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, June 28, 2015

Doing something worthwhile

Jun distance: 126 km

File photo
Kranji, 69 km. Working hard on the big chain ring, trading fewer revs for more effort, and ultimately not having much fun?

Here's the "theory", now practice. What are the results? Change cadence, change effort, how do the results compare?

Learning isn't not a waste of time, if the student is an earnest learner.

This applies to life too, doesn't it? Putting in so much effort, not really going anywhere. What's the "theory"? What to change? What do you want anyway?

Well, knowing what you don't want is a start.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Changes

Serangoon, 18km. I cycle to where I first learnt to cycle, on the road where I rounded a corner at high speed, crashed into a drain, and I limped hone while my dad pushed my bicycle. So, so much has changed. The area where I grew up looks essentially the same. But that was last century, people have grown up, moved away, moved on. What mattered then, doesn't matter now. And what matters now, didn't matter then.

And there are threads that connect the past to the present, and perhaps the future.

I learnt to cycle, to explore, to live with pain. That hasn't changed.

Monday, June 01, 2015

Soft pedal, hard fall

Mandai, 39 km. The blazing, sunny sky grows dark in the afternoon. Will it rain? I've cleaned and lubed Matt Black's chain for the first time. No matter, let's ride.

I'm more hurtling round the bend than cycling. This is dangerous, as the trail is two way. Some cyclists hurtle past me. I finally get to a quiet place. I see a tree root, attempt to roll over it, and crash with a bang.

The crash is so hard, my cyclocomputer dislodges. What happened?

If I was on my rigid Little Red Tank, I wouldn't have crashed. Still unfamiliar with the suspension fork, I wasn't rolling fast enough. The fork absorbs the impact from the root, I stall and crash.

My first crash on Matt Black!