Friday, September 21, 2012

Pre-World Car Free Day

Leading up to World Car Free Day...
I must be mad guy on a small bike.
While most people braved the morning traffic to work today, I rode out.
My mission was to cycle to work and try to raise awareness on the World Car Free Day.
I did this last year on my off day.

The MyVi gets left behind today
The plan
I must say that my financial resources was exhausted. 
Its been nothing but a fucked-up month. So many expenses.
With a bike, I save a lot of money.
So, I timed it in such a way, I can get to work in less-than two hours.
Prior to the ride, I sent out a global message to all the workers in the company. None responded. Seems that nobody gives a fuck about cycling.
That said, the only guys who were keen were two of my colleagues.
I made plans to rendezvous with them at Sungai Way. That is roughly about 7km to Menara Star in Section 16, Petaling Jaya. Its a real short ride.
As for me, I will set out from USJ26 and meet the guys at Tukang Basikal Fook Sang. 
At the same time, I received a Tern Link P9 folding bike from K2 Asia. 
This was for an evaluation and review on my column in BaikBike.
I've done it before with the Eclipse S11i, which is to my surprise, remained unsold after I gave it a decent write-up.
And I find it really strange that some cyclists here are so caught up with getting themselves the uppety Brompton and splurge on Ori Bicycles which I think are junk.
Anyways, after rigging up the Link P9 with my Garmin EDGE800 GPS, a pair of Cateye Rapid-1 lights and the surviving Sigma PowerLED pro, we are in business.

At the bike lane off the Federal Highway

Eddie and his Tern Link 24h

Riding towards Section 16

The Terns in action!
Some road action
I made it to Sungai Way in about an hour.
By the time I got to the Bike Shop, one of the Yong brothers was seen setting up his bikestore.
Along came his parents, the elder Yong and his wife, a great lady who can put any yuppie bikestore to shame.
I also learned from Yong that one of his old cycling kakis was prohibited by his new boss to ride with the 'Jalan-jalan cari makan' group. This is really sad.
These are the same arrogant people who I saw in Penang. Add another prick-like bicycle techie from Three-Two Square in Section 19, the picture is complete.
Anyways, Eddie arrived as scheduled. We waited for another guy who didn't show up, so, we decided to roll out.
The ride was really smooth and as we reached Section 13, we stopped by for breakfast.

Eddie, arriving at the office
Work, work, work
I had to put the paper out.
And at the same time, file in a story about the World Car Free Day and our ride experience. 
For this, I was given a slot on page 8 on Starmetro's Central edition.
Its been a while since I had filed-in any deadline stories. This one was a breeze. 
Took me 30minutes tops to close the deal. And with pictures too. 
One shot in particular, I set it on self-timer and placed my Canon Powershot G1X on a table top tripod. 
It captured Eddie and I cycling our Terns. And the results were really pleasing.
After I was done with the story, I sent it into the Editor's queue for the publishing process.
Then, time to close my pages for tomorrow. I did this with much ease as I had targeted 6pm as the latest time to leave the office.

Someone called 'Mongo'
Yeah, I have way with names and for normal people who behave like retards, I call them "Mongo".
So, this Mongo dude made a comment on a picture I posted on Facebook, it was me next to the Tern Link P9 at my work desk. Beside it was Jake, my colleague.
His comment: " Samuel Tan I can see your colleague is hinting you that you stink :p LOL"
After reading this, I gave him a piece of my mind.
I never met this guy before and from his profile, he's some Public Relations dude. 
Man, this guy blows!
Well, after my day was done, I rode back home. 
Took me about one and a-half hours to get back to USJ 26

The stink picture
Despite a light shower, I pushed on to reach home in a decent time.
The thing on my mind was to get some rest and prepare for a ride on Saturday.
This one is gonna be really interesting as its the actual "Car Free Day" ride..

Hitting a home-run
The distance covered...

2 comments:

wai said...

Chief, I don't understand why some groups have become so exclusive. Cycling is not about the bike brand nor about clubs, it's about the fun. That's why I refrain from joining these mavericks.

Nice write ups. Keep up the good work!

Uncle Mui

samo said...

Hahahah!!!!

That's true Unker Mui..

Once you take out the 'fun' from the equation, its 'suck' all the way..

Again, you can please EVERYBODY..

Sam