#217 - Sunday Ride

This group ride happened Sunday last week. A few of

the Eastern boys thought with Monday being a holiday,

they can afford to have a long ride with us in the more

exciting trails at Mandai.

Anyway, the attending riders who were supposed to

meet at Casuarina Curry at 8:30am were all late due

to the very very heavy morning rain. I, on the other

hand decided to become sneaky again. I am supposed

to accompany my family to Ikea/Queensway Shopping

Centre in the afternoon and so had to cut my ride short.

So what I did was to ride as early as 7am. I went

to Rifle Range Road and went straight to Zheng Hwa

Park by going opposite to the normal trail direction of

Belukar Track. There were no people in ZH Park

to chat with and so I went to Rooty Trail. The entrance

to Rooty Trail has really become water-logged this

past few weeks. I went in and did a slower than

usual ride of the trail and after that I stopped to

eat my breakfast of a sandwich and some cashew

nuts under the 'mango' trees.

I was regulating my pace because I don't want

to meet up with the rest of the peloton at the

Old Upper Thomson exit. I then went to Gangsa

and entered the the trail leading to the Summit.

I didn't stop at the Summit and continued on to

the first stream thinking that the peloton should be

entering the trail from the opposite end by now.

When I got to the 2nd stream I stopped for a loonggg

rest hoping that the peloton would show up ...

no such luck. I pushed on to the third stream

and dilly-dallied seeing as the 'handle' of the

'bridge' is no longer there... still no peloton.

Looks like I have to fetch them from Casuarina

Curry! I resigned to my fate and proceeded

with my ride.... and then finally! I saw StairRider

Deck ducking under one of the fallen trees on

the trail. Contact!

Everybody told me how sneaky my plan was

and as a penalty, I will have to continue riding

without rest hehehehe. I went with the peloton

back to the mango trees. It was while under these

trees when the whole MTB Brothers peloton

arrived. Lots of 'hi's and 'hello's as the Eastern

boys seldom see the MTB Brothers peloton.

After sharing some more biscuits and bananas

with the MTB Brothers, we all went and did

the reverse Rooty Trail. Now the peloton

is quite big. I think it should be more than 20

people!

After the reverse Rooty Trail, we all went to do

the main Bukit Timah MTB loop... That is I did

the last 1/3rd because I had to bail out once

I reached the trail leading back to Rifle Range

Road and clean, dry clothes :-)

Below are some pics of what was on test last week.

SR Deck's new SIDI Eagle Pro 5. Bought from Tay Cycles BT.
Deck comes from Shimano M181N which he said is very stiff.
However, he now declares  these SIDIs to be sooo stiff, that
those M181Ns feel like yesterday's peanut butter sandwich
by comparison. Also, they are not just very stiff, they are
also very light. After saying all those, he looked directly
at my eyes and told me : Mon, Absalon is right, we need these
shoes.  Luckily, Christmas is coming :-) 

Finally! After 2 months of nailbiting and scanning for newspaper
articles if there are cargo ships that sunk en route to Singapore,
Efren has finally found the Truth. The Elsworth Truth according
to him pedals soooo nice on the climbs that he sometimes shed
tears of joy whenever the trail points up. Of course, on the way
down I can't get too much info from him because he basically is
a good descender. So for those who want a good climber but
don't want the ubiquitous Giant bikes, maybe you need to search
for the Truth. You may find the Truth at Hup Leong in Chinatown.

The one on test here is Ronald's new 2012 Fox 150mm, 32mm stanchioned,
Kashima coated fork. Ronald is coming from a a TALAS 160mm
with 36mm stanchions. The claims are that this new fork of his is
400grams lighter from his old one. So while climbing, Ronald
can be heard muttering his mantra '400grams lighter' and this
seemed to do the trick. Of course, when we got to the stairs in
BT, 400grams is almost negligible and did not prevernt
him from blowing a gasket. Anyway, for me the best part
of the new fork are the words 'Kashima coated' on the upper part
each of the stanchions. This should remind you that the stanchions
are Kashima coated in case you ever wonder why your stanchions
seem to be goldish colored hehehehe.