Cycling is like life. Cycling with no goal is meaningless. What meaning is there cycling in circles? Or living aimlessly? Meaning comes from direction and destination. Join me in my life's journey on a mountain bike :)

Blogging since 2003. Thank you for reading :))

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Riding into the sunrise

Oct distance travelled: 706 km

To Changi, 94 km. Up before the crack of dawn, heading east into the sunrise. Lots of cyclists tear up and down Changi Coast Road, including people I haven't seen for a while eg AZ, GC and some Bikers 21. TYS, AL and I take turns to draft each other, then the roadies drop me. Well, I ain't the last guy on the way back. I abandon my tailing of three triathletes at 38 km/h to wait. It's a nice ride. I like cranking the pedals and feeling the visceral thrill of the bicycle surging forward. It's like flying headlong into the wind. At TYS' home, we watch digital photos of her ride to Barelang (Indonesia) and Mount Fuji (Japan). She cooks us soba for lunch too! Us guys snooze after that, while she runs errands. Men ...

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

When things ain't that bad

To Admiralty Road East, 39 km. I dislike cycling in the rain. Dirt gets all over me and, more importantly, on the drive train. It's cold, visibility is poor and brake stopping power drops dramatically. It starts to drizzle. One cyclist turns for home. The other three push on. It starts to pour. Should've turned back too, I chide myself. We seek refuge at Bottle Tree restaurant. And it's a really good ride after all. After it pours, it stops. We see a tree shaped like a bottle for the first time - it's several hundred years old. Fishermen line the banks of the river, and so are catfish. WH hasn't seen these sights before. She's happy, I'm happy. We have a nice chat at a coffeeshop. And R insists on giving us a treat.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

And that's like me

To Admiralty Road East, 54 km. She's a newbie who comes across my website and seeks advice on what bicycle to buy. Before I know it, she's got a Ghost and is exploring the neighbourhood by herself. That's just like me three years ago. So I offer to be a tour guide (just like AF did for me). I show her sights of Singapore she's never seen before. Twice, I nearly crash into her - all my fault; the last time I biked with a newbie was 1.5 years ago. After a few hours, I drop her off where we first meet and scoot for home as the weather turns bad. Which is too bad, since I want to log more km and chase roadies. I draft a truck at 44 km/h and run the gauntlet along Lentor Ave past SLE. Ah, that's what I call riding, three times faster than the usual newbie speed of 15 km/h. In Ang Mo Kio, a learner driver swoops in front of me. I overtake her and glare. She and her instructor are smiling. Solved! The mystery of why Singapore drivers do what they do to cyclists - they learn it in driving school.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

A series of firsts and almost the last

Sat-Sun 16-17 Oct 04:
To Batu Pahat, Johore, Malaysia, 319 km. My first solo round trip abroad. The first time I'm wearing contact lenses abroad. The first time I've logged a total of 15,000 km on my bike. And the first time that I (almost) have enough of cycling.

There's such a thing as too much of a good thing: cycling two American centuries (100 miles) in as many days. In Singapore, the longest distance (round island) is only 120 km. And one can eat and drink almost anywhere. Not so in huge Malaysia; I ride 160 km and I'm still in Johore. And as the fasting month has started, many eating places are closed.

Day 1 The trip starts badly enough, with a gridlock of buses just before the causeway. The thought of being crushed by buses crosses my mind. I see the roadkill of birds, chicken, cat and bat, and I almost join a smashed monkey on the road as I try to avoid it. The journey takes its toll; My speed drops from 30+ km/h to around 20, thanks to an incessant headwind. Also incessant is the thought: "why am I doing this". Riding solo takes mental strength to drown out such thoughts, besides physical strength.

I'm so tired of looking at the distance crawl by on my cyclo computer. I switch to average speed mode; my performance indicator now is not distance, but average speed. The computer tells me it is 23.3 km/h. The series of hills at the end of my century ride mocks me. At Batu Pahat, I feast on mee goreng, one prata and a cup of Milo. All for RM4. That's half the price in Singapore.

Day 2 I'm on the road before dawn. Asking for directions from two persons is a good decision that puts me on the right road. I mock the hills before me with an average speed of 23.8 km/h and follow the road home. Which takes me past two wrecked cars, one on either side of the road. What a smash it was. Nearer habitation, a dog ducks under a gate and runs after me. After Pontian, I cycle non-stop for three hours - the raging traffic around me fills me with adrenalin.

Dodging potholes with traffic whizzing past. One spill and that would've been the end of me. Who says road riding is tame compared to mountain biking? I must've gulped so much, my sore throat is gone. I brake at a junction. The rear wheel protests, my bike shudders and I hear a metallic sound. I pull over the side and note that my baggage has shifted on the seatpost rack. A grain of sand must've gotten into the brake block. And the sound is from my compass hitting the spokes. And I thought a spoke had broken. My waistpouch digs into my back. Back in Singapore, a jerk motorcyclist swerves into my path. Welcome home - as usual, I have to take evasive action in Singapore and not during the hundreds of km in Malaysia.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Alfresco dining

To Admiralty Road West, 39 km. The rain has stopped. It's cool and misty. The dark foreign talent gather after a hard day's work in the shipyard to dine in the open air. Under the trees, on the pavement, on the grass. Unlike their white counterparts in town. This Wed night, I cycle alone as no one is at the rendezvous point. Some motorists try to contact me, including one handicapped driver. At least, I think she's handicapped; she turns her steering wheel, but is incapable of turning on her signal light.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Self-organised

To Choa Chu Kang, 73 km. From different directions they come, dressed in different colours and on different bicycles. At 8.25 am, helmets are donned, bikes are mounted and we're off. "No need for PAP to organise," says one cyclist of the Thomson Sunday Ride. This is my second such ride, the first being on 29 Aug. I'm still in the 30th percentile, but this time, I manage to keep the peloton in sight along Mandai Road. I pass scattered groups along the route. I latch on to a few roadies at Kranji, then shake them off. Soon, I'm alone again. Deja vu. Yesterday, I was among 20 riders who were left behind. Last year, we'd cycled at least 400km for training and on the actual ride for charity. Last night, we didn't make it the few metres up the stage to receive our Commissioner of Police Awards; the ceremony went awry for us. Why am I writing this? Because Flanker and Papa Bear asked me to.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Green-eyed monster


To Choa Chu Kang, 88 km. When we reach the finish line of Hunt on Wheels treasure hunt, we weren't the first. Some of the places and clues are hard to deal with, and we wait for a team member to catch up. Several teams pass us by. Just 15 minutes separate us from the first team (their time 03:07:00). There are six prizes for 30 teams. We're third (our time 03:21:58; six minutes behind second team 03:15:59). Our prizes are so-so; the winning team gets $1,000 worth of prizes, including OGK helmets and CamelBaks. My satisfaction at being third withers when I see the winners with their loot. What a terrible thing envy is. There's reason to be happy: no one got killed or maimed and we did win prizes - including a hamper of cooking oil(!) and airhorns. I learn some lessons on teamwork too:

When you're in the team, you gotta work. It ain't called teamWORK for nothing. We can only move as fast as the slowest worker. Our slowest cyclist is sporting and doesn't complain about the pace; we race for over three hours without rest!
We win as a team, or lose as a team. They made me the team leader. Sometimes, I shouldn't have listened to their advice (they were wrong). Sometimes, I'm glad I listened to their advice (I was wrong). What's important is, we correct the wrongs and (literally) move on.
Keep the goal in mind. We saw the prizes after the race and one of us said: "Should've cycled faster." Yeah.
The race is organised by Yew Tee Zone 11 Residents Committee.
Photo courtesy of pcss38