I've been busy settling into my new job during the past month or so. The company I now work for makes folding bikes and one of the perks of the job is that I get to test ride all sorts of new bikes. On Saturday (10/18) Byron and Mark from the bike blog site Bikehugger.com were in town and dropped by for a ride with us.

I dragged my lovely cousin Erika, who is visiting for a few weeks, along for the ride, figuring it would a nice way for her to see the city and the surrounding area. She told me that the last time she had ridden a bike was about 10 years ago, something I should have paid more attention to earlier.

After getting everyone fitted with their two-wheeled foldable steeds, we left our office at around 11:00 and headed out north along a bike trail that follows along the Danshui River (淡水河) that runs alongside Taipei.

It was a great day, the sun was shinning but it wasn't too hot nor to cold. As usual of late, the bike path was again full of cyclists out enjoying the freedom of their two-wheeled machines. Erika seemed to have a bit of a problem getting up to speed and managing the shifters at the beginning of the ride but she was soon cruising along nicely and seemed to enjoy herself.

Byron and Mark blog about things specifically related to biking on their Bikehugger site and we stopped occasionally to let them film video or take pictures as we filled them in on the latest happenings in the biking scene in Taiwan. Having visited Taipei and toured the local bike paths last year, they were particularly impressed by the very obvious increase in the number of people using the bike paths. The various bike-themed art work that lined the bike path was another point of interest for them too.

After stopping for lunch near Guandu (關渡) we headed off north again along the river. My co-worker Matt blew out the front tire of the bike he was riding after doing a little impromptu off-road riding and we had to stop to patch the tire. After getting the bike back into shape we biked to the Hongshulin (紅樹林) MRT station where we boarded the subway with our rides.