#218 - Climb

Have you ever stored your Nike's for a long period of time
and then decided to wear them? What happens? Most probably
the sole will peel. This pair of MadRocks was stored for two
years and when I decided to wear them ... no issues whatsoever.
Highly recommended climbing shoes. BUT next time, I will try
5.10s and the only reason is that they make MTB shoes hehehe.

Say 'Climb!' and the first thing that I think of

is Mt. Faber ... but a few years ago (2 years?),
I have always equated climb with the artificial

rock wall at Climb Asia in Farrer Park.

I have always wanted to go back and climb since

that is my way of relaxing and stretching. Yes, I

know there is Yoga for that ... but I always get

reminded of circus contortionists when I hear 'Yoga'.

Besides, climbing puts the fun into relaxing and

stretching! So, with NoLights Louie in tow, I

jumped out of my comfort zone, into the unknown

otherwise known as Bouldering AKA Tab's Specialty.

It's not that bad. It's not like the first downhill

in Bukit Timah or the whole of Kent Ridge Park.

The worst that I faced were some girls out-climbing

me and sniggering at my clumsiness...

... and so before I keep on digressing, here's last

night's highlights!

Action !



#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.



#216 - Hiking

My toughest hike to date! I finally decided
to suck it up and finish climbing the Catchment
Path. Anyway, before I did this climb I did
some preparations... errr, actually, just one
preparation. I called one lady friend to go with
me. Hehehe so now, if I ever felt the need to
wuss out again on the stair climbs, all I need to
do is look over my shoulder and see my
friend suffering in silence. That should make me
feel like a weakling and spur me on ... in theory :-)

This hike started nicely because instead of
meeting my friend at King Albert Park McDonald's,
we met on bus 171. We accidentally took the
same bus. So no, time wasted there.

We went into Durian Loop first. Since we
were coming from the direction of Dunearn to
Rifle Range, this trail points upwards. This is a
nice warmup for what's to follow.

After Durian Loop, we crossed over to Bukit
Timah and headed to Catchment Path... and this
time I completed the climb. The only disappointing thing
is that I was expecting Catchment Path to go allll
the way to the summit. But no, it leads to the main
road. We walked a few paces up the main road
and then continued climbing using the Summit Path.
Around this time, I am already wondering why these
trails in BT are called 'path' when in reality they
are STAIRS !!!!

Once we got to the Summit, we then headed down
to Rengas Path and then to the Dairy Farm Loop ...
at first I thought since we already left the summit,
all trails should be pointing down... but no! Whoever
designed these trails made sure we will have a
great workout by making us climb again, then go
down, then climb.. you get the picture?

Anyway, we were already wondering if we
were walking around in circles when we heard
a group of people ask another group where the
particular trail that we're on leads. The answer
was that the trail leads to some waterfalls !

My friend and I thought 'WOW!!!' ! There's
actually a waterfall in here?! So on we went
with renewed energy. After a couple of paces
we started hearing what my friend described
as "heavy rain falling on the jungle canopy". After
a few paces more ... we finally came where the
noise seemed to be coming from but ... there
were no waterfalls ... then we looked down
and it dawned upon us .... ohhhhhhh 'waterfall'.
Yup, forget any romantic notion that you have
in your head about the word 'waterfall'. Here
it is being used loosely. See the pic above where
I doused my head with water? That's the waterfall.
But the water is very cold ... and I saw some
guys refilling their water bottles from that
stream !

All in all, the hike was good fun. It provided 2
full hours of suffering, I mean exercise :-)
It's just that on weekends, the place gets a
little crowded ... maybe I'll try to go there on
a weekday ... or maybe at night !

#215 - Hiking

Pictures from Saturday's hike.



Waterproof Hi-Tec Otter Trail boots. Breaking in by
using it to go to work.



My son decided he wants my other pair of

hiking boots and so I had to get myself this pair

of cheaper Hi-Tec Otter Trail waterproof boots.

World Of Sports had a 10% + 30% sale and so I

got these boots for around 75$... and yup, I'll add

this pair to my 'to write a review' list.

On the left is a trekking pole tip, on the right
is a nordic walking pole tip.

The nice part of the hike today wasn't just the new
boots though.... We were walking around Velocity Mall
last Friday. We went to the usual places like Running
Lab (@1st floor), 2XU, Outdoors and WOS (all three on
the 2nd floor) and lastly, to these 2 stores on the 3rd floor.
The first store on the 3rd floor is related to WOS. They sell
Columbia, Salomon and Hi-Tec. The other store (Xtrekkers?)
sells Garmont hiking boots (expensive!) and other high end
trekking / mountain climbing stuff. One of the staff there
is really very eager to serve. His enthusiasm verges on
the irritating. However, when I was looking at a pair of
Silva 'trekking poles' (<-- notice the quotes, i'll explain later),
he said that a pair of those poles only cost 69$ !
Wow! All the other poles in that store cost 100$+ and
here, we have a pair of poles costing 69$ ??? We're on !
... and wonders never ceased because while we were
paying, it turned out that there's a 10% off on the poles
that I was buying!

Anyway, while we were walking home, I realised that the
rubber tip of the poles that I bought were 'funny'. See
the picture above. They looked like the ones on the right.
First, I was thinking maybe you use them until they wear
off and become flat? hehehehe. In the end of course, I
realised that the flat end of the tips on the right of the photo
should be in contact with the ground and if that is so... then
how do you use these poles?

To make the long story short, I went on to YouTube and
checked out all the hiking videos there. One video led to
another until I saw one video which is praising the advantages
of Nordic Walking. That sounds familiar? Yup, some upmarket
gyms have nordic walking machines. ... and finally, I saw the
tips on the 'trekking poles' that those people on YouTube
were using. Serendipity has struck again. That guy in
Xtrekkers actually sold me a pair of Nordic walking
poles hence the 'funny' tip.

I watched the nordic walking videos in YouTube and
I decided to apply it for this Saturday's hike...
and it was a revelation :-)

Nordic walking is not just easy on your knees, it even
involves your whole body. So now, I can walk and I get
a complete exercise. Walking / running primarily involves
our lower extremities. But doing Nordic walking, you use
also use you arms and shoulders.

So, if you have bad knees, go on over to YouTube,
type nordic walking on the search field and click the
Search button :-)

#214 : Deepavali 2011

Deepavali ! Another holiday and an excuse for

us to let our masochistic proclivities shine
through :-)

Today's ride started from Casuarina at around
8:30AM ... well, my friends started at that time.
Me? At 8:30AM I was opening my mainframe terminal
emulator and working! Anyway, I got out of my
house at 10AM and reached BT at around 10:30ish.
I half cycled, half pushed my bike around the BT
loop and once I got to ZH, I started calling my
friends.

They just got out of reverse Rooty Trail after
coming in from Casuarina. So slow?! Anyway, they
made their way to ZH and once there they could
not be persuaded to stop being masochists. So on
they went to Bukit Timah leaving NoLights Louie
with me. ... Since Louie and I had time to kill,
we did reverse Flowy Trail and went to the
entrance of Rooty Trail. The peloton came after
about ten minutes' wait and off we went into Rooty
Trail again. At this time the sun was shining and the
weather was really very hot but once we got into
the trail that leads to Casuarina, the rain came!

The rain was so heavy we almost could not see where
we were going! Water was rushing down, turning the
trails into streams! Looks like it was just not
enough that we can't see where we're going, we also
can not see where we are putting in our front tires.
Lots of 'whoopps!' can be heard from the peloton
whenever we encounter drops that were concealed
by the rushing water.... there was even a dead monkey
floating at the downhill section before the 2nd
stream... I wonder how that monkey died? :(

The rain brought good things and bad. Bad thing
is it limits visibility and we can't hear ourselves
shouting (e.g. "THERE'S A DROPPP!!!", "WHATTTT???",
you get the picture). Good thing is we didn't feel
exhausted and so the journey to Casuarina was done
in record time.

But this ride has some expensive casualties, namely,
one Shimano sunglasses and one iPhone4 hehehehe.

#213 - Sunday Ride

Randy and Deck

Long time RC friend Jack

My u-turn point in T15 was blocked by trees.

Efren

My friends know me very well now. They knew I won't

be able to make the 7AM meetup at Velocity. However,

they started calling me at around 10AM knowing that

I'll just be around the trails by then hehehe.

Anyway, Randy, Deck, Rey and Efren joined the

MTB Brothers' group ride that started from Casuarina.

Once they got into the trail they all went in the direction

of Reverse Rooty Trail. I think it was at the end of

Reverse Rooty Trail that they separated from the

MTB Brothers as they wanted to do a u-turn,

go into Rooty Trail again and exit back to

Casuarina.

While they were on that group ride, I cruised

T15, did a u-turn near Mandai and did reverse

Flowy Trail. By the way, thanks to the guys who

cleared that newly fallen tree near the end of

reverse Flowy Trail.

I then went on to do reverse Rooty Trail

and it was here where I met Efren, Deck, Randy

and Rey going the opposite direction. Apparently,

they have been calling me! But I couldn't hear my

phone, Anyway, they told me to abandon my sissy

route and go with them to have lunch at Sembawang

Hill Hawker Centre... and that was what we did.

Also, there's some logs missing in Rooty Trail

today. Whoever, did the clearing of those logs,

thanks guys!

#212 - Hiking

Above are a few pics from today's hike.

This is the first time that I used my Salomon XT

Wings 2... and I really appreciate the lightness

of these shoes compared to my hiking boots.

I guess, I'll be doing a mini-review of the XT

Wings 2 soon.

Today's hike is considered short. I went

in to McRitchie Reservoir, Rifle Range Road

and went into part of the Bukit Timah MTB Trail.

I think I was already home by 10:30AM.

I still had time for a nap followed by lunch

with my family :-)

#211 - Merrel Col Mid Hiking Boots

Merrel Mid Col's after the rain (see next pic).
This was also my first trail hike with these shoes.

I've worn my Merrel Col Mid's during this rain

Merrel Col Mid after 15 days.
They should be broken in by now.

According to most dictionaries, Serendipity is when

someone accidentally finds something good. Finding

the Merrel Col Mid Hiking boots should qualify as an

example of Serendipity.

Ever since I discovered that the trail in McRitchie Reservoir

connects to the various trails in Bukit Timah/Mandai area

via Rifle Range Road, I have always wanted to hike that trail.

Forget about running. My right knee has been operated on

already. My left knee has been very painful even if I just

walk from Lavender MRT to my house at Whampoa...

and those walks were done using running shoes with

anti-pronation wedges ... AND those shoes had aftermarket

inserts in them. I resorted to tying a patella band on my

left knee and that helped a lot.

One Friday, my wife and son asked me to accompany

them to Royal Sporting House in Suntec where they sell

cheaper jerseys, shoes, shorts, etc. Once we got there,

the first pile of shoes that greeted us was from Merrel

and well well well, it says all shoes were going

for 50$ per pair only !

I dived into the pile, let Serendipity do its job and

when I surfaced for air, I was holding a pair of Merrel Col

Mids in my hand. I went to one corner and surfed

the web for reviews using my iPhone. The reviews that

I read were a mixture of good and bad (as always), but

it seems the good reviews outnumbered the bad ones ...

and for just 50$, I decided I'd take my chance.

There was one hitch though ... one of the eyelets of the

right shoe was detached. The eyelet was on a piece of

plastic string which was attached to the shoe and so

my wife said 'maybe it can repaired?' ... so I thought,

ok, I'd still get it. Hey, even a pair of Havaiana slippers

cost over 50$ !

The Revelation began immediately after I paid for the

shoes. I immediately put them on ... It was like walking

barefoot on a thick pile carpet! I can feel my

knees were already thanking me! Walking with these

boots in the shopping mall make you feel funny.

They are clunky and unwieldy BUT they are very

very comfortable.

I wore them again the next day to work. I also

wear them whenever I walk home from

Lavender MRT to Whampoa. All this time, I still

have a patella band. Finally, when the weekend came,

I wore them on my walk from McRitchie

to Bukit Timah (10km).

From the time I bought them up to now, it has already

been 3 weeks and I have used them every weekend

on my hikes...Last Sunday (9 Oct) and yesterday (15 Oct),

I not only used them to go hiking from McRitchie to BT but I

also used them to climb the stairs in the Catchment Trail

in Bukit Timah. They are heavy, like almost all hiking boots.

However, yesterday, I forgot to bring my patella

band and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that

I don't need it anymore ... when I'm using these shoes :-)

Notice that I left out the specs of these hiking boots

in this review. You'll find the specs here at this website.

I don't understand much of the terms anyway

(e.g. "last", "rand", etc.). 

I just know that these shoes have saved me many

many times from twisting my ankles. It also has very

good grip even in the wet. It is waterproof but of course

if you use them during heavy rain, water will come in

from the top. Don't worry, though, once the rain stops,

the water does not slosh around inside the boot. I know

this since I have used it while raining.

But best of all, and I can't get over it, is it seems to

have 'cured' my knees!!!  I don't feel any knee pain

now ... so much so that I just bought a lighter alternative

to these shoes : Salomon XT Wings 2 hehehehe