bimbo went biking @ rawang

Activity: off-road biking
Place: Some palm estate close to the Rawang toll exit
Temperature: a scorching 36 degrees C (felt more like 40!)

Since last Friday, the email had gone out to the so-called "clan of the cranking cruisers", or C3, this name Eric had given to us straggling bikers. Today we had planned to ride on this trail they'd gone the week before CNY on a bike hash, which I'd decline due house-cleaning (and lazy bones). After a week of pigging out, including last night's stewed lamb shank at Monte's, my guilt conscience forced me to get on my bike and go for the ride.

Despite the gung-ho replies earlier in the week, only the three of us - Eric, Veron and myself - made it for the today's adventure. I guess everyone else was smart enough to back out with some excuse or other; I was half regretting not coming out with some lame excuse myself. Then again, I thought of the excess pounds I needed to lose... ok, I'm still in.

We started out a little late in the morning, close to 11AM by the time we rode out. Oh man, did I pay for being complacent on exercise the past few weeks! Not even 20 minutes into the ride, I had a very bad cramp on my right hamstring. O-U-C-H. I stood there stretching for a good 10 minutes before I was ok to get on my bike again.


Eric and Veron rode ahead most of the time, since they had mapped out the route on GPS during the hash. Problem was, Eric's GPS kept restarting itself due to a loose battery compartment, so we stopped and retraced our routes quite a bit.

It didn't help that the sun was scorchingly hot today. I was huffing and puffing, drawing in one big breath after another and blowing it out, sounding similar to a whale's blowhole. It got so bad at one point that I was actually short of breath. Normally I would've down-geared and ploughed through at the slightest incline, but this time, I just couldn't. I got down and pushed at every single uphill 1 hour into the ride (we had another hour to go).


I'll spare you the details of the route; I can't quite remember much anyway, except trying not to faint on the trail and putting one foot in front of the other like a soldier. I gather I might've built some upper body strength too, by all that bike-pushing I did. And since I was dead tired with every fibre in my body protesting to more torture, I couldn't control the bike very well. I wobbled a lot, had many false-starts, even accidentally let my bike go while pushing and it went crashing to the side.

We got out of the trail close to 2PM. I was utterly speechless, I didn't have the energy to carry on a decent conversation. My answers to their questions like "Where do you want to go eat? Shall we stop at the Sg. Buloh bridge? Are you ok?" were grunts, nods and sighs.

We made our way to Burger King at the Sg. Buloh bridge on the NKVE highway. I was dragging my feet all the way to the restaurant. No kidding! My thighs were so tired and stiff from the ride, I really couldn't walk any faster than and old woman.

I was more thirsty than hungry, so just had chicken tenders for lunch. I had greedily gulped down a can of Coke earlier in the car. I sat there drinking my iced lemon tea faster than I was eating my food. Till now - a good 3 hours after the trip - I'm still thirsty-ish, despite my belly being bloated like an aggravated pufferfish due to all that liquid I'd consumed. Hmmmm... a can of 100Plus would be nice right now.

Washing my bike was such a chore in the hot sun after that. Groan... scrub-scrub-scrub... sigh... scrub-scrub-scrub... ouchhhh... scrub-scrub-scrub... you get the picture. I counted the number of bruises I had while taking a shower. 7... 8... 9... oh, here's another one, 10...

Ok then.

No skirt for a week.

(Checks bruises again...)

Make that two.

*G-R-O-A-N*

Technorati: adventures, biking