ST's Secret, 24 September 2000
It was supposed to be a short and sweet ride, with the ride finishing by 10.00am in time to catch the live telecast of the Sydney Olympics men's MTB XC race. So I planned a ride of extremes that would tax even the most teng-kar knight. Problem is, if you announce this kind of ride beforehand, chances are, most riders will not turn up. So it has to be a secret, with just the meeting time and place announced. 9 riders turned up with Franz Ziegler coming in just as we were about to take off at 7.40am. Looking around at the rest of the riders, I realized that today would be my turn to suffer. I was the slowest rider of the lot in the absence of our resident sweeper, the turbo snail. Alan, they all missed you. Today, I missed you too!!
After a quick bite at our regular breakfast joint, we proceeded towards Air Itam dam, bypassing the chaotic traffic around the market through a short cut. As we approached the trailhead which leads to the playground in air itam dam, you could hear everyone shifting to their granny gears. This was a first time up this extreme climb for Franz and we expected him to panic a bit, just like the last time we took a KL rider (named withheld forobvious reasons) up and you could see him doing the Elvis shake as he struggledup the slope. But not Franz, he was up to the task and climbed confidently. In fact it was Hwa who was the first and only one to jump down and push, after the 3rd climb. Ben, who used to be a pusher too up this track, was also up to the task. Wah, must be secret training, until we realized he had shaved off 5 Ibs from his bike with new tires, forks, handle bars, brakes and RM1100 poorer. With this fast pack, everyone reached the playground in record time. While waiting for Hwa, some of the kids took time to entertain the hikers by riding down the long staircase. Not to be outdone, Franz too joined in and cleared the stairs without incident. Bravo, Franz!!
On the way to the trailhead to Hilton around the dam, Roger kept complaining that his gears won't shift. He tried hard to shift and only succeeded in breaking his chain. The last time he broke his chain, Roger spent 15mins trying to fix it before giving up and pushing all the way back to Sim's bike shop. This time round, he was lucky as we had 2 MTB engineers, Lai and
Leong riding with us and it took only a minute for Lai to fix the damage. The ride up to Hilton was uneventful, though the rain the nite before had made the trail wet and slippery.
The plan was to ride the XC loop from Hilton and cut across to Bkt Penara, down the steep leafy descent to K3 and downhill the trail to Paya Terubong. The trailhead, just 10meters off rom Hilton on the track towards Balik Pulau used to be unpaved gravel, but some rich orchard owner had cemented it to provide access to his farm and changed the character of the trail.
Luckily, he only cemented about half a km of the trail to his farmhouse. However, after that, following the single track winding path, we got lost. We have ridden this loop before, clockwise. However, riding it anti-clockwise proved to be confusing as we did not realize there were so many forks. Getting lost in this place is not a problem though, cos all the trails are inter-connected and provided us with the opportunity to recce new trails and make new connections to trails we know. Everyone was game to press on and happily turned back if we hit a dead-end. We eventually came across the loop that we we had planned to ride and everyone took the opportunity to speed down the trail, now that we know where we heading.
Cutting across to K3, Franz sped ahead and did not even blink when he came to the steep technical descent with steep drop-offs and tree roots to endo the unsuspecting rider, taking it all in his stride. Me, I valued my skin and realized my downhill limitations, so it was pushing time. At K3, Lai led the way to a new connection that he discovered that will end up at the Paya Terubong graveyard. The farmer trail was wet and slippery from the overnight rain, but we were lucky to have Lai and Franz crash to point out the danger spots for the rest of us. By the time we reached the Paya Terubong trailend, it was already 10.45am. Everyone decided to forego the makan and headed straight to my place to catch the Olympic MTB race. BTW, did you notice the way those guys pedaled non-stop for 2 hours uphill and downhill....they must be on steroids!!