"Same old ride"? New discovery in Sungai Sedim, 27 May 2001
It was supposed to be an arranged ride for a visiting Singaporean rider. Well, he is not exactly a Singaporean, a Penangite who has been living in Singapore some time and traveling between two islands. But he decided not to do it in the last minute. Something comes out from his family. You know lah, this is his family matter. I did not press on to find out what happen. Just hope next time he will make it! When I told my high school buddy about the Sedim ride, the first impression I got from him was, "Sedim again ah?" Yeah, riding the same old place for godzillion times is very boring. I was also quite bored of Sungai Sedim but it was requested by my guest. But you know, it was a special request. We KOTRT honors...:)
I was thinking of skipping the ride this morning but Azmi just did not want to let me go. I forgot to inform him that I did not stay in our family's condominium in Tanjung Bunga. When he did not see me at the Petronas Greenlane, he thought I was going to chicken out again. Can't blame him. Having missing from the ride since my wrist injury three weeks, most knights started to miss me dearly. So he called me up exactly seven thirty in the morning when I was doing my thing in the bathroom(shower lah!). Had he not called me, I would go back to bed half an hour later! I felt so lazy to go. The "rest" had taken a toll on me. But anyway, I quickly change into lycra shorts and on my way to meet the rest!
We started the ride after we met the rest at the Sedim base camp. Instead of doing the plain old race track, or our "secret" singletrack again, ST suggested to explore the downhill trail, which was not exactly a downhill trail. It was called because the last downhill event was held there! I decided to go slow. Also, judging from the trail condition when I was driving towards the base camp, the trail is going to be muddy. Everybody was very excited, including my high school since we were not riding the same old track this time. He was no where to be seen when I caught up with the group. It was very muddy. With few meters into the DH trail, my bike tires were already full of mud and became a superfat slick. I could hardly get any grips on ground since the "tires" were so smooth. I decided to climb down from the saddle and walked through the mud instead. I saw another knight walking also. It seems like it was not worth the effort to pedal through since the it was so muddy.
Luckily the rest of the trail was not as muddy as the first few meters. I managed to climb back to saddle. But it was not long before I met another group of riders. One of the riders broke his bike's SRAM derailuer and could not proceed further. Maverick, the bike mechanic from Parit Buntar was trying to fix his bike by changing it into a single speed. I decided to stop by to see if I could offer any help. It ended up that he would have to return to the base camp since the chain kept on skipping the gear. I decided to move on since there was nothing much I could help there. And Annuar had decided to go with me, with three others follow suit.
It was a nice undulating logging trail. The climb was not as extreme as the ones on Penang Island. I had no problem to climb with heavier gear combo. Also, the trail was canopied by the trees along the way! It was sweet. I like it! I saw a live black scorpion, which was about six inches long crawling across the trail. I careful went pass it without getting it excited. Looking at the fat sting at the rear, I could imagine how painful it was going to be if it decided to hook its sting into my legs! It should consider itself lucky. If it were encountered by others, it would have been dead by now! Sometimes I wonder why people want to kill these animals when they are minding their own business? We came to a stop when we met Azmi and Sup, who waited for us. I did not realize that I had left the rest, except Annuar, behind(but it still does not qualify me as tengkar okay???). So we decided to wait for the rest. Meverick showed up with one of his riders minutes later. We than continued the ride to catch up with the rest of the group.
It was a long but gradual climb. When I was about to reach the peak of the climb, I saw someone coming down from the opposite direction. The front decided to turn after they encountered a king cobra on the way! This nasty reptile decided to use the part of trail as its nesting place. No one was brave enough to ride pass the trail! I was a little bit disappointed that ride would have to cut short. Minutes after I met the first rider, the rest showed up with my high school buddy leading the group. ST was among them. There was a branch off before the climb. ST suggested to explore the branch off since we still had time to do so. Seeing no objection, we proceeded to the branch off.
It was yet another surprise! Again, no serious climbs. It was easily manageable by any intermediate level riders and above. Still, we had another rider who decided to call it quit. It was this rider who came with one of Azmi's friends. I rode with him before but I am pretty bad in remember people's name. He claimed that he was not feeling. His face was pale. It looked like he was not faking. I decided to call Azmi to inform his friend that he would be heading back to the base camp. He was lucky. We met a group of student, who were having some sort of motivational camp. We decided to leave him to the group of student. But his buddy was not convinced. He decided to go with him also. That's what a friend for right? After taking care of the sick puppy, we proceeded to the rest of the ride.
I wonder why I was always the last rider in this ride? Maybe because I was too scared of getting my wrist injured again, I found out that I was more careful than before when there was a downhill. I usually flew down the trail without even thinking of applying brakes. But it was different this time. The branch off was more downhill incline, and it was this beautiful stretch of downhill singletrack, which was supposed to be my playground. But the image of me falling down at Kulim High Tech trail and Singapore Bukit Timah keep on coming back whenever I told myself I was ready to fly down. I found myself squishing the brakes so hard that the joints of my fingers hurt after the ride! I found myself chicken at one sweet downhill. It was a shady singletrack, with some sections were quick technical because of slippery root. I was coasting down at much slower speed than I was used to be before. I was okay at the first half of the descent. And then all the sudden, I thought back about what happened to me in Kulim High Tech trail and Bukit Timah MTB track and looked at my right wrist, which was "protected" by a wrist guard. My heart suddenly sank to the bottom, and I lost all the confidence to going down again! I felt like shit afterwards since I had to climb down from the saddle and continued the "downhill" by carrying my bike down! I had to overcome this phobia, or my "career" will go down to the drain, hehe. It ended up that the branch off connected to the race track. Since some of us already showed sign of fatigue, especially me, we decided to finish the ride by completing the race track.
It was a sweet ride. The trail was very shady. It was the XC trail that I always thought what a mountain biking should be in Malaysia. There were climbs, downhills, streams, singletracks, doubletracks, snakes, scorpion...Man I can come out a long list about the trail. Anyone who loves XC should pay this trail a visit. I think I am going to go back to the same again when I have overcome the phobia thing.
So what am I going to do next week? There was a talk of doing Parit Buntar trail this coming Sunday. First thing pops out form my mind whenever the mention of doing Parit Buntar trail - Beef Koay Teow soup. Excellent! It is served with tender beef, koay teow(a type of ride noodle, which looks like chow fung but narrower) and beef balls(a fish ball like thing made of beef). Swallow it with lots of ground chilli, yummy!
Stay tuned!