Feel the love of bicycling in busy Taipei

We were guys staying at the same Taiwan hotel with our mistresses.

He looked like a Taiwanese gangster, with permed hair, black suit and pointy knockoff Italian loafers. It was 5:30 a.m. and he was renting a room for a few hours with a woman in a leather miniskirt and the longest false eyelashes I've ever seen. They had no luggage.

My mistress was my $4,000 carbon-fiber bicycle, and I was carrying my beloved out of the hotel lobby for a morning workout when I passed the couple as they were checking in. It must have been a surreal sight for them, a tall Western guy in a red polka-dot jersey and tight Spandex shorts, lugging a fancy magenta-colored road bike.

I was doing what I love to do — taking my bike on a business trip and staying at an inexpensive, no-frills hotel close to some spectacular cycling terrain.

This time, I was bunking at the Feeling Hotel — one of the numerous "love hotels" in Taipei, Taiwan's capital.

They are cheap places often used for lunchtime flings and one-night stands in crowded Taipei, where privacy can be hard to find. Rooms can be rented by the hour, and no questions are asked. That means you can roll a bike through the lobby and wedge it in the elevator without anyone hassling you. The staff is used to weirdness.

Although they may sound seedy, establishments like the Feeling Hotel are clean and well-run by professional and friendly staff. They're usually small and only offer bare-bones amenities, but that often means the rooms are inexpensive, about $50 a night at the Feeling Hotel. This makes them popular with families and business travelers during these hard economic times.

The biggest plus for me is that the Feeling Hotel is at the base of the spectacular mountains of Yangmingshan National Park, just outside of Taipei. The hotel in the suburb of Tienmu — long popular with expats — is also surrounded by great restaurants, stores and bike shops, but few standard hotels.

Whenever I travel for my job, I try to bring my bike along. I'm a serious cyclist who tries to stay in race shape, so I can't afford to be off the bike during trips that can last as long as a month.

I would much rather explore a city by bike, and traveling with one is easy with the latest bike boxes and bags that are relatively light and protect your rig.

In Taipei, I can get in a tough two-hour ride in the mountains before work if I get out the door by 5:30 a.m. It's a fantastic ride that begins in the "Blade Runner"-like urban chaos of Taipei and within a few miles takes you into the lush green mountains that provide terrific views of the humming, sprawling city below.

Taiwan is undergoing a cycling renaissance. Bicycles were once the main form of transport for the masses before the nation evolved into a manufacturing juggernaut. But the people who shifted to motor scooters and then cars are rediscovering the joys of cycling. On the weekends in Yangmingshan National Park, the roads are filled with people pedaling all sorts of bikes.

My favorite ride is a 57-mile out-and-back tour from the Feeling Hotel, over the mountains in Yangmingshan National Park and down to Jin Shan beach on the Pacific Coast. The park's hot sulfur vents spew steamy clouds into the air, and the tropical rain forest is loaded with bamboo groves and tall grasses.

After my ride I returned to the hotel absolutely exhausted, but grinning from being in the spectacular outdoors. I lugged my bike up the steps of the Feeling Hotel. As I stepped into the lobby, I saw the Taiwanese man in the black suit with his date. He was also smiling, looking tired but happy.