Everybody has a friend that they will want dead or deceased at a point or another in their life. Maybe it could be a really irritating subject teacher, or even a close colleague that is taking your much-needed place at the top.
Do not fret, do not get mad, do not pass go, do not get 200 dollars, erm.. just get even. There is a more viable and perfectly legal solution out there.
You no longer have to worry about lifelong imprisonment or the slow and painful death of a brown rope tied around your neck, if you are found guilty of murder.
All you simply need to do is to make them go for a leisure ride at ketam bike park in pulau ubin. nothing much to it, that's all to it. just a simple lap, they can take their own sweet time, if anything goes wrong, just get off the bike and push, or just press the brakes and get off, and then push. easy peasy.
Which was exactly what we were led to believe on saturday, when me, shane and vek registered and went for the "leisure" category of the hentam ketam bike park official opening 2008.
Booshee was supposed to go but he had work, or he could have flirted with near-certain death. Definitely more interesting than a boring half-day at work, right?
me , shane and vek, aka "bike gods" in high spirits after barely surviving ketam.
Shane is my 27 year old brother, and the most skilled among the many regular biking friends we hang out with. (others include booshee, didi, booshee, didi, and sometimes, booshee) he rides a white commencal hardtail since he is widely believed to have a commencal "face".
Commencal is this cool french bike brand endorsing many many mtb superstars, and is quite in with the bike crowd nowadays. But shane's most important attribute is that he provides the group with much-needed road visibility (read:lights) as he is still the only one with them. (edit:didi has them now too)
Vek is the resident dwarf (he is as stubborn as them) of the group. he rides a dirty-gold salsa, coupled with red-hubbed custom wheels, and thinks of himself as quite a bikanova (a bike casanova aka a playboy who cannot afford a car). His most important attribute is that he provides very emotional outbursts at select times and dispenses cigs on rides.
He currently resents proper bicycle suspension, and safety as well, thus sitting on a plastic saddle atop a ridiculously high seatpost which results in him not being able to jump off his bike during 10km/hr bicycle mishaps.
We reached changi jetty at about 8 in the morning, and collected our tickets which will grant us free bum-boat rides to ubin. yes, just in case you were curious, we get varying boat rides according to our financial status. Vek had his personal registration comments read out aloud to him by an equally embarrassed registration administrator.
Shane had doctored vek's internet comments a week before; juicy excerpts from it include "i love my eyelashes", "fluffy bunnys" and the highlight of it all was his blatant admittance to sharing a bubbly man-bath with his buttbuddy alex on several occasions. (rubber duckie not included)
After that hilarious episode, we proceeded to the jetty, threw our bikes onto the boat, and rowed over to to ubin with our bare hands. actually, we were very careful about placing our bikes on the boat, and we were ferried over by professionals.
We reached pulau ubin at about 9am and rode over to the ketam bike park, which is situated in the central-west of the island, near a deserted quarry randomly littered with human bones and rat faeces. (another manly fallacy adding spice to the story)
-Fie's "I was there!!" account of the hentam ketam bike race 2008-
The place was filled with many wannabe local racers and a smattering of ang-moh guys to make it an "international" biking event. The official race was about to start and they were getting ready to do 3 laps of the ketam course. The female emcee was particularly enthusiastic and kept trying to keep spirits up by shouting "come on, come on, everybadeeeeeee!!!!!!" and "lets go, lets go, letsgoletsgoletsgo!!!!!!!!!"
She must have been high due to the humid and hot morning, or she is paid hourly by charting her enthu-meter attached to her body. If she was better looking, there should be no problem as we men can look past these cosmetic flaws. Alas, the problem was there.
The sun was blazing hot but luckily, there was this big makeshift wooden structure to keep us leisure riders sheltered. It didnt shelter us from the Unbridled Girl Lady Yoddler (U.g.L.Y.) emcee though. We sat through three whole hours of sh*t from her before being allowed to register for our slots in the leisure ride.
On an unimportant side-note, some singaporean commando guy won the official race in a time of an hour and 9 mins? 3 laps and a 1.2 km run. *yawn*
Back to the main story at hand. The 3 bike-gods were ready for their first mass-leisure trailride. shane had all his gear tacked on, looking every inch a pro. vek was looking rather bored as usual. i was just happy we are one step closer to the day-ending lucky draw. I was very confident we would not go home empty-handed. Time to get a nice spankin' new bike to sell on the internet! Cash money!
By now, the girl emcee had convulsed and taken out of action. This boring male emcee took over. he was the exact opposite of the druggie lady. He will drone out incredibly exciting comments like "number 27 is changing into his running shoes now. do give him a big hand." or impromptu party poopers like "yes. eran here just came in 62th place, do give him a big hand." Amazing.
But not everything was that bad. we did get to see two unicyclists attempt to break a record and some limbs (theirs) by going the distance with their vehicle of choice. Thus, the day did have its fair share of comedy. By the way, they won a special prize for their coolness. I didnt see what it was but from the size of the bag, i am willing to bet they got branded straitjackets.
The actual leisure ride was a blur. It was so tough that i think i lost count of the number of times i had to push the bike up the insanely steep slopes and gingerly snail down the suicidal downhills . A lot of time was spent by me just putting myself and the bike aside to let some fake-aggressive "Make Way, Make WAY!!!!" leisure riders, who had no balls to take part in the actual race itself, overtake me.
They looked like they actually thought that they were going to win a medal if they finished first or something. Zooming past casual riders, kid-bikers and even slippered riders must have been such a boost to their ego. Go figure.
hello? leisure ride? need a bong? rent a brain?
Finally, after an hour, most of us struggled through the 10 km long course. we were battered and slightly winded. I had lost a lot of energy racing against this 9 year old kid accompanied by his father. I barely outraced him and the 2 slippered guys by taking gratitious shortcuts and leeways on the course.
The lucky draw beckoned. Half an hour later, we left for the jetty. We won nothing in the draw. I missed out on the 2nd prize by one place, and the two guys that accompanied us on that day- bernard and uncle hadley, won the top two prizes respectively.
scene of the ill-fated lucky draw. And great view of the fellow losers who didnt win stuff.
No worries. We live to fight another day. My dreams of doing the 70.3 is still alive. I still have my limbs intact after ketam. And on my way back to singapore on the boat at about 2pm, my thoughts veered back to the rest of the day ahead of us.
But that will be covered in my next post. Stay tuned!
Ahem..me> and veky
