Burung Hantu trail

Last Sunday (3/10/10) I brought Roy and Chan to ride the 2010 Burung Hantu trail. Chan has riden part of it when we had gotong royong trail clearing last month and Roy has not had the chance to try it out and was curious since he has registered for the night ride.

Pampering my IBIS with a snow wash treat (compliments from Chan)

This will be ECC's 2nd time in organising Burung Hantu Night Ride, the first being a day ride which was called "The Sahara Ride" and lived up to its name. After the hot and successful Sahara Ride, the club decided to do something it is very familiar with, Night Cycling. After overcoming many obstacles in organsing last year's night mountain bike jamboree and later fueled with the positive comments from participants after the event, ECC is proud to bring back the much awaited yearly affair - 2010 Burung Hantu Ride


I have ridden the complete trail a few times and would like to share some trail description (for those who are taking part and anxious of what to expect)

The trail is basically cross country. Those of you who came last year might remember the steep climb after Check Point 1 (beside the water pump station). Well, good news... Overall, there are no big hills this year, only occasional short climbs which is ridable if you prepare yourself mentally and get the gears change in preparation of the short burst.

The hardest climb which is also the easiest is actually the beginning after flag off. You will be cycling into UTEM which is located on a high area. The ride might be slow to some but since it is the beginning, you'll have plenty of energy for it. Just some 20 meters after UTEM's main entrance, is where the fun starts with a fast downhill. Be careful at this point because there will be many riders all around you.

The distance from starting to Check Point 1 is the furthest among all the check points (18 km). After that, it is spaced out quite evenly.

Danger area. Just after you get your CP3 sticker, there is a uphill climb and then it goes downhill for about 150 meters. Safety marshal will be present to caution all riders at the peak. It is straight and goes down fast. The danger is the cemented path that has broken off the the edges so you only ride on the middle or where you can visually see the path. This is probably the most injury inflicted stretch if you fall down. Go slow if you are not confident. Then right at the bottom of the downhill trail is a hard left turn. Once again, please be careful at this stretch. By the way, I am manning CP3, don't be shy to greet me!

Everyone should be able to complete the whole 45km trail if they follow this simple cycling technic.

Cycle at your own comfortable speed but cycle consistently without taking too much breaks and rest. Our fast ECC riders take about 2.5 hours, I take about 3 - 3.5 hours and if you ride at a slow speed of about 10km per hour (but I know you can do better), it should not take you more than 4 - 4.5 hours. Plus you won't be as tired since you are cycling at night. Check points are for you to get the stickers, refuel energy with bananas and water but not to rest, sleep, eat nasi lemak that you brought along, chit chat (which you can do while cycling) and or give excuse to light up the cigarette to chase the mosquitos away.

A previous entry that might be useful
http://cyclingben.blogspot.com/2009/09/night-ride-tips.html

If you are still thinking of giving up midway, I highly recommend that you stay on to cycle till the end because the best part of the whole trail is kept towards the end where you will cycle on single tracks which cuts through a jungle. Guaranteed highlight of the night!

If you are still thinking of joining the ride, can still do so by submitting the form and registration of RM60.00. Forms are available here http://burunghantu2010.blogspot.com/

Last count of paid registered participants - >1300.
Should be an interesting event with so many riders cycling with lights off road. Don't miss it or else it is another year to wait.

Till then, happy trails

Early bicycle adventure

This entry is written after I read Akmal's blog of him bringing his son on a child bicycle seat and going for rides. I am inspired to write on our own adventure.

If my memory is correct, my parents bought a Raleigh bicycle for me when I was 11 years old. A year after that, I started to cycle to school. The passion was already there then, even with a bike with only single speed, it gave me the wheels of freedom to explore places around the kampung area.

From bicycle I upgraded to another 2 wheel vehicle, this time with engine when I was 17 in Form 5 - a Honda cub C90. That open another chapter of exploration when you don't need pedal power to go places. The Raleigh bicycle was retired until it rusted.

Fast forward a few years later after getting married, I had the first glimpse of a mountain bike when we visited my relatives in Banting and they had a Sanyo brand bicycle. It had fatter tyres with deep grooves. The fork was rigid but that didn't matter at that time and best of all, it came with gears! Wow! It was an awesome feeling riding the bike around the housing estate and having the first taste of off road cycling when I cycled into the oil palm estate. I was hooked!

I bought 2 Lerun mountain bikes later for my wife and I. Both bikes are still with us (sentimental value). A few years after my son Justin was born, I fitted a bamboo child seat so that I can take him along when I go cycling in the evenings. Boy, did both of us look forward to those rides.

Photo taken when Justin about about 3-4 years old

It was about the same time as the photo above when Justin and I were cycling on road one evening and a minor accident stopped all the fun.

I was happily cycling with him in front chatting away being curious at everything when suddenly I felt being pushed off the road by some strange force. We both fell with me incurring most of the injuries as I tried to shield him from the tarmac road. Justin was crying and I was in a daze. In front of me was a motorcyclist who was in the drain and a small lorry stopped further ahead after some passerby shouted at the driver to stop.

The story unfolded as we regained our composure.
The lorry overtook the motorcyclist but he drove too close and something on the lorry's body hooked on the motorcyclist and dragged him off the road. As the motorcyclist was dragged, he got lose but was heading towards the drain and as he passed us, he in turn, pushed us off the road and made us fall.
We ended sideways in the carpark of a restaurant and the motorcyclist was in the drain ahead.

Luckily there was no serious injuries on us including the motorcyclist who survived the accident with cuts and bruises. My Lerun bike which was accident free before was now full of noises as I slowly made my way back home. I never got any compensation from the driver although I contacted him once but that 1 bad incident made me stop our regular evening rides.

Pets, pets and more pets

When you cycle off road, you sometimes come across exotic creatures that cross your path. Wild boars is a common sight for most riders. I am sure many of you must have had experience these animals either running across your path or even running along you as they try to escape.

When we were cycling on one of the Wednesday night rides, Ah Chye who was leading the ride along a river path, stopped abruptly as this baby python was in his path. The baby python instead of slithering away, climbed up his bike!. It was more curious of us than we were of it.

One of the good things you learn while watching TV programes on snake is to recognise what snake is venomous and what snake is not. By the beautiful colour markings on it's body, I knew it was a python.

They knew I was into this kind of pets and I immediately decided to keep it.

One of it's kind custom made Jagwire snake skin motif cable

It took only about a week before it allowed me to handle it. My girls are now expert snake handlers!

Speaking of python, a day before we went for Batu Pahat's Berani Ride on 18/7, the local bike shop had an unexpected guest which turned out to be a baby python, almost the same like mine.
The shop staffs kept it for awhile before releasing it as no one wanted to keep it.

I don't intend to keep it long as I did more research on it and found it is a reticulated python which just happens to be one of the largest python species around. Not good when it grows to more than 15 feet long. But it would make a nice belt though!

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Some 2 months ago when our group cycled to Tampin hill, a scorpion happen to crawl across my path, not the first time though but I decided to catch this one instead.

It adapted itself rather quick and was eating crickets after a couple of days. Scorpio was feed regularly and was getting kinda of fat. I read some articles on rearing scorpion that they tend to become fat and lazy if there is no exercise. We also don't know if it was a male or female.

Last Thursday when I went to check on it, I noticed some white stuffs on the back. The scorpion is dark green, almost black. At first glance I thought it was dead or maybe had some kind of fungal infection.

Then upon closer inspection, I realised it was baby scorpions! Our scorpion is a female and a proud mama of ....the last count was 10 scorplings.
If you are interested to rear this exotic pet, do let me know coz I intend to sell the scorplings when they are bigger.


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I also have these cute miniature pinschers for sale. Selling only the black and tan ones and they are all female. If you are looking for a good house pet with incredible hearing and alertness, these miniature pinscher breed is one of the best pedigree dogs to rear. They are small (eat less), short fur (does not dirty the house) and easy to train (intelligent). By the way, female dogs make better house dogs than male.

Please contact me if you are interested to get one. Almost giveaway price as I only want them to have a good home.

I am now hoping to come across a tarantula as I am cycling.

Tampin hill revisited

Tampin hill revisited on 30/5/2010.

A bigger group this time cycling up Tampin hill, come to think of it, a hill within the mountains.
Only 4.1km from base to the peak but guaranteed to make you sweat and work every leg muscle you have. As usual, the downhill is always a welcome after the hard work.

KLMBH Epic Ride

It gives me great pleasure to inform everyone of KLMBH's Epic Ride that will be held on 27th June. This will be my 3rd Epic ride with 2nd being the most memorable as it left me with a permanent souvenir. Click on the poster to go their forum group for more details.

For those who have not attended an Epic ride, I would strongly encourage you to go or else they wouldn't call it an Epic Ride.

As for me, I am going to start promoting the event among the Malacca riders to get a group to go.

Tampin Mtb Race

A group of us from ECC Malacca/M2BH went to Tampin Mtb Challenge on 16/5/2010.

I am the one at the back with the orange bandanna sticking out right under the letter M

This will be my 2nd participation in a mountain bike race, the first one being the Sg. Lembing Mtb Challenge held 19/20 March this year. I have been avoiding, or rather preferred mtb jamboree compared to race as jamboree is a much more relaxed ride. I remembered attending my first jamboree, KOTRT's "One Hill Ride" way back in 2002 and it took about 5 hours to finish the ride (can't remember the distance).

Max Ng and I just after the race

Many many jamborees followed after that and I still took a long time to finish the ride. I realised the reason for taking hours to finish the ride was because I took a relaxed ride, too relaxed in fact. Stopped many times to recover and to take photos for this blog. Hey, I gotta stop being a tourist and be a mountain biker.
After joining ECC and being with riders that want to push themselves to the limit rubbed on to me. Got tips from my friends on how to come out earlier and now like to challenge myself to see my rankings and have fun at the same time comparing with my fellow members.

My position has improved tremendously since then. I now target to be in the top 100 with most of my fellow ECC members in coming mtb events. One thing for sure, I am enjoying the pressure and difference in racing than in jamborees. Next race - Langkawi International Mountain Bike Challenge in August.

As for this race, I came out 18 out of 30 plus participants in my category.

The hill that fried our brains

My category was the Junior Veteran which the organizers group the 31 - 45 year old participants together. Not good grouping as the age difference is too wide. They probably had limited budget and resources for this race. We rode 4 laps of 3.7km per lap.

The race started with a short stretch of flats and then came the mother hill. Few managed to ride up but for most of us, we took the word MTB literally - Mari Tolak Basikal. It was pushing up for about 1.5km and then the fun begins from the peak. Downhill with some peddling for most of the way back to the starting point.

Each time we reached the hill, it got hotter and hotter with the noon sun right above our heads. Repeat that 4 times. It was the sun that drained our energy than the hill itself.

Good thing was the downhill that provided some rewards after the pushing. Looking from the above photo, you get the idea how nice is the downhill from the zig zag route.

Ah Chai who came in 3rd in the same category as me. Good job!

Sze Wee, a new young rider came in 5th the junior category

Last but not least, thanks to our ECC members that provided support in terms of safety, photo, encouragement and feeding. It was a joy to ride with all of you.

Note of thanks also goes to the friends in facebook for the photos used.

Road trip to Kampar

My wife and I recently went to Kampar with our son Justin and his class mate, Alex to see the place that both of them will be staying and studying for the next 1 year. Both of them signed up to study at TAR College.

We hooked up our 2 old bikes, one of which was a Lerun mountain bike which had a rigid fork bought almost 20 years ago, on the roof rack of our car. The other was a chap ayam "Giant" that Justin used to cycle to school.

We managed to reach Kampar safely with wet rainy weather almost all the way. As I was taking a slow turn around the corner in Taman Bandar Baru, Justin's bike just fell off from the Thule 561. The incident gave us a fright! The bike was fastened on the fork with the front wheel taken off and somehow due to the weight of the bike and probably the action of warbling left and right along the highway caused it to loosen. Thank God it did not happen along the highway at the speed of 110km per hour. We really think God was giving a helping hand throughout the journey as everything went well and the next day after we got back to Melaka, the car radiator heated up. Some leakage somewhere that drained the water from the radiator.

The view from Justin's rented room, the Grand Kampar Hotel

Noticed anything wrong with the photo? We went for toilet break along the way and when I looked up from the toilet cubicle, there it was, staring back at me. What an angle to put a camera.