Regional Roaming

This shall be about my night cycling stint about 2 weeks ago. Ok it is seriously overdue and I may not be able to remember every single thing that happened that night but hey I have pictures to help me. Not the clearest of pictures since they were taken with my N6020 VGA camera, but they'll do I believe. Well, to say the least, it was an exhilarating experience. To say the most, hmm, you'll have to follow this entry to get the details.

On 30 May, at about 7.30pm, my dad received a phone call from his co-driver saying that the taxi was going to be grounded for a day cos it broke down earlier in the day. Well, my dad was on the night shift and the taxi breaking down meant he didn't need to go to work. No pay leave since we'r talking about driving taxis here, but hey that's another issue. While my mum was worrying about the no pay day, we were thinking about how to spent the night fruitfully. You know, it's not every day that we get our dad at home during the night cos save for some nights when my dad wasn't well, he has been working non-stop every night for about 2 years now. Ok since this weekend is for the fathers and all, I might as well thank him for the non-stop hard work he has put in for all of us. His passengers are always surprised when he says he has 5 children, what more with all 5 still schooling. Our life as a family aren't always without hiccups, but hey with a strong leader in da house and everyone doing their best to cooperate, we can always go through the greatest obstacles in life, with Allah's Grace.

Ok the small tribute aside, we the adventurers (and adventurous) in the house suggested that we could go cycling all night. My mum winced at the thought of my dad not resting at home when he had the chance to do so. But well, the adventurers would always prevail, especially when their adventures require almost no money at all. We had the bicycles; they just need a lil bit of maintenance before we set off on our northern adventure. I call it 'northern adventure' cos the furthest we went was Yishun lar, and that is quite northern, tho abit towards central already. I'd have liked to repeat our familiar east side adventure we used to embark on regularly when I was a teenager still living in the east, but well, this was something new. And new experiences always have the potential to excite us night riders. Haha 'night riders' sounds a bit exaggerating but well it sounds cool enough so...

We set off at about 10.30pm with 2 main destinations in mind. Seletar reservoir in Yishun and Sembawang Park in well, Sembawang. I experienced my first hiccup very early during the adventure lar, when failing to make a right turn in time just outside the carpark around my block. So unglam, but I can't use bicycles with 'pedal brakes' for nuts lar. The normal hand brakes work lar but this pedal brake function the bike I was riding on had meant that I could only pedal clockwise and had to be careful not to pedal anti-clockwise. But sometimes I tend to pedal a bit anti-clockwise to just get the rhythm and of cos it got me into trouble just 5 minutes into the adventure. I was kinda in the middle of the road but luckily there wasn't any oncoming cars on my side of the road so I was safe. My dad, who had made the turn with my youngest bro, came back to guide me to safety.

And we rode on...

to our first pit stop.

It was some bus stop in Sembawang. I just know we had passed a lot of factories and British American Tobacco, which I wouldn't have noticed had my dad not mention it. He was talking about why the cigarette factories are still well and running even tho there's all this talk to get ppl to quit smoking. I didn't want to get the debate started by talking about the economics of cigarette smoking, so I just let my dad do the talking.

After resting for about 10 mins, we moved on for quite a long while before we reached some part of Yishun.

This was our 2nd pit stop. I never actually knew where we were exactly the whole night cos it's like North here we are talking about. If east can lar, cos the east's my kampung. I just knew Chongfu Pri Sch(I didn't even know such a sch existed if not for that night) was on the opposite side of the road, and that we were very near my aunt's old place. I gulped down quite a bit of water there cos we had just gone through many stretches of road with slopes. I laboured quite a bit to cycle up those slopes cos my bike had no gear lar! Looks like a stunt bike to me, the small2 kind. The pro bikes with multiple gears went to the father and the bro cos they were just too big for me. My lil bro is a tad more daring than me so he didn't have any qualms riding on the pro gigantic bike owned by the first bro. I should seriously learn to be more daring.

Daring or not, we all arrived at Seletar reservoir, our 1st destination, at about 12.30-1am. Can't remember the exact timing lar. Anyway the route we had taken there was a good one in terms of the light traffic but bad cos of the slopes. Going down the slopes was the best part of the cycling experience though cos you could just feel the cool wind slapping your face while the bike moved down the slope on its own at breakneck speed. Totally breathtaking!

Speaking of speed and breathlessness, that stretch you see in the background of this picture was not without power wheels and racer wannabes. I don't know the road name but this stretch dividing seletar reservoir into 2 halves had quite a bit of a night life. There were vans blasting disco music from their stereos, couples strolling along that stretch of road (don't know what's so romantic about that place) and racer wannabes testing their limits. Quite an eye-opener, for me who don't usually stay out late.

We then moved on to our 2nd destination, Sembawang Park.

The bikes we used, mine being the one on the bottom left. The only one out of the 3 without gears. So, lasting the whole journey was quite an achievement for me. Btw, I have to say sorry(but dunno to who) cos I ended up using my tj sweater for approx the last 2/5 of the journey(the one hanging down from the handles of the top left bike) to cushion my butt so as to prevent any serious abrasion. I love tj all the same but in hamidah's words, 'desperate times call for desperate measures'. By that time my butt was already aching like crazy, even with all the excess fats. And for the record, my butt ached for a total of 96 hours. Even longer than any muscle ache I felt during my sporty days.