A Re-Visit to the Juru Fire Track, 14 January 2001
Maybe we all are in the CNY mood now. It seems like no one is planning to ride today. I was with my fiancee for the whole Saturday night. So it should be okay if there wasn't any ride going on this morning. Anyway, I have not been to the Juru firetrack for quite some time. Last time I went was like last year. Speaking of which, time really flies. Y2K is still like yesterday. Just a blink of eyes, it's gone! I SMS my high school to see if he was interested to re-visit the firetrack or not. I expected a negative answer, but he surprised me by saying yes! So, we set the time at 1700 hours to visit this twisty singletrack. It is also a good ground to try my newly acquired VooDoo to see how she handles in an offroad singletrack. I was late at Fatt's house because I woke up late from my afternoon nap. Since there were only me and my high school buddy, we managed to set off to the trail once I had got my VooDoo ready in minutes!
The trail looked the same at the beginning. Maybe the trail was frequently used by villagers to access to the Juru riverbank, it was well maintained. We had no problem to reach the riverbank fire road at all. One thing, we had to be careful not to run over the cow dung that was scattering all over the track. A slight mishandling to the bike would sure splat this smelly shit to the rider behind! I had no problem to go thru the track with my rigid Erzulie. The feedback from the wheels was not as much as my stiffer Diamondback. The ride confirmed my decision of making it a rigid bike. With a flex steel like this bike, I wonder if I really need a front shock.
The ride at the fire road was even better. Someone really takes some time to widen the track and re-lay the track with laterite, or red earth as understood by most people. Fatt and I just sped through the track without any difficulty. But it doesn't mean that the whole on the fire track was merely a speedy ride at high speed. The tricky part of the track still exists to add more fun to us. We were greeted by narrow singletrack after the widened track ended at about one kilometer after the the junction. It would be quite tricky if the rider were never ride a narrow singletrack before. Again, I had no problem to storm thru the this section. The accurate steering of the rigid fork gave me the confidence to go thru at higher speed than I used to.
One thing not so good about the ride was the sudden change pf weather at the middle of the ride. The heavy down pour really took their own sweet time to soak us like what an old Chinese saying, we had became a chicken that drop into a pond of soup! Still, we decided to continue the ride until we reached Fatt's home.
It was a fast and wet ride. I am glad to find out that this beautiful fire track is still rideable. Juru Fire road is very suitable to bring newbies for their introductory ride. If you think Mount Erskine is too much, this should be the one for you!
Stay tuned!