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, January 24, 2010

Solo twogether

Woodlands, 56 km. I cycle alone, minding my business. To breach the piddling 50 km barrier, I make a little detour. As usual, the usual monkey business is going on. I don't mean the little monkeys that scurry across the road nonchalantly, I mean the big monkeys sitting in their cars which stop on the road without pulling over at the sight of monkeys. Deer freeze at the sight of headlights and it seems some motorists freeze at the sight of monkeys.

I cycle on, minding my own business a tad too much. Then I see a solo cyclist by the roadside. He doesn't seem like in trouble, his bike is ok. I stop anyway. Turns out to be a Frenchman who'd flown to Bangkok, cycled to Laos then Cambodia back to Thailand, to Malaysia and today is his first day in Singapore. He peers at his laptop; he has no maps, just some street names. I become his guide and lead him to a petrol kiosk where he gets a drink and a roadmap.

Along the way we pass foreign labour who sit on a pavement facing each other, eating with their hands under the shade of trees. When they finish eating, they will lie down and rest from their labours in the sun.

I lead the cyclotourist to the housing estate and then I'm lost but he finds the right little street. I leave him at the three-story home of his friend of a friend. He's so happy, he asks a resident to take a photo of us. His next stop: Australia and New Zealand. Bon voyage!

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