Gimme a break

Jalan Bahar, 76 km.

A returned Singaporean wants to ride
I get up early and oblige.
Not that I sleep well, bad dreams affect shut-eye.
Dark clouds float on high, so we say goodbye.
How quickly the road turns wet from dry.
At a bus stop I sit and sigh.
Grey reaches far as I see with my eye.
I ride on, with my bed I've a date.
But I soon realise, I'm 'neath the edge of the cloud.
As sudden as it hid, sunshine bursts through the grey cloud.
My drive-train is blown dry.
My tyre holds up too, on the biggest hole I'd ever patched.
Oh what a break, my skin nor my bones don't break.

New route, new loop

Woodlands, 55 km. I hear thunder rumble at dawn, wonder if I get to cycle today, and to back to sleep. When I get up, the sun is up. It is a scorcher. I'm not sure where to go and head north, poking my wheel (and nose) just a bit off the beaten track. And that little bit extra leads me to a familiar road that takes me home. Little things, can mean a lot ...

Grey skies and everything nice

Admiralty Road West, 44 km. Unlike past weekends (burn in morning, rain in afternoon), the morning sky is a cloudy sky. To taunt the clouds, I put on my sunblock and cycle with my camera. I retire my very first pair of bicycle shorts (5.5 years old) and ride with a new pair. When my bum feels good, so does my brain. What comfort; sentimentality and hanging on had gotten in the way of comfort. It (the sky, not the shorts) rains but does not pour. The water does not spray up in a parabola from my wheels. My saddle bag feels dry but it is not. So what if it is plastic, the water gets in somehow and my camera gets damp. But it bothers me not. Because it still works. Back home, I warm up my insides with home-brewed chai, after a messy, foul-tasting first attempt on Fri.

Adversity, adaptability

Admiralty Road West, 59 km. Would you spend a night in a place on Singapore's top 10 most haunted list? Well, hundreds of foreign workers spend every night there, a place formerly known as View Road Hospital. I reckon it was vacated 20 years ago, but now, it buzzes with life. As I wander about the north, I see more of them. Strangers, thrown together by a common desire to make a living. Some chat together, others just gather and sit separately by themselves. I'm your kind, please be kind. Many of them live in container-like structures stacked on high. Across their abode, live the locals in flats stacked on high.

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.

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?

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.

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 ...

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.

Exhilaration acceleration

Feb distance: 220 km

East Coast, 70 km. Once in a while, I have a good day. For warm up, I cycle 12 km to the start point: the Formula 1 pit. I've wanted to cycle on the race track and now I can. There's 2,400 of us doing the 40 km OCBC Cycle Singapore challenge. We're packed like cattle but when the ride starts we somehow space out. I see dropped water bottles (which must've bounced out of bottle cages as we speed over speed bumps). I also see two cyclists go down in separate incidences in shuddering turns but I'm without a scratch as my mountain bike is oh so nippy. In the risky East Coast Park area, we're early enough to avoid the misguided kids and pedestrians (though they must be especially foolhardy to venture on the wrong track with pelotons bearing down). I hang on grimly at 35-38 km/h and start overtaking in the last few km. Near the finish line, I sprint and hear the commentator say, "Here comes a mountain bike, it's not built for speed ... but look at that, faster than a racing bike" as I overtake a spent roadie. I might've been the first mountain biker to cross the finish line but kudos to the guy on knobbies who kept up until the last few km. Oh yes, what a beautiful day.