Tom Butler: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 Podcast, season 3, episode 24, taiwan, cycling Route Number One, and I'm your host, tom Butler. The truth is that new things don't come easy to me. I feel like I'm always fighting to keep on track with staying healthy. My latest battle is with the dietary changes that I've been trying to make for over a month now. Food preparation is not my favorite thing in the world, and I'm finding it really difficult to get in the groove of cooking differently. I typically like to eat pretty much the same thing every day, just because it's easier that way. I'm not someone that needs a lot of variety when it comes to meals. The simpler the better. That is one of the things that makes the change that I'm trying to make difficult.

Tom Butler: 0:55

I'm using a meal plan from a company, and I do think they do an excellent job putting meals together. I think they have found that most people like variety, so they provided a six-week meal plan that has a lot of variety. For me, the variety means it is harder to shop and harder to do meal preparation. I've gotten in the habit of eating two meals a day. This meal plan is three meals a day, so that means not just more prep time per meal, but an additional meal every day. I don't know why I find it so difficult to carve out time to prepare meals, but it takes real discipline for me. A second problem with the meal plan is that I would need a bit of time to get used to the flavor of the food. I have no doubt that I would eventually come to enjoy the food, but I think it would take a couple of months to retrain my taste buds. I've not really enjoyed the meals that I've tried so far. Again, I think I would eventually welcome the new flavors and the variety of the meals, but it would take me putting up with less appealing meals for a while. And the final obstacle is that, because the meals are very low in fat, I don't feel satisfied after eating. Once again, I think this is just a matter of adjustment for my body. Even with the challenges, I think I'm going to be able to make this switch if I can get into the habit of planning meals out on Sunday and Wednesday. I originally thought I could do just Sunday, but I think I really can't do more than a few days of planning at a time If I can establish this process of meal planning for just three weeks. I think I will get used to doing meals differently and then I'd be able to adjust the other aspects of this new food. I'd be tempted to just call it quits, but I do believe there is a chance that eating very low-fat meals could help create more insulin sensitivity at the cellular level, and if that is the case, for me it means it is well worth the hassle.

Tom Butler: 2:40

Last week I mentioned that I'm looking to take my bike on the train and go down to Eugene, oregon, to do a ride. A listener from Seattle sent a text saying that they find that riding around Eugene is really good and they have taken the train down in the past. It was encouraging to hear that somebody had a good experience with this. In addition to hearing this listener's perspective, amtrak recently announced new trains are coming to the Northwest. Amtrak announced the new Aero trains that are quote a modern passenger experience end quote. I'm really not sure what that means. Aero is spelled A-I-R-O and it sounds like Amtrak is expecting that people are going to really like these new trains. The Pacific Northwest is set to be the first home for the new trains. They're scheduled to be here in 2026. In a blog post from June 21st last year, the League of American Bicyclists stated that their work with Amtrak yielded an agreement from them to increase capacity for bicycles on the AeroTrains. Now this makes me even more interested in taking a train trip this year so that I can compare the experience with the new cars in the future.

Tom Butler: 3:48

Ultimately, I would love to figure out some trips down the West Coast by bike and train. There's a route called the Coast Starlight that runs down the Pacific Coast. It would be really fun to jump on that route for a few days and camp and bike at a couple stops. One option is taking the train to Martinez, california, in October for the Bike the Bridges event. That event benefits the Northern California Special Olympics. The route is only 50k but it sounds really unique. I think combining that event with another stop along the way could make for a memorable trip.

Tom Butler: 4:22

I want to remind people that the Rails to Trails Conservancy fundraiser, called the Great American Ride, starts this Saturday. It goes to June 6th. It is not too late to sign up. The event is very easy. You just log the miles that you normally do into the event website and it tracks a virtual team along the Great American Rail Trail. I believe the work being done by Rails to Trails is really important. I think they're helping to establish active transportation and recreational opportunities and I truly feel that it's worth supporting them, and this fundraiser seems like a really fun way to do that. You can find information about the fundraiser by searching for the Great American Ride.

Tom Butler: 5:02

I'll put a link in the show notes for the team I'm going to be on. The team is called Huffing and Puffing. Last time I placed the link I forgot to put in the password for the team, so I'll make sure to include that this time. So go to the show notes and follow the link and join me and some others as we take this challenge on as a team.

Tom Butler: 5:30

Last week we got to hear about a great bike trip from a podcast listener and I'm happy that we get to do the same thing this week. Scott Gruber joined me for both the Cycling Over 60 Zwift Thursday ride and also the Thursday Zoom chat. In the Zoom chat he shared about a ride that he did around Taiwan and I was really intrigued by the adventure, so he came on the podcast to discuss it with me, and here's the conversation Scott and I had. I love having the Zoom chats on Thursdays because it gives me a chance to chat with people I wouldn't otherwise get to meet, and my guest today is one of those people. Thank you, scott Gruber, for joining me.

Scott Gruber: 6:09

Thank you for inviting me.

Tom Butler: 6:11

Yeah, great to be here. Let's start out by having you tell me about your earliest memories of the bicycle.

Scott Gruber: 6:19

Oh, that's great. I grew up in Phoenix, arizona, and I had a BMX bike when I was in elementary school and I used to ride with my best friend at the time, dudley Mermanish, and ride to school after school, just kind of out playing. So that's definitely my earliest memory of riding a bike.

Tom Butler: 6:43

Yeah, that's cool and that sounds really fun.

Scott Gruber: 6:47

Yeah, I don't know if you remember Webco that was like the brand but I was so excited with that bike, it was fun and Phoenix was pretty good for riding back then, so it was a great entry into it. Then, when I was in college, I had a mountain bike and I went to UC Santa Barbara and they have a great biking community there and so all through campus there's bike paths, all around, everyone rides bikes and at UC Santa Barbara and getting to Santa Barbara there's a great bike path and so I wrote a lot when I was in college. Then I sort of stopped and got back into it when I was during the pandemic. Okay, and so, like you, I was riding a Trek FX. Mine was FX4. I think you had told me you were on an FX3.

Tom Butler: 7:42

Yeah.

Scott Gruber: 7:43

And so I had a you know, flat bar3. Yeah, and so I had a flat bar bike, and I live in Los Angeles now, so there's a riverside bike path that also leads to the ocean. There's a beach bike path that goes from Santa Monica down to Palos Verdes, so I rode that a lot.

Tom Butler: 8:03

Now, right now, this time of year, when we're starting to get just hints of spring coming, a bike path along the beach in California sounds pretty good to me.

Scott Gruber: 8:13

Yeah, I'm pretty spoiled with it because it's a protected bike path, although there's a lot of pedestrians on it and a lot of bicyclists. So you know I it's a great place to cruise. You know there's a few people that ride real fast, but I'm not a speed demon kind of person and the view is fantastic. So next time you're in los angeles and you want to go for a bike ride, let me know I'll. I'll be happy to show you that'd be awesome.

Tom Butler: 8:41

Yeah, you talked about getting away from it for a number of years. It sounds like. Could you say why that was? Have you thought about why you got away from?

Scott Gruber: 8:54

it Didn't ride quite a bit as I fell into the pattern in Los Angeles where it was a lot of driving. It was funny. There were some times when I did ride my bike from near downtown Los Angeles there's a town called Silver Lake and I worked at UCLA, so it takes me it's about six miles to drive back and forth, so about an hour. But I could ride my bike in just an hour and 10 minutes and so I figured I'm actually just driving six miles an hour both ways, because it's about that long of a time and I can ride a bike at, you know, easily at 10 miles an hour.

Scott Gruber: 9:47

But, um, I'm afraid of cars and didn't, uh, feel totally comfortable riding, so I fell out of the, the culture of biking and but I'm really really glad I got back into it and I finally got my first road bike and I have a mountain bike. So I got back into it and I finally got my first road bike and I have a mountain bike. So I've been exploring the Santa Monica Mountains as well as some of the local hills in Santa Monica and the Palisades and Brentwood, all along the Santa Monica Mountains leading into Griffith Park.

Tom Butler: 10:22

So what road bike did you get?

Scott Gruber: 10:24

I got a Trek Domani. It's the most I really like it, but it was like the least expensive one. It was like you know, I upgraded the wheels and put carbon wheels on it, so it was like three grand plus a thousand bucks for wheels, and so it's not one of those like really, really expensive domani's that are like what ten, twelve right thousand dollars. That's way out of my budget, but it was still a significant investment for me. But uh, I like it. It's. It's uh all black and has a gold letters with trek and uh it's. It's suited me well Cause I'm not a racing cyclist, so it's an endurance bike and so it fits my body type pretty well. And throughout my whole biking history it's the first time I had a drop bar bike and I really, really like it Cause I can shift my position on it and it's turned out to be a real good workhorse for me. I put like 12, almost 15,000 miles on it already.

Tom Butler: 11:33

Nice, nice. Well, we got talking on the Thursday Zoom call about a trip that you did to Taiwan and I just really wanted listeners to hear about that trip. It's the example of like because of the podcast I hear of all these great trips and it's like man, now I have another trip on my list. But I think this is like one of those kinds of trips that it's like you put it on your list and I'm wondering what first inspired you to go to Taiwan.

Scott Gruber: 12:04

You put it on your list and I'm wondering what first inspired you to go to Taiwan. Well, you know, my wife, sue, is from Taiwan, so we had gone to Taiwan right before the pandemic. I am a web designer, so I was invited to do a web design workshop in Cameroon in West Africa, over a three-month period. I went to Cameroon and was in Los Angeles and then was in Taiwan right before the pandemic visiting family there. It reminded me how much I love Taiwan, family there, and just, uh um, it reminded me how much I love Taiwan.

Scott Gruber: 13:09

When I was in college I lived in Taiwan for about a little less than a year and, uh um, work there. I don't know if you remember CompuServe it was kind of like a, an internet service provider. Back in the day I worked at a company Fujitsu had bought it for the Japanese market, called it Fujitsu Serve, and I worked at a company called TTN Serve and that was translating CompuServe to the Taiwan market, and so you know, I lived there at a time when they were just building out all the subways and, and so it was known as like the dark age period in Chinese. Everything was quite chaotic, and now, 30 years later, when I went back, all of those subways are done and the infrastructure is fantastic for biking.

Scott Gruber: 14:05

So after the pandemic this was November 2023, we went back for a visit and I had gotten into biking quite a bit and so I wanted to bring my bike and ride. And Sue's sister, tina, who lives in Taipei, told me oh, you got to do this ride. There's a round Taiwan tour that everyone does and the giant bicycle company sets up the tour for it. So I looked it up and I was like, oh my god, this is perfect. So I signed up and it was a nine day, eight night ride around the island, which is about 900 kilometers, maybe five, six hundred miles, and it uh, it's like a all-inclusive tour package. And so I, you know, brought my bike, my trek, in a bike bag onto the plane and brought it over to taiwan and joined the group.

Tom Butler: 15:10

Now, when you say your trek, you have two tre now, so which one has that? Was that before you got the Domani?

Scott Gruber: 15:17

Yeah, it was the Domani.

Tom Butler: 15:19

The Trek.

Scott Gruber: 15:20

FX I gave to my son-in-law. Okay, it's up in San Mateo. And so now in the family we have a hybrid, the Trek FX4, my road bike, which is the Domani, and I picked up a mountain bike that I ride in the Santa Monica Hills, which is a Cervelo. Okay, okay, but that's a different story. So I brought the Trek Domani to Taipei.

Tom Butler: 15:49

Now. So they said it was a tour company and so they had the route all planned out, so that wasn't something that you needed to decide on.

Scott Gruber: 16:01

No, no, no, I hadn't realized. But Taiwan has a great biking culture and the tour company that I did is. You maybe have heard of Giant Bikes, oh yeah, they're the largest manufacturer of bicycles in the world, yeah, and they have a foundation in Taiwan and they sponsor these tours and so it's part of the identity of Taiwanese to ride a bike around the island and so it's a big deal. There's a lot of different groups. In my group. We had 40 people and most of them were local Taiwanese. We had a few Chinese Americans, we had a couple from Malaysia, a couple from Hong Kong, but mostly it was Taiwanese and the age groups were from like 20 to 70 plus, and I was the only non-native speaker in the group, but I had studied Chinese hadn't used it much in a long time, but I was able to communicate and it really got me inspired to seriously study Chinese again because I had so much fun talking with people and writing with them during the trip.

Tom Butler: 17:23

Now they must have been kind of happy I don't know what the right word is but maybe even a bit impressed by you being able to converse a bit in Chinese.

Scott Gruber: 17:34

It was hilarious because, you know, all my Chinese came back, and so I was, you know, I used to go to karaoke all the time and used to sing songs in Chinese, and those came back, and some of the poems that I had memorized came back, and so all the time I was singing in Chinese, and everyone in the group it was a kind of one of these peak experiences and we all were writing together, and so all we did all day was ride and chat, and so they welcomed me and I was, you know, very, very grateful with they welcomed me and I was, you know, very, very grateful with, you know, with their spirit of bringing me in and sharing with me the beauty of the island of Taiwan.

Tom Butler: 18:20

I had sent you a question if you had ever heard of the film Island Etude. It doesn't sound like you've heard of it.

Scott Gruber: 18:29

No, I hadn't. You know, there's a lot of youtube videos on biking in taiwan. I looked up that film and and saw this from a while ago and but I didn't watch it. Could you share a little bit about it with me?

Tom Butler: 18:42

well, my understanding is that some of the almost rite of passage maybe of doing the trip around Taiwan, that it was kind of spurred on by that film and so it is an older film and it's a story of a deaf college student that decides to ride around the island.

Scott Gruber: 19:08

And I've not seen it. That's right. In my wheelhouse Some of my friends that I was riding with they told me there's, like you know, three things that you want to do as part of your taiwanese identity, and one is to ride a bike around the island, another is to swim in sun moon lake and another one is to hike up jade mountain. So far I've got one of those things done so do you have plans to do?

Scott Gruber: 19:35

the others is that like yeah, I wrote to sun moon lake but they have a big festival where like 10 000 people swim in sun moon lake on the same day and that's sort of like the big event to do and so that's in September and I haven't been able to do it yet but it's on my, it's on my bucket list for sure to do and this, this kind of like you know, the film Island of Two, to have this journey of touring the island as part of the identity of Taiwanese, is so fascinating to me because it's like I had never gone bike touring before and there was something so wonderful about slowing down on a bike but yet you're going fast enough that you can go quite a distance to see the countryside. So our routine was, you know, breakfast morning calisthenics hop on our bike ride for maybe 20 kilometers, stop at a temple or a park. So we stopped a lot, lot of Taoist temples and Confucian temples and have a snack. Everyone would check their cell phones, but we would have time to get some water and have some bananas and oranges and apples. We were very well fed and so none of us had problems with fueling the ride.

Scott Gruber: 21:14

We'd stop at a catered restaurant, so we had great Chinese food for lunch. We'd sit all together and chat and then right in the afternoon with another break and meet up at the hotel where we'd have a catered dinner and then do it again the next day. So it was like you know, and the whole time we're, you know, riding down the West coast of Taiwan, which is very industrial but still quite a number of bike paths, all the way down to the Southern tip and moving over to the east coast, which is very agricultural. So going through rice fields in this east river, east rift valley, it's just gorgeous. But even in the uh city on um, in the industrial areas on the west coast, you still have these kind of uh layers of mountains on, I guess, on the left and, and you know, on on the east.

Tom Butler: 22:14

On our east side, you know, taiwan is has the highest number of over 10 000 feet mountains, wow, of any island in the world wow so it's like, uh um, great for biking if you're into riding hills right, you talked about giant, you know, and in giant, in 1977 the ceo of giant negotiated a deal with schwinn and that's really when they took off. But ever since 1977 they have been a major manufacturer and and really the carbon fiber bicycle available to to most people. That happened because of giant and so.

Tom Butler: 23:04

I'm wondering if, if you could, you know if you would see, like the evidence of Taiwan being such a hub for bicycle manufacturing or not, really on the trip that you did oh, totally, we did.

Scott Gruber: 23:18

Um, I got sort of two anecdotes that I can share about that one is, um, we visited giant headquarters in uh, taichung and there's a cycling museum there, and they, um, it's a cycling cultural museum and there's a. They have a beautiful building and we, um tended a lecture about bicycle history in Taiwan, really had a a great stop over and I I became a huge, huge fan of giant bikes because of it, cause the the tour was so well organized. They had, uh, two support vans, one with our day packs um, one with our luggage. They had gosh, we had 40 people in our group. Some were on e-bikes, some were older, some were more experienced riders, but we had um leaders, two, three people in the front of our Peloton and two, three, four people in the back of the Peloton, and the vans would hopscotch uh but uh and ahead of us, and they had professional photographers who were taking photos of everyone as well. So the giant adventure company really produced a fantastic tour. That, I think, is just gold standard of bike touring.

Scott Gruber: 24:38

Then it's like, you know, I needed to get equipment, you know. So when uh I was in Taipei, I had to get my derailleur adjusted, so I dropped into a bike shop that was. There's a lot of giant bike shops throughout Taiwan, and so it's easy to get any kind of spare parts. I had a pair of cleats that wore out during the ride, and I was able to pick those up in one of the cities that we had gone through, so it was like very, very convenient biking. A lot of people are on bikes. There's a lot of protected bike lanes and a lot of uh stores where you can either rent bikes or buy bikes or get your bikes repaired.

Tom Butler: 25:27

You talked about. You know, which is, I think, an element of a well-done bike tour is that you had meals catered to you. I'm guessing they were really good meals.

Scott Gruber: 25:41

Very good. You know I'm a fan of eating all different kinds of cuisines, but the foods in Taiwan were particularly good. The vegetables were fantastic. You know, the fruits in Taiwan are really, really good, and besides all the stir-fried dishes, so we always have a full meal with a wide range of Taiwanese delicacies to have.

Tom Butler: 26:09

So they have good mangoes in Taiwan.

Scott Gruber: 26:11

They have fantastic mangoes. They have really good apple pears. They have wax apples which are particularly good. There's this one sort of large fruit that looks like a bodhisattva's head. That's very sweet and a bit of a mess if you're not too talented eating it but I was. It was just delicious.

Tom Butler: 26:42

Nice, I gained weight during the ride.

Scott Gruber: 26:44

Okay, I was riding like a hundred kilometers a day.

Tom Butler: 26:47

Yeah.

Scott Gruber: 26:50

And wait. It was, it was fantastic.

Tom Butler: 26:54

That's cool.

Scott Gruber: 26:55

And you know, I went back in 2024 for a self-supported ride as well, and there's 7-Elevens all over the place and you can always pick up sweet potatoes or baozi or hard-boiled eggs, which was a great way for me to fuel my rides when I was doing self-supported rides. There's one other thing I do wanted to share as well. All right, so I did the ride around Taiwan, but Taipei has a riverside bike path that's about 60 kilometers that's also completely, completely protected. So taipei is surrounded by rivers on three sides and then a mountain on the on the on one side, and there's um. When I was in taipei, I would, you know, take a ride along these bike paths and there's a lot of bikers riding that, as well as joggers and just birders, and you know it was just fantastic biking in Taipei and there was plenty of places to stop to get good food on the way as well.

Tom Butler: 28:02

Do you feel like you experienced a real contrast between Taipei and LA as far as how much the bicycle has been embraced?

Scott Gruber: 28:13

You know, yes, for sure, from my perspective. You know, and I've studied Chinese and was talking with my teacher about this. She does podcasts as well in Chinese, kind of like talking about Taiwan like a native is her podcast, and she was talking about cycling culture in Taiwan and pedestrian culture and there's a reputation of Taiwan to being a pedestrian hell and I was like I don't think so, cause compared to my experience in Los Angeles, los Angeles is the pedestrian and you know, for me it was. You know, the sidewalks are real hard to walk in in Los Angeles. They're, um, not kept very well. There's, you know, not many businesses along the streets, like in Taiwan, where life is just pouring onto the streets. There's, there wasn't as many big trucks and big cars that if you do get hit you're going to be, uh, injured quite seriously in Los Angeles. And there's not as many kind of scooters I guess, um, which I felt kind of make people more, um, aware of all kinds of vehicles sharing the road.

Scott Gruber: 29:32

So I felt it was a great place to ride. Some of it may have to do that. I was riding for sure on the trip around Taiwan that I was riding with a tour group and we had a set route around Taiwan that I was riding with a tour group and we had a set route. Taiwan has a national tour route that is mapped out, that the government has signs for, and um bike a lot of segregated bike paths that go around the entire island. Korea has that as well. I think I had heard one of your previous guests on your podcast were talking about the national ride from Seoul to Busan.

Tom Butler: 30:17

Yeah.

Scott Gruber: 30:17

Same sort of thing In Taipei because it has this riverside bike path. I had plenty of opportunities to ride in a segregated bike path that was totally safe. So I didn't. I felt there was a real strong commitment to building bike paths that I don't. That is a bit of a challenge in Los Angeles.

Tom Butler: 30:42

Yeah, now preparing for this. Do you feel like you prepared well? Did you? Did you have to prepare mentally as well as physically? What? How did you feel going into it and would you have done anything different?

Scott Gruber: 30:59

Yeah, um, great question. I had been. You know, I fell in love with riding again, so I was, you know, training pretty hard. Um, I'm a member of the Rafa cycling club in Santa Monica. You know, I'm chasing the group head over with that group, you know I'm definitely the slowest, but they're a friendly group and they, you know, really challenged me to ride up routes that are, you know, with a lot of climbing. And so I was. I trained.

Scott Gruber: 31:30

You know, I was riding a hundred kilometers a week consistently for a year or two, with a lot of base riding, so flats, long rides, but also combining with a day of hills. And so I was. I'm, I'm in pretty good shape right now. You know, the biggest problem was like sitting on a saddle for multiple days. I hadn't done that before, but if you've ever ridden a century, I did a couple of those before I went to Taiwan. So I wrote I had a couple hundred mile rides under my belt, and so I was. You know, frankly, I don't think I would be singing while I was riding if I wasn't in pretty good shape, so I was able to.

Scott Gruber: 32:23

You know, with the pace that we had, I was able to ride and talk without any problem, and that's usually a good sign for my cardiovascular if I can talk while I'm riding no, that's perfect.

Tom Butler: 32:36

So what kind of gear did you take with you, as well as the bike did you have?

Scott Gruber: 32:42

I had two kits. I had a tire repair kit. I had my you know first aid kit for when I went on the tour to Taiwan, the round the island tour. I brought more stuff than I needed.

Tom Butler: 33:01

Okay.

Scott Gruber: 33:02

But I had a, you know, we had the support vehicle so I was able to bring my suitcase with me. I couldn't leave my stuff in Taipei so I had to bring everything with me. So but my bike, I didn't carry much on the bike at all.

Tom Butler: 33:17

Okay.

Scott Gruber: 33:18

When I went back in 2024, it was self-supported and I got a, a tail fin rack that, uh, is kind of like a 30 liter backpack but on a mountain on on a rack. That worked great and that's all I carried, gotcha and that one. I definitely had learned a lot from my first riding trip of what I needed and what I didn't need. You know, I brought, like cliff bars and I brought, like you know, powdered electrolytes to put in my water. I can get all that in Taiwan, it's no problem.

Tom Butler: 33:56

Gotcha, and do you think that you were prepared as far as your clothing? How's that aspect of it?

Scott Gruber: 34:08

I went in November and that's like prime season for biking, so there's tours, like every week, in groups of 40. So there was other groups that were hot scotching ahead of us and then we'd pass. So we had a couple days of rain, and I didn't bring a rain jacket because it was still really warm, but the tour group gave us a rain jacket, okay, and they also gave us two jerseys, so I had a rain jacket from them that I used Maybe, I think, the fourth or fifth day. We did some climbing, and you know, to get from the west side of the island to the east side, we had to climb over a mountain, and on the east side of the island we ran into rain. So it was really raining hard.

Scott Gruber: 34:59

Someone crashed in the in the rain, but in general it was humid and pretty, pretty warm, beautiful weather. I think, though, if I was to ride across the middle of the Island in the mountains, it can get quite cold, so I'd have to have a change of clothes to be able to. So I did, you know, layering and had enough to. If I did get cold, I would have plenty to wear. I think the biggest challenge is worrying about getting sunburned.

Tom Butler: 35:28

Okay.

Scott Gruber: 35:29

So a lot of people had a kind of sleeves that are sun protection and pants that are sun protecting, but I went with shorts. I'd even worked on my tan a little bit so I didn't get sunburned, and there was certainly plenty of sunscreen with the tour group supplies. So every time we excuse me every time we stopped, everyone put sunscreen back on.

Tom Butler: 35:58

So doing a lot of cycling. In LA you would get used to the heat, but there, with the heat and humidity, it seems like it would be quite different yeah it.

Scott Gruber: 36:10

Um, I didn't have a problem with the humidity, but again, november is really like the prime time of year okay if I was there during the summertime, when it's really really hot and humid, it would be a whole other kind of experience yeah so I'd we timed our trip around the best time of the year.

Scott Gruber: 36:29

I'd recommend that Spring and autumn would be the really good times to do any riding in Taiwan. Same in Korea too, actually. It can get quite warm in the summertime. There as well Do they have storms in the spring. The typhoon season is towards the end of the summer.

Tom Butler: 36:46

Okay, have storms in the spring, the typhoon seasons towards the end of the summer.

Scott Gruber: 36:48

Okay, when I went 2024, there was a typhoon late in the season in the end of october that hit the day before we went. So I was a little worried, uh, that a lot of trees would be felled, but the city government cleaned everything up within a day. I was blown away. The city governments are very functional and efficient.

Tom Butler: 37:17

So, when you look back at the trip around the island, I think that is called Taiwan Cycling Route 1. And then there's also a name Hondoooo. I don't know if I'm saying that. Right, that's the tour, it's called hwan dao.

Scott Gruber: 37:34

Hwan dao, okay, yeah, it's translated as a. Around the island, everyone is saying, oh, you're doing the hwan dao, and everyone immediately knows gotcha okay and so in fact I was, like I've done some tours in los angeles, that I called it the juan la tour it was like around la, yeah, but it's uh, it's the big deal, it's the. The honda was the slang term for taking that route, one around the entire island.

Tom Butler: 38:06

Now, do you have like something that jumps out as most memorable from that, or like most beautiful from that?

Scott Gruber: 38:13

Would it be possible to you know certainly the people that I met, you know in the conversations, that he had been battling with depression over 10 years and cycling that he didn't share with his wife and he, through cycling, was able to heal and take care of some of his mental health issues. That's awesome. You know, there was a married couple that were celebrating their 25th anniversary, a married couple that were celebrating their 25th anniversary and they said if we can make, uh, if our marriage can last 25 years, we can have the strength to do the huandao and so they were.

Scott Gruber: 38:56

They were celebrating their anniversary by doing the the huandao nice the tour to taiwan.

Scott Gruber: 39:03

There was a 73 year old who I asked you know, why are you doing the Huan Dao? And he said one of his best friends had died the previous year and it affected him so much that he decided not to wait for, you know, to seize the moment in his life and do things that he hadn't done. So he was doing the Huan Dao in memory of his friend and to seize the moment in his life. There was a mother and daughter who were riding together. They were on e-bikes and so they were having a mother and daughter relationship, sort of bonding experience. There was a husband and wife from Malaysia. They ride a lot in Malaysia and they came over to do the Huan Dao. There was one gentleman from Northern California who convinced his two friends who had done the Huan Dao before A lot of people do it more than once and so this was his second tour of Taiwan and so he convinced a couple of his buddies from his cycling club in Northern California to go with him, so they were experiencing their first Wanda.

Scott Gruber: 40:18

So I totally you know there was. They have a nine day one. But there's also an extended tour of Taiwan that hits the Northern, most northern point, most western, eastern and southern point. So it's extended. Instead of 900 kilometers it's maybe 1100 kilometers, a little bit longer, so that one's for more advanced riders who can do a couple centuries during the ride. I haven't done that one. A couple centuries during the ride, I haven't done that one. It's just this. You know, hearing those stories and seeing people you know doing their best and enjoying that adventure really affected me a lot and was a peak experience in my life that I was able to both do that tour with them but have them share some of their life stories.

Tom Butler: 41:11

Now you had more knowledge of Taiwan than maybe you know the average person in the US would have, someone that doesn't know anything about Taiwan, is that going to be just like a great way to see a lot of culture, a lot of different parts of Taiwan? Was there time to experience different places as you went around?

Scott Gruber: 41:39

Definitely. You know, each English is almost the second language in Taiwan, so if you don't speak Chinese, you're in good shape. I was fortunate enough that you know they humored me and only spoke Chinese, so I was able to, you know, work my way with the language skills that I had, which you know, are not as good as I would hope the ride is. We stop at museums. We stop at temples. There's English and chinese descriptions at each of these temples. We stopped at a festival for the sea, god matsu, and you know although that you know there was no explanation of what was happening, but it was. It was quite a scene. It was a street festival with a lot of parade and a lot of different cities and towns represented in the parade. Again, we went to the giant headquarters, which, of course, had bilingual materials. There's a lot of people that speak Japanese as well, and signs are in Japanese, korean, english and Chinese.

Scott Gruber: 42:48

If you wanted to experience Taiwan, there's no better way to see it than doing the tour to Taiwan bike ride. It's a really, really special experience, and not only do you see a lot of the industrial area, but you also see this agricultural area, so you get a real strong sense of the diversity. I hadn't expected the East Coast to be so Polynesian. It reminded me of Tahiti or Hawaii. It had a very strong Pacific Island feel and you know that led me to learn that some of the languages in Polynesia originated from the people who were emigrated in Taiwan long, long, long time ago. So there is that cultural connection with the indigenous population in Taiwan.

Tom Butler: 43:45

Okay, scott, so here's something for you to think about. If a group of people came to you because I see you as kind of a unique resource now you know you can speak a little bit of the language, you've done the trip once If a group of people came to you and said Scott, we really you know, we got a group of us that are going around Taiwan. We'd like to pay for you to go with us, would you be open to that?

Scott Gruber: 44:14

I would probably pay my own way and definitely would lead the group. You know I was talking with some friends who wanted to do just that.

Scott Gruber: 44:23

And you know it's, I want to go back and ride more, just that. And uh, you know it's, um, I want to go back and ride more. So, yes, I would love to go back and lead a group to ride in Taiwan. I got a book on bicycle touring called Taiwan road roads above the clouds. That has a lot of GPX files. So I've got all the maps and, you know, can use them to navigate some wonderful routes. I followed these routes during my ride in 2024. That was unsupported.

Scott Gruber: 44:56

So a friend of mine who I met during the 2023 ride around Taiwan, we rode from Taipei to Sun Moon Lake, which is maybe three, four day ride from Taipei, and used the GPX maps from the roads above the clouds. It didn't take us into the high mountains but I was on the foothills of the mountains and that was challenging enough for me. It was intense. But I do have a long-term goal of riding up Ali Shan and Wuling Shan, which is like there's a famous King of the Mountain KOM challenge in Taiwan, riding from Hualien to Wuling Mountain. I sort of have a long-term goal to try to do that. So I I want to go with either beginners who because I know how to get e-bikes now, or more advanced people who want to ride some mountains, so I'm looking forward to going back. The challenge is that I also want to ride in Korea and Japan, and maybe in Europe or Colombia and South America, even in a in. You know, I still need to do the ride from Seattle to Portland that you talked about.

Scott Gruber: 46:19

You know I was very inspired by that, by that ride. Well, it's coming up. So there's some, you know, so I'm still training up. So there's some, you know, so I'm still training. I did the, a grand Fondo and mammoth last year and I have a century with some friends from Rafa club, the uh Jay Takahashi spring classic. It's a self-supported century in uh in may and then I'll do uh some grand Fondos in Santa Barbara in October. So I've got some rides to keep in shape for when the next time we go to Taipei.

Scott Gruber: 46:52

So we got to go, tom, if you ever ever want to go and experience a ride, I think the Tour de Taiwan it's a great, fully supported ride and it's not expensive for a tour. It like 1700 for a single room, which is a bargain for what you get, because with you know, not a shameless plug for them, but the uh it's. It's a really great deal and the accommodations are fantastic. On east side there's hot springs. So after you have ridden for seven, eight days, you stop. The hotels that we stopped at had hot springs so you can get a nice relaxing recovery experience. We're hopping on the bike the next day.

Tom Butler: 47:46

It certainly sounds like one of those special trips. You know just all the different elements of it, not just Mangos, which in and of itself is a good reason, but you know all the other, just the layers of it, the different trains and the fact that the country is set up so well for bicycles that you know taiwan is a hub for bicycle manufacturing and it would just be interesting to go do that you know from what I've read or people who've ridden in taiwan, it's the hidden gem for cyclists in the bike touring yeah I believe it's a really, really great place to ride.

Scott Gruber: 48:28

Gosh, I'm I'm quiet, but my heart is bursting thinking about planning a ride.

Tom Butler: 48:35

Well, it would be fun and, you know, maybe we'll have to, you know, figure that out. There's so many rides that I'm trying to figure out how to do. You know, both in the States and all over.

Scott Gruber: 48:47

So you know it's interesting. I'll plant a seed for you to talk with your wife and daughter and her husband. You know a lot of people were on e-bikes. Some people started on a regular bike and switched to e-bikes and so they made it accessible for anyone. And you know, although I did the nine-day ride, they also have shorter three-day rides just on the East Coast. The pacing for a nine-day ride you're on the bike all the time. It'd be nice to do it more slowly, to have a couple rest days after four days, have a couple rest days in between the tour. It's accessible for anyone who can be on a bike. You know, again, there was people from 20 to 70, people on e-bikes and everyone did great. You know no one, I don't think you know, struggled. There was some. You know there was one accident. A dear friend crashed and had to drop out, but that was. You know it was a's done. A few trips to the Philippines.

Tom Butler: 50:10

And there's always seems to be a number of hours that is spent in Taipei and so you know, I think, for her to expand like what she sees in Taiwan. I think she'd be really interested in that.

Scott Gruber: 50:25

I couldn't recommend it more. It's a really, really great ride. I don't know if I tried to share some of the photos. I have some Google photo albums and I tried to share with you. If you had a chance to check some of those out.

Scott Gruber: 50:38

I really shouldn't make them public, but it's like it's a very Instagrammy sort of tour Cause it's like, you know, beautiful architecture, beautiful foods, beautiful people, beautiful locations all along the way, and you're kind of in your own group and so you know you're, you're making friends with people and I've I found the taiwanese were super friendly and open and welcoming. I don't think it should be a hard sell. You know I'll send you the link to I think it's giant cycling worldcom, okay, lists all the tours and they do them all year long and they have, you know, nine day ones to three day ones to one day one. You know it's great because great, because I had my GPX and I had my Strava route for all of the touring that I did in Taiwan, and so I've got, you know, I also use there's an app called Relive, okay. That will create like a 3D map of the route of any GPX route.

Scott Gruber: 51:46

So I used that and pointed at my photos and it would generate a whole sort of slideshow for it. Which is really, which is really fun that is fun.

Tom Butler: 51:54

Well, scott, I just appreciate so much for you taking the time to come on and talk about this, and I am inspired. You know I am gonna be looking to figure out how to get to Taiwan, along with a lot of other things I want to do, but thanks for coming on.

Scott Gruber: 52:15

Hey, tom, I just joined Cycling Over 60 on Strava just now. Okay, I wanted to let you know part of my personality when I get into a hobby, I tend to go broad, okay, and so I've been listening to a number of podcasts on cycling and your podcast really has meant a lot to me. You know, the kind of sharing that you do on your own personal journey has inspired me to be more healthy and to take care of myself and to ride when I'm in my 70s, and the guests that you have really tell great tales and they resonate with me a lot. So I'm really, really happy that I reached out and rode with you on the Zwift and we'd had the Zoom and had a nice chat while we were riding together and had a nice chat while we were writing together, and then you know that you invited me to this podcast is like a highlight of my year so far.

Tom Butler: 53:13

Well, that's really cool for you to say, and I really appreciate that feedback because that's you know, really, what I want to be about is for people to. I've experienced so much positive things for it and I want other people to as well, so that's fantastic, thank you yeah, true, you mean a lot to a lot of people.

Scott Gruber: 53:32

Man it's uh, you do, you do some some good stuff. Thank you so much for that right attitude thank you.

Tom Butler: 53:39

Well, hopefully we'll get to ride together again on zwift and and on the zoom and um.

Scott Gruber: 53:44

I'll see you in a couple days. It's uh, it's uh, what thursday at three is, usually when you do your ride 3 pm pacific time.

Tom Butler: 53:53

So, yeah, for sure, looking forward to it.

Tom Butler: 53:55

All right, talk to you later now thanks, tom scott talked about taiwan being the hidden gem of cycling locations. I can easily see that being the case. After hearing him talk about his trip With a tour company as connected with cycling as Giant Bike managing the ride, it is easy to imagine it will continue to be an excellent experience. The Giant Adventure website, which is the website for their touring options. They call Taiwan a cycling paradise. It sure seems to me that there would be a sense of pride on behalf of the company to give riders the best experience possible in their home country.

Tom Butler: 54:39

I'm going to see if we can get some of Scott's photos in a post in the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club, so keep an eye open for those. Let me again encourage people to join the Thursday Zoom call. You can get an invite to the call by sending me an email. My email is in the show notes. There's also the Cycling Over 60 Zwift Thursday ride. You can access that by joining the Cycling Over 60 Zwift Club. But even if you aren't doing the Zwift ride, stop by the Zoom chat and say hello. They both happen at 3 pm Pacific time. One final reminder about the Rails to Trails fundraiser. Come join in with Team Huffing and Puffing the link and the password to join the team are in the show notes. That is it for this episode, and I hope you get out this week and enjoy the road, whether you're getting pampered on an organized cycling adventure or whether you're just out near your home and remember, age is just a gear change.