Photo-story - Where my bike’s been

[StreetCowboy]

I don’t know how to measure “agley” but I would say “scance agley” would be the right term for whence we went this afternoon.

Our out-ride registered as fractionally more than 20 km at fractionally less than 20 kph, and ended at a new pub - “The Corksman” in Bukit Bintang, as recommended yesterday by Peter B, who appeared - as if by magic -during our first pint. Three pints saw us rescued from horrendous prices by a resolve to cycle home half-sober - “home” obviously being a euphemism for cheaper local pubs, and surprisingly, the way home was slightly over 20 km and then over 20 kph.

As we were sat in the Corksman, I asked “do ye have lights?”

”Its one o clock in the afternoon”

”Aye, ye say that now, but your answer might change after a couple of sets”

”We can get the train home”

”I hope you’re not proposing that we cycle 400 metres invisible to the station…” At 40 ringgit a pint, we were lucky we did not develop that plan any further.

I leave you with this picture from the start of the ride.

[StreetCowboy]

On Vesak Day I met up with an old acquaintance to discuss opportunities, and while I was sat in the shade refreshing my weary brow, my bike was sat outside baking its tyres in the blazing heat of the scorching sun.

The back tyre had split and blown out, and as I was fixing it, I was glad I’d only had the one set of Tiger.

The tyre appeared to have split violently, allowing the tube within to burst.  I had a spare tube, but I was worried about the tyre. So I folded a plastic one-ringgit note inside the tyre, and folded another and stuffed it into the split between the rubber and the canvas carcass of the tyre.

This was on the shopping bike, which still has its original slick bulbous 45 mm tyres, but the rear has worn quite thin - hence the split.  I was wearying with my short-stroke wide-bodied mountain bike pump, but in any case, I probably didn’t want to be stressing the tyre up to its rated 80 psi in that condition.

What with the heat of the afternoon and the effort of the pumping, I was grateful it was only a short eleven km home, and I thought “I’ll be almost passing Bar Roca, and no journey is so short…”, but grateful for having only had one set, common sense prevailed, and the conclusion of my route-finding saw me delaying a further stop until I was within walking distance from home.  One thing led to another, but by that time the sun was substantially lower in the sky, and the tyre saw no further stress, and took me safely to and from the supermarket the following day.  The bike is now up in the apartment pending tyre replacement, and I rode my road bike into the office today.

The photo below shows the damaged tyre waiting replacement, after 11km home and 6 km to the supermarket and back.  There’s no sign of the note that was stuffed between the rubber and the carcass.

[StreetCowboy]

I was back in The Old Country, and off the bike, so the highlights were a German own goal in the European Roundball, and walking along the beach. 1 / 0 shots on goal is better than the 5 / 7 that they achieved.   
See if I was looking for optimism, I’d go straight to Scotland football fans (apologies to our rugby supporters).  I never took any screen shots of our humiliation, but its a nice beach.

And We can still rise, now….

[StreetCowboy]

The weekend saw us take off for the hot springs of Slim River.  Slim River is simple to get to - 100 km up the North South Highway, or the Old Route 1, or my route.  I was feeling slightly sheepish with the first navigational error on the first line of directions : “Monkey Road”; perhaps more detail would have helped for the first 40 km, even though it was familiar roads.

I’d had breakfast, as I was anticipating 125 km, but the gentleness of the gradients had pulled us into a false sense of comfort.  I was drinking for mouth dryness, but I could hardly stomach any more water.  Eventually, I had to stop for a rest. I sat at the side of the road until I felt better, and stood up, and didn’t.  I tried lying down, but when I sat up, I felt dizzy.  “Well, this is not getting us any closer to cider” and I stumbled onto my bike and struggled on.  I insisted on going in front, because I didn’t want to find out how slowly I could be dropped.  We’d gone less than a kilometre to the next junction, and a roadside food hut.  We ordered some fried rice, and iced lemon water, which came back up 60 seconds after swallowing it - fortunately, with sufficient time to get to the roadside gutter.  After the rice, I felt better - as in - not so bad, and we hauled ourselves the last ten km into town.

It was a nice route, though.

Very gentle gradients, mostly very sparse traffic - although there were more trucks on The Monkey a road than on a Sunday, and our hotel was very close to our arrival into town, which passed by a 99 Speedmart cider merchant.

Dinner was not so convenient.  I’d identified The Mountain Cafe as a suitable feed stop, but it was on the wrong side of the main road through Slim River, which is the Old Highway One. Daunted, but never thwarted, we trusted to our road sense, the courtesy of local drivers, divine intervention and perhaps a modicum of good fortune to get there.  The MountainCafe was not the biggest disappointment of the weekend, but disappointed, though not thwarted, we proceeded to search for a Chinese coffee shop.  To be fair, my buddy had been there a few weeks previous, since we were not searching a clean slate.

 The coffee shop wanted to close some time around 9 pm, so we took the fourth round of guinness back to the hotel.  
The morning saw us set off at a reasonable time to the hot springs, and as I expected, the ride there was fairly gentle.  There is a Strava segment that goes substantially further, to the crest of the hill, but the Google StreetView car had not been able to complete the segment, and we turned back too.

Not here - gravel is OK, but when the road flies up in your face like stepping on a rake - well, we had a long ride home in the morning.

The hot springs were a disappointment in their casual failure to commercially exploit nature’s wonders.  

Boiling water bubbling out the ground is great - but where was the bath-house?  The development I’d seen during planning was the base location for a white-water rafting business a few km up the adjacent river.

99 Speedmart provided the cider to prepare ourselves for Guinness at the Chinese coffee shop, and in the morning, we packed up for an early start home.

my apologies for my bike facing pannier-side away.

Learning from Saturday’s experience, we made four stops on the way home, including food for lunch.  We made a wrong turning again on familiar roads, but I was confident I could get us home based on road signs.  I was less confident when I thought I recognised the same village for a second time,but Strava tells me we took a fairly direct route, and all these little villages look similar.  We arrived home before our regular pub opened 4 pm during the week, but 50 metres further to the Bell& saw us over 300 km for the weekend.

[StreetCowboy]

As you know, we are short weeks away from Pubcycle XI, so I took a take round on Saturday to get some photos for the poster. While I was about it, I took a meander through this road, a few hundred metres from KL Sentral

 

Pubs en route.

18th August, if you are joining.  Just send money if you’re not.  All proceeds to Agathians’ Shelter.

 

[StreetCowboy]

Saturday saw me following more or less the same route to drop off posters, and to confirm the route.  There’s one tunnel on the Federal Highway that’s under repair, so we’ll shorten the route to avoid it.  K & A, who will be back in country for the ride will love it, and Big G, who is back in country but won’t be riding, will be delighted to avoid the gradients.  I still need to work out a route for our rescue driver, avoiding the salmoning, footbridges, bike lanes and underpasses.  We will be passing where we lost our Project Director, several years ago - I’ll be sure to keep a close eye on him this time…

 

Sunday saw me slightly the worse for Saturday’s elevation, and I was happy my buddy was timid with a cold.  He brightened up on the ride, though, and I was the one dropping the pace on the homeward leg.  To be fair, that was into a headwind - I still insisted on going at front - you can’t be dropped if you’re the lead rider.

As we were getting close to the pub, I dropped a bombshell, by way of managing expectations… “Bell& has no cider, nor 42, nor Mahjong, if yesterday and Thursday are anything to go by”

”Thank you for not telling me earlier - that would have made the return journey hard”

We confirmed my warning, and sat dejected on the benches at Bell& for a moment.

” We could try Loco … Spitalfield is too far”

”Pricewise, aye”

”And I’m in no mind for Science Centre Hill to Sid’s” so we struggled a few kilometres to Loco, where our scant hopes were sadly dashed, and through tears of disappointment ordered as much Guinness as we could.

[StreetCowboy]

The following Sunday we repeated the planned pub ride route - it is a great route, though maybe a little shorter than our regular Sunday routes, and my buddy let rip with a veritable tirade of disappointment at the absence of interesting route-planning.

So this week, we revisited the Coronation Ride, which, you may recall, saw me getting bowled over by a cow, sitting nursing concussion at the side of the road and sorely in need of a replacement helmet.  We paused a while at the start, waiting for the rain to either ease off, or get heavy enough to cancel the ride. As it was, it ranged from pleasantly mild to mildly unpleasant.

Within a hundred metres of my previous mishap, two dogs appeared, and I demonstrated the prudence that could have been called paranoia had it not been based on bitter experience.  
Shortly after, we were into the country back roads, dotting back and forth to find traces of the old roads that had been obliterated by the West Coast Expressway, and eventually we found our way to familiar roads.  All the misnavigational meandering had eaten sorely into our rehydration, and I kept up the pace enough to see us address our first cider with a suitable thirst, despite the cooler weather.

[StreetCowboy]

 There’s a couple of events coming up in Langkawi just after Pubcycle XI - Langkawi Folding Bike Challenge and Langkawi Legendary Ride on the two following weekends.  For one reason or another it was too troublesome to go to either.

”Well, we don’t need to go to Langkawi to ride 65 km on the folding bikes” so I am now planning the Jalan Langkawi Folding Bike Challenge, from TTDI Station to the pub (2.5 km as the crow flies) via Jalan Langkawi, and I need to find a simple 4 km detour to get to 65 km.

 

Which was why I washed the folding bike this morning. I washed my road bike because it was filthy since last week… but I only had enough chain oil for one of them, and I needed to check out the condition of the folding bike, so I rode it out to the railway to listen to trains.

I’d planned on popping into a fancy bike shop on the way back to buy chain oil, and the DASH Highway access roads made it much harder to get to.  If I’d known that they only sold clothing now, I’d not have bothered.  I went over the road to Meng Thai - not far for a crow, but a fair trek with the dual carriageway and one way systems …. I was a in and out like a burglar, but all the detours helped me catch the rain again… Anyway , I can now lube the road bike first thing tomorrow morning, and I’ll think about the route at the same time

Edited August 10 by StreetCowboy

[StreetCowboy]

Sunday was a total wash-out, almost.  Three of us assembled at the station, and watched the rain get heavier and heavier. Our pilot showed us a satellite weather view that offered the possibility of dry weather in KL, torrential downpours in Kajang and risk of treacherous conditions in the hills.

We raked our memories to recall if we’d ever cancelled because of rain before.  I searched my Strava archives, but that only threw up the times we’d persevered -

“Putrajaya in the rain”

”Flooding in Kapar”

”Washed-away roads in Hulu Langat”

I found one ride that had been shortened from a 70 km planned route to 20 km to a local pub…

The rain waned and waxed… “As we’ve been sat here, sometimes I’ve thought ‘maybe we should’ve just persevered and braved the elements’ … but I’m not thinking that now”

”So this is going to be our first complete cancellation?”

”We’re only cancelling the first half - the cycling; we can still make it to Mahjong”

The pilot bailed out when the weather finally eased off, and while he could still safely cycle home.  We persevered until we could fortuitously cycle home.  

 

[StreetCowboy]

Sunday saw us ride PubCycle XI to raise  money for Agathian’s Shelter, a local orphanage overlooking the Federal Highway.  We’d had some last-minute bail-outs, but the pilot turned up early.  So we set off, but on Stage One Batman’s battery started giving him jip.  A recharge gave him confidence to continue, which confidence was sorely misplaced, and he abandoned , to go home and collect his mountain bike. If he’d remembered that his house keys were in his car at the start, we’d have not passed him trudging forlornly to meet us at the end of Stage three. Thwarted and disheartened, he accepted a lift from the Rescue Driver. A, who claimed he’d been put off by the rain, though we had remained dry the whole route, caught and joined us onstage Three to substitute for Batman.  L had bailed earlier, out of fear of excessive sunshine .  I explained to her “If it’s a long ride, you’ll be cycling through the heat of the mid-day sun, no matter what.”

”Aye”, she replied, “but you’ll get to the end soon after”

”Mebbe, but the way we drink, it’d still be prudent to bring lights”

Stage Four was the last of the stages that were not passable to motor vehicles, featuring a two-foot wide concrete pack horse bridge.  

The White Van was patiently waiting

and M parked in the same place as last year as well.

The patrons at the pubs were as generous as ever, so I hope the final total will be close to the RM20,000 we raised last year.

 

 

 

 

[Stevemercer]

Meanwhile, back in Isan...

 

 

 

[Stevemercer]

Dupicate post

 

 

 

Edited August 21 by Stevemercer

[StreetCowboy]

On 8/21/2024 at 3:02 PM, Stevemercer said:

Meanwhile, back in Isan...

 

 

 

 

That looks like a Grand Day Out for everyone!

where was your route? 
Did you finish in the medals?

- fastest?

- oldest?

- photos?

[StreetCowboy]

As I think I mentioned earlier, Saturday was the Langkawi Folding Bike Challenge, but I could not be bothered with a trip to Langkawi..."Well, you don't need to go to Langkawi to ride 65 km on a folding bike."  
So today we rode the Jalan Langkawi Folding Bike Challenge, starting - as usual, down at the station at 10 am

The folding bikes are not ideal for the steep highway descents, and 54 km/h is not enough to keep up with the traffic there, but we got to Jalan Langkawi easily enough

 

 

A mis-judgement on my part saw us riding the wrong highway, and ending up repeating part of our route, but nonetheless we got to the pub at about 65 km, and all's well that ends well

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25 by StreetCowboy

[StreetCowboy]

Last week we went to Hulu Langat - you’ve all seen the pictures before, looking over the city from Ampang Point at the highways and the smog, then on to the reservoir, and down to Kajang to get the train home.  I should’ve turned my bike around (if I can say that on a public forum) but I think a young boy who was leaning against it got chain-oily trousers that will never wash clean.

today we took a much more gentle ride  to Kota Kemuning and a village beyond.  I thought “This gravel would not have spoiled the ride for the New Boy, were he with us “

but my subsequent aimless wandering through the urban boondocks might have; I did not feel sufficiently relaxed to take a photo of that dirt track.

”We’re not lost, we’re exploring”

I knew fairly exactly where we were; I did not know where were the roads.

 

In  the pub after, our talk diverged to future routes, and my mate and I had a clear disagreement regarding an excellent short-cut road, which he assures me he has driven, and I am fairly certain having looked for it, that it does not exist.  So that’s next week’s route sorted…