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Joe Buckley's Journal
Merida Cup
posted by at 07:42 PM on December 28, 2007
Part of being in product development means traveling to Taiwan quite often to meet with vendors and partners of ours to work on things for the upcoming model year. One of our biggest partners in Taiwan is of course Merida, who just so happens to sponsor one of the biggest mtn bike races in Taiwan, appropriately named, the Merida Cup. For a couple years now, our friends at Merida have been telling us to come race at their event, but it just never worked out that we were over there at the same time. This year though, the race took place during a time when a lot of Specialized people happened to be in town, so a lot of us planned on competing.
Now, for those of you reading this that have traveled to Taiwan for business, you’ll understand that it is next to impossible to really explain to someone what it’s like there. There are some similarities to the western world (Starbucks, TGI Fridays, shopping malls filled with Western culture, etc), however, it’s in the details themselves that make the Taiwan experience so different. Things like a mother and 3 children blasting down the street on a small scooter with a dog hanging off the side, or a driving style where it is fine to cut people off, even oncoming traffic, and nobody gets upset about it. There are too many crazy things to list here about Taiwan, however, probably the best thing about the country is how friendly the people are. Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen an angry Taiwanese. It’s like the opposite of traveling to Germany (Jan, if you’re reading this, sorry, but there are a lot of frowns in Germany). The Taiwanese are just always friendly, and super hospitable.
About a month before the race, I was taken out to the area where the event was to be held, and shown where the actual trails would be. Of course, that was an experience in itself, as Daryl from Merida took me out there on the back of his scooter, blasting through traffic, dragging his kickstand in the turns, and even making a couple cell phone calls while driving. I swear, if they had urban scooter racing in the Olympics, Taiwan would medal for sure. So we get out there to the “course”, and it’s almost all pavement, with the exception of a couple of dirt sections in it, which I thought was kinda strange. But, this is one of those “details” I mentioned earlier. Don’t worry that it’s a mountain bike race, there’s some dirt in there…. That’s the cool thing though, they don’t care, everyone there still loves it.
We were able to wrangle a handful of folks from the office into competing, including Wyatt (tire engineer, house music fanatic), Schroeder (head of engineering, and fan of anything having to do with a tailwhip), Trav (product manager, bodybuilder), Robb J (engineer and local Hyphee expert), Bob (bike R&D ringleader and master negotiator), Brandon (senior product manager and sugar connoisseur), and Anthony (I don’t know Anthony super well, and will avoid giving him a hard time until a later date. Oh, yeah, I raced also. All in all, we had a pretty diverse crew for the race, and all of us were looking forward to a good time. Some of us took bike preparation pretty seriously, picking out skinnier tires, building up a special bikes that would work really well on the pavement, while a couple of us were content just to “run what we brung”. The only real rule about the race explained by Merida was that we had to ride mountain bikes.
After most of us had gotten our bikes all ready and taken a shakedown ride or two, the day came to split for Taiwan. Just before I left for the airport, I got an email from Daryl saying that our tires have to be at least 1.75” wide, or we’ll be DQ’d at the race. This should have been the first clue into how strange this deal was going to be, but I simply emailed back asking him to find me some tires that were appropriate since I was leaving right then, and had 700x32c’s (what I liked to call 29er tires). Not to mention Brandon and Wyatt had 26x1” tires on their rigs also. A day later we were at Merida for business, and Daryl casually mentions that all bikes need to have front suspension, or the rider would be DQ’d at the race also. This thing was getting more strange by the day it seemed. A mountain bike race that was 75% paved, a minimum tire width required, and front suspension mandatory? I was starting to kinda be over the whole thing and just let them DQ me, I mean, what the hell kinda crap is that? Taiwanese hospitality ended up prevailing though, as Daryl secured us wider tires, and negotiated with the officials at the race to allow our non-suspended bikes to compete.
The night before the race, most of us went out to dinner with some of our vendors at a Japanese restaurant, where Mark started “cheers-ing” everyone into drinking quite a few small cups of beer. This got the owner of the restaurant extremely excited, and she came running over with a large bottle of beer and proceeded to go around the table, drinking with each one of us. It’s pretty hard to turn down a very excited 57 year old lady who probably weighs 90lbs who wants to pound a beer with you. Needless to say, it wasn’t the best pre race prep, but hey, it was Taiwan, and when in Rome….. But Wyatt and Robb had to take it one step further in getting ready for the race. When we all went to bed that night, these two guys decided to head out to someplace called the Liquid Lounge to check out some DJ party that they were all fired up about. I wondered how long they’d make it, as I was already super tired.
The next morning we met in the hotel lobby at 6:30am for our drive out to the race course. Wyatt comes walking down, having returned from the club only an hour earlier. Robb was still asleep (returned the same time as Wyatt), as his double safety measure for waking up didn’t work out. Turns out, setting the alarm at 5am is pretty difficult, and the wake up call doesn’t really work when you forget to hang up the phone after you actually request the wake up call. We were able to get him up and going though, and everyone piled in the bus to munch on some Mcdonalds breakfast sandwiches, and old fashioned McD’s deep fried apple pies. We listened to Robb and Wyatt’s crazy stories from the night before, until they both passed out. Since the event is so big, it took awhile to get there with all the traffic, but when we finally got there, it was booming! There were thousands of Taiwanese bike enthusiasts and racers checking out the pits and getting ready for the races and “fun rides”. It was pretty cool to see the whole scene, as everyone was super pumped on this bike event.
We were all signed up for the pro class, with Ralph Naf and Jose Hermida (super fast world cup xc racers), the Taiwan national XC champion, and some other pretty fast locals. Obviously, we knew none of us had a chance at winning, but it would be an adventure anyhow. At the start line, it was packed with spectators, and racers as well. All the other race categories were starting with us, so it was a big pack of everyone. There was everything from serious looking racers, to weekend warrior types with tennis shoes, flat pedals, and fanny packs! Eventually we started, and were led out on a flat paved road for maybe half a mile, and then started up a pretty good paved climb. All the Taiwanese racers were so fired up, they were taking off! I was getting passed by kids, old guys, and even a few fanny packs. I was thinking, “what the hell? I’m going to get worked!”. A couple minutes later though, the excitement started taking its toll, and everyone started going backwards, and I got some of my ego back.
The course ended up being kinda fun, even with all the pavement. About ¾ of the way up the climb, it turned to dirt, and then at the top, popped back onto pavement for a couple miles, then dropped into a river bed style singletrack. My skinny tire, non suspended bike was pretty rough going down that thing, but it was fun anyway. The Downhill section dumped us into the start/finish area, and the crowd was going nuts, it was super cool to see everyone out there cheering for some silly looking Americans. We kept on going, heading out for the second lap, and right away started running into lapped riders. This wasn’t a big deal, until we dropped into the singletrack descent again, and a bunch of local people were walking their bikes. This caused some problems, as I started pinballing off of locals left and right in efforts to get down the hill fast. Luckily I didn’t cause anyone to crash, and was able to stay up myself, so it turned out ok. The finish was cool, tons of people yelling and going nuts for the racers, something you don’t see here much.
After finishing, I learned that Wyatt had flatted out on the first lap, and Robb J finished the race with essentially no sleep, and a flat tire on the last downhill. Good job Robb, way to rally! Bob went off course somewhere, and ended up taking a minor tour of Southern Taiwan before finding his way back to the finish area. Everyone else finished up fine and had a good time racing. I think all the locals cheering everyone on was the best part about the whole thing, as I said before, you don’t get that here in the states, and all that enthusiasm is contagious. Well, at least I assume they were cheering for us, it’s hard to tell when you can’t understand the language. Maybe they were making fun of us, who knows, but it was fun anyway, and I’m looking forward to racing it again next year!
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Comments (3)
07:28 PM on January 03, 2008 UTC Shimanodog wrote:
What a great story! Where are Robb and Wyatt's posts about the club? Ha! You are right...When in Rome.
08:20 PM on January 03, 2008 UTC Joe Buckley wrote:
Well, Robb is quite the player, so i'm not sure that one night on the town is a big enough deal for him to write about? Wyatt, well, it's Wyatt, so who know's what's up w/him....
07:30 PM on February 02, 2008 UTC Rachael Lambert wrote:
What a story! That sounds awesome. I am only sorry that Eron and I weren't there to partake in the race. The only thing you failed to mention was taking 4th place among those super serious xc racers. Way to go Buckley!!