Long Ride Saturday

After a day of rest on New Year's day recovering from the revelry and merrymaking, I was raring to go. There were 4 of us and we planned the Lim Chu Kang route. It was the usual 5 am set off time and we rode down Adam- Lornie route. HC had not quite exorcise his demons from the last group ride although I thought he felt more comfortable after the last ride with me.Nevertheless we did not go up the ramp at Macritchie reservoir. On passing LH we saw the joyriders no doubt preparing for their morning ride.  I took over the lead from JN after LH and decided to go down old upper thomson road for HC to face his last demon when he crashed out and was pleased he kept up well and took the corner onto the main route without event. Mid way down Mandai route, we were overtaken by a peloton of uber fast riders and literally ate dust. A second group came up and I was determined not to be left behind and actually tucked nicely between the front 3 and drafter them and was able to keep up the pace. They were going at 33-45 km/h all the way to the Mandai shell station. PK took over and we swung right down Kranji road. The road was a narrow single carriageway( 2 way road) and traffic was quite heavy to our surprise. We actually were stopped at the Railway crossing and the barriers were down because the train was passing through. How cool is that in Singapore?? We rode to the Kranji reservoir and took a break there, swigging our water and chatting. As we prepared to restart, PK's bike ran into some troub le and in the dark we were fiddling around and discovered he had broken a spoke which meant he had to take cab back to home base while the rest of us continued. I was totally unfamiliar with the route and JN had to leda. The next stretch was quite an unforgettable experience. As we wound round Neo Tiew route passing places where I only passed while I was in the army, we passed and sniffed farm manure and we passed some satellite/ radio stations where the pylons were spaced nicely apart. With the sun coming up, The pylons stood silently interconnected with wires. The base of the pylons were shrouded in swaths of mist. The imagery was surreal  and the horizon was made the softer with the mist rising slightly to blur the edge, in stark contrast to the sharp sillouette of the radio pylons.

We came down to Lim Chu Kang road and with the long straight I leapt out of the seat and sprinted forward and told JN I will meet him at the end of the road. I was riding at 40 km/h but ran out of gas in barely 1 km to my embarrassment. I had over-estimated by capability! We rode down Old Choa Chu Kang road and Bricklands road before turning to Choa Chu Kang estate where at this point we became lost and had to stop to ask for directions. A kind elderly man pointed us the way to Upper Bukit Timah route and we made it back to rendevous with PK where we had a great breakfast at JN's house.

66.5 km; 1:38