Since I was going on that monster bike ride last week, before I left I had to get my bike tuned up because neither brakes worked and the gears were pretty stiff. Anne found me a place by Qizhang (my apartment) so I headed over there last Friday during lunch.
After a few frustrations with blocked roads that showed as through roads on Google maps, I found sort of where I was supposed to go. A lot of the alleys in Taiwan are not on Google Street View so Anne wasn't able to pin-point the place for me.
It was quite difficult for me to find the place because I was looking for address 3 on lane 8 off of road 302. After circling around I found this door which I thought was the right place.
Actually it was this door below. (to the left of the door above)
There you can see I'm pointing to it. I tried the buzzer but no one answered. Also tried knocking but no one answered. After a while I ended up calling the guy (even though he spoke no english). He popped his head out of a nearby door and let me into his bike shop. I was thinking it would be an actual shop that I could see from the road but no, it was in his house.
He spoke about as much English as I speak Chinese but I was prepared. Anne had written on a piece of paper everything I needed to have tuned up:
- Neither front or back brakes work
- Can't shift into 3rd front gear
- Seat is far too short for my height
- Back tyre kept going sideways
He started working on it and his wife came home who spoke English so her and I chatted for the whole time.
She told me that her husband is a big cyclist and him and a team of other cyclists can go on trips for 100-300 km! By the way his name is Bruce Li. Easy to remember!
She also showed me some bikes they had in the back that were for sale. There's this nice GIANT bike that I was eyeballing. Bruce Li said it would be pretty difficult to find a seat that was taller unless I bought a different style bike. My bike I bought from Carrefour only cost $60, and he figured I might end up spending that much just finding a replacement seat for the fitting on my bike. A new nice bike is around $200 so he recommended if I was going to replace the seat, I should probably just get a new bike. The seat wasn't the only reason to get a new bike. Also the front gear can't go into 3rd and that's unfixable unless I spend at least $30. And also, the front brake is really weak and that's also not fixable unless I spend $30.
So it's looking like I may be getting a new bike shortly. I'll decide when Eliza gets here. If she wants to do some cycling but not too strenuous, I'll see if my current bike can fit her needs. If so then I'll buy myself a different bike; one that fits my height properly.
After an hour or so he said he had done all he could. It was supposed to cost $6 but he only would accept $3 because he said he felt bad that he couldn't fix half of my requests. Either way, great service and if I look at purchasing another bike, their little shop will probably be one of the first places I look!
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