Road hazard

Dec distance: 1,070 (includes Taiwan trip, see Jan entry)

Old Upper Thomson Road, 31 km. I use my new cleats with my road pedals and find them rather tight - though I manage to unclip as a van turns and cuts me off at the kerb. I haven't even left the carpark yet! I also test a long-sleeved cycling jersey - the first time I'm wearing one. It is warm now, but up in the mountains up north, I wonder if I'll be snug like a bug in a rug or chattering monkey-like in the cold.

The monkeys are out in force today. A car stops and the troop scampers towards it. What would've happened if I was between the car and the troop? Drivers and their passengers, comfortable in their cars, ignore the "do not feed the monkey signs". Why do people keep feeding the monkeys, blocking the road with their cars and littering the road with food? Perhaps they imagine they are on a DIY safari.

While monkeys are all over the road, they are less of a road hazard - they do keep an eye and ear out for what's coming, calculate speed, distance and direction and get out of the way. Unlike some pedestrians.

To fix the pedals, a little kitchen cleaner, some lube for the pivots and some grease where cleats interface with the pedal should do the trick. I hope. I'll know if hope become reality if I do another road test. But first, there are other things to check and service: rims, brake pads, rear derailleur cables, the all important transmission ... and all that packing!

Oral exercise

Pasir Ris, 78 km. For them, it's a round island ride today. For me, it's a training ride where I do some interval training before I meet them, and during too. I stay behind at junctions to wait for the last cyclist, then sprint to the front till the next junction. The peloton, with its blinking white lights, look like a constellation of stars. After a few hours, I have enough. Time for me to streak off like a comet and reach home before midnight.

This is exercise for my cardiovascular system and legs. And my vocal cords.

At the start of the ride, lady crosses the road, lost in her own thoughts, looking straight ahead as if I was wind in her ear. I shout, then shriek as I near collision. Fortunately there was a bus bay for me to swerve into. As I pass her, she clutches her chest in horror while I clutch my handlebars. At the end of the ride, a driver slips out from a slip road. He sees me and stops just so the metal body of his car and my body can conduct heat exchange.

Jam session

30 km, Old Upper Thomson Road. With the prospect of cycling 2,700m up a mountain soon, it's time to spin the wheels a little more. A 30 km training ride isn't going to do much, but some training is better than nothing, especially if there's some sprint training thrown in to jazz things up, get more of of a short distance and break the monotony.

The monkeys are out in force, grooming themselves, nit picking and ignoring me as I whizz by. Which is a good thing. If one or more of them jumps on me and clean their teeth on my skin, I'd get a bad case of road rash and perhaps some dents too :o

Round on the ground

Paya Lebar, 49 km. Email announces we meet at 1100. As I'm not familiar with the place, I allow buffer time but find the place at 1030. I wait till the minute hand yawns clear past 1100 then call my friends.

After waiting outside a piano shop to kill time softly, I start doing some laps and loops. On the grass, through the grass, under the overhead train tracks I go. My knobby tyres slip and slide in the gooey mud; slowing down and keeping up the traction keeps me upright. Globs of cool mud fling up too, onto my handlebar and my cool orange sunglasses.

People in the area must've thought I've gone mad. Or maybe they thought they were going mad, as in "didn't I just see that guy a few minutes ago?" Round and round I go, as the minute hand goes full circle.

My new cleats, on their first outing, get their first taste of mud. It is amazing how efficient new cleats feel. All that energy and efficiency lost during Bike n Blade, all that time lost!

Get on with it

Woodlands, 56 km. The phrase "weather pattern" exists for a reason. For the past few Sundays, the sun burns in the morning and afternoon. By mid afternoon, the sun pulls over a dark quilt of clouds and snores like thunder. Then rain pours down for hours, so a night ride would be way after dinner and close to bed time. So I don't cycle yesterday, because I didn't get on with it and chose to do (or not do) other things. Can you beat the weather? Well yes, but you'll get soaking wet. No fun. But no cycling is also no fun. And cycling on Monday, a working day, means more traffic dodging. Trade-offs.

Over the weekend, I saw someone who got on with it. A skateboarder with a full-face helmet. Perched on steep slope. With a cape. When he scoots off in full flight, he crouches down. When traffic nears, he stands up, stretches out his arms to unfurl his cape like a drag chute. Then he goes back up for more. He takes care to pack his chute around his ankles before he sets off. He also scans the road for cars. His neck depends on it.

As for me, my "achievements" are:
a) adjusting my saddle using a spirit level. I've been sliding down; what I'd thought was level wasn't, due to parallax error. Errors get us down. Is your spirit level?
b) changing the worn-out cleats on my shoes later in the day, and getting them just so by using a marker (redundant) and matching (precision) the old indentations with the new cleats before tightening them. For greater pedaling efficiency. So I can go at breakneck speed at breathe-taking distances. Soon :p

Two cups of tea

Nov distance: 318 km

Changi, 58 km. To see how much (or little) I can take, I drink two cups of tea for breakfast and head east to meet some fellow cyclo-tourists and discuss our coming big ride. Things to find out include:
Weather:  temperature is one thing, wind chill is another.  Being out in the cold is no joke
Accommodation: is there room for our bicycles or will they be left to the elements and thieves? Is there running water? A place to handwash laundry? Toilet paper and towels? How many persons to a room? Or would it be snore-fest in a dorm?
Road: the roads may be tarred, but if there's monsoon and landslides, expect off-road conditions on the road. There may be slime and moss in dark tunnels. Which means, road trip with fat tyres?

Monday blues ... not!

Punggol, 45 km

Sunday morning was sunny
Then it turned rainy
I thought I'd cycle at night
But that was not to be

Today I'm on leave
So I don't come to grief
I explore the sea shore
And meander as I please.

Creature comforts

Old Upper Thomson Road, 30 km. Hour after hour, the rain buckets down. The sky stays cloudy and grey. The rain stops, only to start again. Only after night falls does the rainfall stop. If I didn't have a trip up the mountains in winter coming up, I'd stay indoors.

I hustle out the door to cycle after dinner, only to feel hungry a few km later. Round and round the circuit I go, along the road that winds among the trees, cutting a swathe through the moist, post-rain air.

Raindrops glisten on the leaves. I wonder about the monkeys - how do they sleep in the jungle? What do they do when it rains? How do the little furry creatures cope without houses and other creature comforts?

Perhaps they cope because they don't think they can't.

A study in contrasts

File photo

Tuas, 130 km. Once in a long while, my alarm clock works on a weekend morning so I can play. I want to stay in bed but roll out before dawn and cycle north to head south. Though I usually cycle alone, there are 8x that number today.

There are new bicycles (a Wheeler), old bicycles (an Alpinestar), road bikes, mountain bikes and a foldie. The foldie rider, on her third journey with it, folds before the first rest stop. I cycle with her to the nearest train station so she can board the train with her bicycle. Meanwhile, the main body moves on and it takes some doing to find them.

This ride is touted as an 85km+ ride. Some cyclists turn up with backpacks and hydration bladders. One looks at my two water bottles and no bag.

Where we start from to join the ride is different. But it's the same 85 km journey. What we carry with us is so different. And what we make of the ride, what we have in our heads affects where we finish.

Timing

Woodlands, 55 km. I've done this loop so many times, but never at night. The scent of Frangipani flowers fills the night air as I cycle in a car-sparse area. Even the main roads seem bare of cars. It's dinner time, I guess. As I pass the shipyard workmen quarters, the smell of curry wafts through the air. The sun has set, the roads and air have cooled. Same route, different time of day, different experience.

Doing the same thing at a different time can lead to a different result.