Saturday : Sunset Boulevard Ride
Sunday : 1 Hill Ride
270 participants
After being victims of KOTRT's Cameron Highlands ride the year before, 5 of us then Absolutees were itching for more torture. Here's Pain's Account of this initiation ride. Will not go into painful details of this ride, as Pain has said it all....notice how he blanked out when it came to Stages 2-3? The penang ride has that effect on you! Oh....and I broke my chain less than 5 minutes into the ride....think that was my first encounter with the slow smurfs, who later became our remaining fellow sufferers!
First thing I learnt : Never trust the Malaysian metric system! It lies. The warm-up "Sunset Boulevard" ride on Saturday was more than twice the distance it was touted to be. And we found this gross mis-aggaration of distance a habit picked up by many Malaysians who do it just to be kind. Am proud to say we Singaporeans have learnt to adapt to this habit - always mutiply distance by 2, and you're just about right (kinda like the SGD-Ringgit). Some of us have even learnt to adopt the habit, especially during our Eco-X-Capade race. We told other competitors the next checkpoint was 5 minutes away when it was more than 30 minutes! Poor souls, they can only thank us for it! hee hee!
Second thing I learnt : A jamboree map, although a beautiful piece of art, is never drawn to scale. Or maybe like many Singaporen bikers, we just weren't paying attention to details. The artist was still completing the second and third leg of the ride when we registered. Above, you see No 228 on a plate. These were our badges of honour, aka passport for bragging rights! Collect all 5 stickers and you get a medal once you complete the ride! Can't remember if medals were dished out for this first ride, but the experience itself was well worth it.
Third thing I learnt : When asked the simple question, "how many more slopes are there?", the standard answer is "don't worry, this is the last one"...and then holy smoke, every corner you turn you are greeted by yet another concrete slope, til you reach the big mama - the Stairway to Heaven staring rightatchya! Next time, trust no one along the way! The only way you truly know you've reached the top is when you smell chicken pie!
Since this was a leisure ride, we even had time to jalan jalan, check out the treetop walk, stuff our faces with oh-that-famous-Penang-chicken-pie and other goodies and "cheeze", another photo-evidence that we're not dreaming!
Last thing I learnt : What goes up, will eventually come down, if you manage to get up there in the first place! One Hill Ride indeed! :PRead Chia's account from founding member's viewpoint.
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