Perrin

Last weekend, we went mountain biking with a guide and a few of his friends.The guide’s name is Alan and he owns a bike store. There was also an Australian guy and two of Alan’s friends that you could tell were hard core. Carly and I were the only kids.

We started at Alan’s shop to size our bikes. They were really high quality mountain bikes. To get to the trails we had to go on the city bike path first. The city bike path is a pretty path that winds along the river, and people can bike, walk and run on it.  We biked on it for about 1 hour and got off on a ramp that took us to a part of the city at the base of the mountains. My mom and sister decided to go back home because they were getting tired, but the rest of us kept going.

The roads started getting steeper and smaller as we headed up the mountains. There were more trees and not as many buildings, and after half an hour a little town appeared in front of us. We were in a small parking lot and lots of people were up and about, including a Taiwanese family with a small dog that had curly brown fur. We watched it as we waited for the Australian guy who had been struggling up the hill.   The dog circled a spot for a few seconds and then it pooped, right on the pavement, in the middle of a bustling parking lot! It was hilarious.

After the Australian man caught up, we kept going. We walked our bikes up some stairs and followed a tiny road until Alan pointed out another rickety set of stairs, so overgrown that they were barely visible. I couldn’t believe that we were going to go up them!  Those led up to another set of stairs which we pushed our bikes up and found MORE stairs. After we had hiked up about 10 sets of stairs, carrying our bikes all the way, we got on another road and biked UP HILL even more! I was exhausted.

On the way up we passed a famous gondola in Taipei and finally, after what had seemed like a lifetime of uphill, Alan led us onto a trail in the woods. The trail was harder than I had expected. There were lots of slippery rocks and there was a cliff on one side that you could easily fall off of if you weren’t careful. After that trail, we went on an extremely rocky uphill, and I was only able to bike about a fourth of it.  Riding down it, though, was exhilarating!

At one point we came to a teahouse where we rested. The tea wasn’t very good, but it was a relief to get a break because we were about to go on another hard trail. This trail had a set of stairs that were at least 100 yards down! They were narrow, made of slippery wood, and were in the forest with trees on both sides, but Alan and his friends rode down it anyways although everyone else walked it. They are crazy! 

Then there was an equal amount of stairs going up on the other side. By that time we were extremely tired but would Alan stop? No! The next step was climbing through a metal rectangle in a big metal gate. The opening was small on all sides and the handlebars of our bikes couldn’t fit through, so we had to turn them, and stuff them through. At that point, we thought we were going to go straight back after the four hours we had just biked, but alas,  we had more to ride.  We rode for 5 minutes to an amazing view spot where you could see almost all of Taipei including Taipei 101 which is the third tallest building in the world. It was soooo piao liang (beautiful)!

Taipei 101 is on my head in the background

We finally started making our way back through a grassy, overgrown trail that ended abruptly at a small road. On the trail I lost my balance and fell into the grasses on the side of the trail.  Since the ground off the trail was lower than the trail itself, when I fell I couldn’t get back up because my head was downhill and my leg was trapped under my bike, so I couldn’t push myself up! My dad took a picture of me while I was still trapped before he helped me up. What a nice Dad!!

From there it was just a ride back to the bike shop except for Alan leading us amongst the traffic as if we were vehicles and weaving in and out of cars. SKETCHY!

When we got back to the shop, we were famished since we hadn’t eaten anything for the whole ride, so we bought some bananas from a fruit stand next door to tide us over until we could get more food.

The downhills, beautiful views, and pure adventure were the rewards for all the uphills and hard work. I also have a story to tell after. It was a truly awesome 5 hour bike ride.