UNFORGETTABLE WEEKEND IN KLANG VALLEY

Mud & Dirt

Date: 26 January 2003

Trail: Batu Dam Needle Eye

The riders: 12 – Krankster, Kompressor, Bengkel, MightyTong, Danny Ng, Victor Cool, Yellow Manta, CoolGuyZ, Andre Gan, Dr.Eric Tan, CoolGuyZ’s friend and Rama.

Of Sizzling Butts and Broken Sole by the Yellow Manta

The Needle Eye at Batu Dam is the place to ride if you want a quick yet good workout on a Sunday morning. Trail conditions are not too tough yet give most riders some good challenge, especially when it comes to the hilly stretches during the wet season. The flat single track hugging the dam’s edges are best ridden fast for maximum pleasure unless of course you also don’t want to miss out on the fantastic scenery. And of course a mountain bike ride would not be complete without the customary river crossings and rickety log bridges to carry your bike over deep gullies. These you definitely find plentiful at Batu Dam.

But what gave us the most pleasure last Sunday at the dam had nothing to do with all these. It was our beloved Rides Director-cum-Webmaster Krankster who decided to close the Chinese lunar year in the most sizzling manner – by landing his butt on his baking hot brake disc after being ‘hooked’ and pulled off his bike by an overhanging thorn just as he was about to tackle that steep, rutty and rooty descent down to the stream. He thought he was bleeding profusely down there when he felt a warm sensation before realizing that his butt was on fire!

Not one to give up easily, he mounted his bike again as soon as the smoke had cleared only to kiss the earth once again when he couldn’t clip one of his ‘Sidi’ shoes into his Eggbeater cranks. Any ordinary sole, er, I mean soul would have called it quits but our Krankster gathered himself and moved further up the slope. Ah, perhaps the longer distance before the downhill would give him the momentum and sufficient time to clip in. Clipped in he did this time, perhaps too tightly, only to be derailed by an off-angle piece of root. Once again our jolly friend was sent off the bike and off came along was his right sole! ‘Sidi’ shoes had now become silly shoes as our friend picked up the pieces and himself of course.

Just when you thought he’d finally given up, our friend hopped on again minus one sole and made it all the way down without any further ado and cutting short our amusement. Unfortunately nobody had the whole thing captured on camera... Our orang gunung who came all the way from Singapore Dr. Eric Tan had the other camera but he was already positioned down the hill hoping to capture some of us tumbling down.

New on the ride was Andre Gan who straddled one of our project bikes. He performed reasonably well as a beginner and I’m sure he enjoyed himself thoroughly. CoolGuyZ also brought along a new rider but I didn’t get his name though. Pretty fit rider. My colleague Danny Ng has improved tremendously both in fitness and guts and could be seen riding down technical stretches that he didn’t dare before! Rama, an original PCC pedigree dating back to the Peugeot days, finally found time to rekindle an old love i.e. mountain biking only to be let down by a derailleur which got ripped off by the thick undergrowth, after which he had to ride single-speed.