Runway Cycling 2008 + Meetup with Addie

Yesterday was Runway Cycling 2008!

It was the first time I’d actually brought my own bicycle to Runway Cycling. Surprisingly the ride there only took 45 mins and the roads were nice and empty, ok duh cause it was a Sunday and no one was working.

People in party: Me, Sis, Evon, Gwen
Non-people in party: Swifty, Nexus (Sis’s bike), my blades, Gwen’s blades, Gwen’s famous pink umbrella

Me, sis and Evon came early. I lent Evon blades, meaning I had to cycle there like a mountain tortoise carrying blades on my back. We (me and sis) completed the 15km (not the Endurance) this year, since we can’t cycle there, ride 45km and still come back right? Especially after all that dirt-riding yesterday? (Ok, I’m a wimp. I know)

Gwen and Evon bladed not even 1km and then came back lol

As usual: Lot’s of swee bikes and some hot girls.

Not as usual: The goodie bags are getting crappier and crappier and this year it only contained a bottle of water, a phone ‘keychain’ and a lot of useless vouchers 😦
However there was free tao huey zhui. 🙂

Anyway I had hurting legs to match my hurting arms and everything hurt so much I didn’t feel like riding Knut out later.

Went out with Addie in the evening to Starbucks. It was great seeing her again 🙂
Thanks for the tips for my sis, will tell her to go Starbucks more lol

Scrambler-cycles!

Saw this kid riding one. Cute, but I wouldn’t trade either Knut or Swifty for one though…

Cyclists on the footpath

Ok, I have failed to receive some crucial files again and therefore I cannot start work. Needless to say, I am a little peeved.

If I can’t start work, I shall have to blog instead.

Ok, one issue keeps coming up, and it is the war between cyclists and pedestrians.

The bicycle is a poor creature. Scorned by cars, hated by pedestrians.

Yes, I may be a cyclist but I’m afraid I can’t defend my fellow cyclists here.

There is a place for everything.
The footpath is not a place to ride fast.
You want to ride fast, go on the road, but be aware that you also must watch out for the traffic.
You want to stay on the footpath, firstly you must be aware that the footpath is mainly for the use of pedestrians, and they are being nice enough to let you ride alongside them.

Footpath rules I follow:

A lot of this has nothing to do with bicycle skills. It’s more an issue of considerate behaviour (i.e. not scaring/hitting pedestrians).

On the footpath, I ride slowly.
When I see a pedestrian, I slow down from quite a distance away.
If the pedestrian is not facing me and I need to pass them, I pass them as slow as I can leaving the largest gap possible between me and the pedestrian.
If the pedestrian is unaware that there is a bicycle behind him, I call out “excuse me!” and thank him as I cycle past.
I make sure my brakes work and know how much stopping distance my bicycle will allow.
I do have to get down and walk my bike often. Footpath cycling makes for a lot of walking and again this has nothing to do with your bike-handling ability, it’s more an issue of not inconveniencing drivers and not scaring pedestrians.

In short, some important things to bear in mind about footpath cycling:
Rider must have sufficient skill to ride the bike slowly, stop consistently.
No stunts. No “high-level” actions (wheelies, stoppies, riding like motoGP etc.)
Rider must be able to think from other’s points of view (drivers, pedestrians).
Rider must ride in a way that is consistent with the expectations of others (drivers, pedestrians) i.e. riding in a straight line is consistent with people’s expectations, pulling wheelies is not.
Remember that since a bicycle lacks any conventional ways of signalling, whatever you do sends a signal to others around you. Make your intention as obvious as possible. This includes stuff like on-road: your lane positioning, speed, where you are looking, checking behind you (preparing to do something strange like stop or change lane position), footpath: the speed you are moving, position in relation to pedestrian, dismounting from the bike (not intending to ride across obstacle i.e. filter lane). And signal early.
And please look, not just where you are going, but also for anything that might intercept you halfway along your path.

Every time I hear of another cyclist inconveniencing pedestrians, it really makes my blood boil.

Another missed opportunity

Today, I was cutting through Bishan park heading towards Old Upper Thomson Road when I encountered a small flight of stairs. Although it looked quite ridable, due to the presence of spectators around the area and an uncle doing something to his bicycle on the track after the stairs, I suddenly lacked the guts to ride it.

On hindsight, maybe I should have just ridden down it. Haiz.

Don’t serve your gear, let you gear serve you!

I own a beautiful bicycle that I bought a few years ago that cost me a few hundred bucks (I think around $500 but don’t take my word for it, it was a loooong time ago).
A few hundred bucks to a student is not a small amount.
If anyone dropped my bicycle, I would go ballistic.
(The irony of this is that that bicycle is a mountain bike, which is supposed to be built for abuse anyway)
Many years later, I wised up to the fact that the bike is meant to withstand abuse anyway, and not riding it to it’s (intended, I’m not going to take responsibility for people riding their Aleocas down steep drops and stuff like that) limit is just a waste of whatever money you spent on it.

If you can’t drop your bike (bicycle or motorbike or whatever) without spoiling your entire day and killing whatever nut caused it to happen and go ballistic over every single scratch, you’re serving your gear.
If you have to sit around not riding your motorcycle (even though you need to) cause you can’t afford petrol, can’t afford replacement parts, etc. you’re serving your gear.
If you don’t ride your bike just because you’re embarassed about what people will think about you when you’re on it (don’t laugh, it happened to me), you’re also serving your gear.
(If you don’t want to ride but your bike makes you do it to charge up her battery or whatever, you’re serving your gear. Fuck, this always happens to me during holidays 😦 Ok Knut, right now I want to ride my Swifty ok? Now don’t start going all low-batt and needing-a-push-start on me)

Now, when I buy a piece of gear, I look at it in this way:
If it can be destroyed in the cause of proper usage without me going totally ballistic over it and sitting around sulking or taking risks with my safety because I can’t afford a new one, I’ll buy it.
If I can maintain it comfortably without having to eat grass or cut costs, I’ll buy it.
(This is one of the reasons why I have been taking so long to decide whether I want to do motocross. A few hundred dollars is still not a small amount to me right now)

No point paying an arm and a leg for something “extreme” and pussying around with it just cause you can’t afford to get it replaced.That’s just stupid.

Ganguro!

You know what they say about your natural hair colour matching your skin colour best?

Well, sadly for me it is not true.

That day I got sunburnt riding from seletar to punggol.

Few days later, I got sunburnt again recce-ing the AMK to Paya Lebar route.

And now I am damn black! It looks really odd and strange and my skin colour doesn’t suit my hair colour at all!

Shit, maybe I should just dye my hair blonde and become a ganguro.

Am very restless… feel like going offroad again, alone if I really have to ahahahahaha. But have to sit around and be restless cause it’s the weekend and my pa will be at home and he doesn’t like me riding anything with two wheels unless it’s around the park which is like totally =_=”‘

Swifty hits the road

Since KTM backed out of cycling last evening due to some commitments (which resulted in SATan and SATan’s pa nearly having no dinner, therefore she was pissed), SATan decided to do some cycling today.

And what better thing to do than recce the route from AMK to Paya Lebar airbase?

So, armed with nothing but a waterbottle, three snackbars and an outdated street directory, I set off on my trusty “little” blue bicycle Swifty.

The intended route was like this: Start > Bishan park > Kallang park connector > braddell road > bartley road > upper paya lebar road > (optional:Tai Seng link > Tai Seng ave) > Airport Road > End

Well, guess what!
I completed it!
(I got a little lost along the way but it was minor)

At the end of the Kallang part connector part, I ate my first snackbar.
Upon reaching Paya Lebar air base, I ate my second and third snackbar (they were packaged together)
So far so good.
But it was during the trip back when I started getting really really tired.
I felt like a little bit inside me had died of exhaustion.
Upon reaching my neighbourhood, I immediately went to get a drink. they didn’t have Pocari Sweat so I took 100-plus.
It was the most satisfying can of 100-plus in the whole world.

Doable? Definitely yes.
Tiring? OF COURSE!!!!
Manageable for all members of the party? Errrr… Seriously, I really don’t know. You need pretty good road sense here (traffic is a tad heavy at some parts), and a little bit of stamina. And being able to take a few bumps doesn’t hurt too.
Appropriate to take this route to Runway Cycling? Depends on how “hardcore” you are, haha. And if I were to take this route, I’d probably sign up for the leisure route or similar. Still need energy for the home trip.

Runway Cycling 2008

Yes, this year we have runway cycling again.

Er… this question sounds a bit old but… who wants to go? We can cycle to Paya Lebar together ba…

I’m bringing my mean blue dirty monster!

Ouchs sunburn

My arm hurts from the sunburn on Friday. In case it isn’t clear, these are the events that led to the sunburn.
After calling Dirtwheel to tow my stranded bike, I went MTBing again.
We rode from Seletar to Punggol (I think but don’t trust my direction cause my direction is super screwed heh)

Hm, there were a lot of new experiences.

It was my first time cornering through sand.
KTM skidded but managed to recover.
I skidded and fell @$%#$%!!! (And yelled “Nabei” on top of it… KTM didn’t hear lolz)
Don’t mess with soft sand k? It’s deceptively difficult!
(Especially when you accidently stop on it in the wrong gear and starting again is one hell of a bitch)
The damage: 1 ‘orh cheh’ (bruise) on the leg. Nothing much (it was soft sand)

Then we also had to cross a bridge, but it was high tide and the bridge was totally submerged.
It was my first time riding through water.
Erm… the feeling was very weird lor. There was all this debris near the water that I had to navigate and went I entered the water, I had this feeling like I was riding through a fish tank. Not to mention the strange bumps hidden underwater and the row of holes in the bridge (that fortunately wasn’t hidden)
The water was all the way up until my pedals, therefore my whole shoe was submerged and is still hanging up in the balcony to dry.
On the way there we didn’t know whether to ride through or not but we were lazy to lube chain and sprocket (and I had never been through water before and couldn’t swim) so we just carried our bike across.
Then there was this security guard coming toward us to tick us off so we rode away.
On the way back, we decided to ride across cause we could lube chain back at the van. I realised the guard did not intend to tick us off after all, just tell us to ride our bikes across, cause there was a sign that said something like “No pedestrians, only bikes and vehicles allowed” on the bridge.
Hohohoho!
(I would have taken a photo but I don’t carry my hp with me when biking)

Other than that it was quite an easy ride la.

Anyway the water washed all the lube off my chain.
Think I need to go lube chain again.

And now I am two-toned again. Hohohohoho!

Bicycle riding instructional video… not!

Ayumi “riding” a bicycle.
Should make May, Evon and C watch this lol.

Adorable Ayumi….
Would willingly let her crash my motorbike if she wanted…
(I don’t think she would dare though…)