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, March 29, 2009

Pushed

Mar distance: 235 km

Lim Chu Kang, 73 km. I see the trees, high as three stories, lie on their sides, pushed over by the invisible wind. The base of their roots, each as wide as a small car, lies vertical. Elsewhere, I see a truck lie on its side, pushed over by invisible forces as it makes too tight a turn perhaps. I feel tired, but I push on. Today's ride (plus yesterday's) is about twice my weekly total. Yesterday, at a "time trial", I push myself so hard, sweat pours off my body and my glasses almost fall off. Age catches up with me. I trash a kid (late teens, I guess, see the look as his mother looks at me) but someone in his twenties walks away with the $1,000 prize. A bad carpenter blames his tools. I blame my clothes; I forgot my socks, wore the wrong jersey (too thick) and thought I didn't need a headband. It takes energy to lose heat.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Do you know where you're going to?

Sengkang, 42 km. The road ahead may look doable and the (intermediate) destination may look attractive. But after a while, that's all there is. A dead end, or you just go round and round. Is that your destination? Where can you go from here? Or the road ahead may be rocky, yet full of promise; when you round the corner, a new vista opens. Over a babbling brook you go, and a trail beckons ahead. Past knee-high mimosa, over waterlogged ground. The cost might turn out to be higher than any potential benefit. I know, because I was there - several times, before you even knew the place existed. Does it make sense for newbies to follow advice from other newbies?

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Pain and rain

Sembawang, 42 km. Wrist pain: since mid-Sep, six months ago. Back pain: three weeks ago. Knee pain: 1 week. Well, I cycle today anyway. I feel the sun warm the small of my back. Ah, feels good. Then I realise I've no sun block. I tussle within: it might rain, it might not. If I burn, that would hurt. A u-turn isn't necessarily a flip flop. And pain might be creative destruction; that's what exercise is about, to tough up the body. I head head home for my sun block then head as far north as I can. If I could cycle on water, I would be in Malaysia. I pass an olive-green pickup with top-mounted machine gun, with ammunition box attached. I pass a white police van. Soon, I'm in the middle, with a police escort in front and army one behind. Clouds gather, rain falls. But I'm ok, it's rain that refreshes not the kind that drenches. I race against the rain and get home before it really pours.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Short-handed and rattled

Kovan, 17 km. A handlebar is meant to have two hands on it. But one of my hands holds a bar end - and a wheelset. The wheelset rattles. So I seek help from bikeshop man. He says something is trapped in the double-walled rim and I would have to shake it out. To console me for going home empty handed(!), he gives me a makeshift rim tape and tells me why the one I made didn't work well. As it turns out, even if I fix the rattle (I didn't), the wheelset doesn't quite fit (diameter is right, but not the width of the rim). What a difference 1-2 mm makes. What a difference a good fit makes. What sadness if something that used to go well goes awry or away ...

Sunday, March 01, 2009

We've moved, it's over, move on

Old Lim Chu Kang Road, 61 km. For years, whenever I cycle past, someone is tending to the land, watering, weeding. Now, the land is overgrown. Whatever sweat has dripped onto the soil, whatever calluses has formed on hands, what was it in aid of? There's nothing left to show. In the distance, heavy calibre weapons boom like rolling thunder, followed by the pitter patter of small arms fire. Dark clouds gather overhead. What's happened to the people who lived and toiled here? I don't know them, yet I wonder. What more the people I know of? But it's time to move on.