Alright people, I’ll try my best to keep everything short & sweet about this event which took place on the 6th Feb 2010 Saturday at East Coast Park (start point) as there was just plentiful details during this event, one of the incidents was quite funny or “disturbing” to those conservative ones… We were placed under the Leisure category since we can’t find the 4th rider to join us in the Competitive category. Our team’s name was: Team SLT (surname initials -- Seah, Lim & Toh , well… that was for convenience sake, next year we’ll use SgNiteCycle.com!)

I reached the place at about 7pm and the registrations were still on-going  so it was kinda bored sitting around… we waited till about 8.40pm and finally the NUS students started to gather all the participants around for the events briefing which we think its a bit late, if time management was better to gather all around, we could have started at 8pm, an hour earlier would be better but of course it can be more dangerous for those who are riding on the road as there will be more vehicles too!

It was almost 9pm when we start to get on the clues through the score sheet and I can tell you some of the clues really made us clueless!!! Some of them are quite lame too! Especially the Bedok one, with picture of a bed then another pic with an “OK” sign, well credits has to be given the students for brainstorming to this really lame clue… haha!

The initial part was the organizing and planning that truly matters, Perly and Jayme were reading the clues and I was spying for other’s clues, I actually came up with a few & gave the clues to others… Lol… it doesn’t matter since we are in the Leisure category, hopefully the other team can make full use of our clues to win with extra advantages (which they didn’t win cuz they went “holland” in Changi Village for one of the houses… i know… wtf right…)

Eventually, being not familiar with the game rules, we “sacrificed” the first few houses but headed to the first hotel at Bedok Reservoir Road 745, which is right in front of NTUC Fairprice. The game played was fun and Perly’s drawings were extremely funny, I think we’ve gotten 6 or 7 out of 10 correct… the only house we gotten was the one with the big football near Bedok ’s Swimming Complex, did I forgot to mention we were the first team to reach this first hotel point? Unbelievable!!!

One of the rules was we must include the team captain in the pictures needed to be taken, so all the images are Perly in all the images… LOL! Watch out for his ultra funny poses!!! :p The next location we set off to were Temasek Polytechnic then IKEA Tampines since we missed out the houses for the ones situated near Changi Village other wise we could have gathered more points!!!

Pretty obvious, this is IKEA! ^^

Immediately after IKEA, we headed to our 2nd hotel point which was in Pasir Ris Park’s “spiderman web” which we were the 1st team to reach as well… We played the game required then a quick toilet break near the area, then set off towards the next 4 houses which are Win Tai Industrial Building, Hougang Sports Hall -- Yellow Stationary Cab with 2 wheels, Woodbridge Hospital’s apple tree, Bowen Secondary School’s main entrance with their star logo and finally the hotel point located at the famous hawker center -- CHOMP CHOMP!!! Situated in Serangoon Garden Way.

Ok, here’s one of the funniest incident that took place when we reached Hougang Sports Hall. While searching for the Yellow stationary cab with 2 wheels, I scrambled through a dark passage way from the sports retail shop below the GYM towards the other entrance of the sports hall. At a very secluded dark corner, I saw a middle aged chinese man shaking his white butts banging his girlfriend right before my eyes! Omg!!! I wish you could see his ultra self owned facial expressions when I simply stormed past the couple having public sex!!!!

Hmmm… I wonder if the guy finished his “job” or not, as we finally found the yellow cab & took the picture before continuing our journey… LOL!

Entire route from Wing Tai, Hougang Sports Hall, Woodbridge and Bowen Sec towards Chomp Chomp were carefully and strategically planned by me, so we didn’t waste any precious time at all throughout my route, we maintained a good average cycling speed of 25km/hour. :D

Below are the four house pics needed before the Chomp Chomp hotel….

Wing Tai Industrial Building 01!

Wing Tai Industrial Building 02!

The Yellow Stationary Cab with 2 Wheels!

The Apple Tree at Woodbridge Hospital

Bowen Secondary School

The hotel we headed for was at CHOMP CHOMP, and again we were the first team to reach, which evidently shows that most of the teams had chosen to head for the hotels in the city area before the ones located in the east and north-east areas. We swiftly played the game required in CHOMP CHOMP, scored Full Points, used the Community Chest car then received 1.5x Multiplier for this hotel. Luckily we didn’t get jailed! All thanks to Jayme’s lady’s luck for drawing the 1.5x multiplier!!! Yay!

Bartley MRT station which was the first station we achieved, then off to the 2nd nearest MRT — Potong Pasir, went along Upper Paya Lebar then cut through Upper Aljunied, straight down towards city to the train station, this didn’t take us too much time except while searching for stations’ exit A.

Answer to the house question

I missed taking the picture of Potong Pasir MRT station, well it was not required by the game anyway… So, immediately after Potong Pasir, our planned direction was to head down to city and complete the rest of the houses, hotels and MRT stations, we decided to head towards Clarke Quay’s Merchant Court Hotel which is the next targeted house to claim, while heading towards The Sail at Marina, we claimed the Raffles Place MRT which denied entrance to the answers because the exit was closed, a picture was taken just in case… Next, we head down towards Chinatown for Lim Chee Guan, took a quick picture at their entrance follow by Outram MRT station before climbing up towards SGH to take another picture in front of the 3 flag poles of the Duke-NUS School.Right before the entrance, Perly was showing signs of mild cramps in his leg, he applied some tiger balm heat run I think, he complimented for its effectiveness! Good job tiger balm!!!

By this time, we finished all the 4 required MRT stations worth 160 points if I’m not wrong and the required 4 houses for the next hotel we are claiming for situated Maxwell Food Center. Again, we achieved FULL Points for the game played at Maxwell looking for shop unit numbers, so we made use of the Community Chest card again which gave us 2x of the points we collected. Hail to Jayme’s lady luck!!! Thanks to Jayme ! :D

Clarke Quay behind Merchant Court Hotel

The Sail @ Marina Bay, the orange bridge


The Sail @ Marina Bay

Chinatown’s Lim Chee Guan!!!

We couldn’t find any clues at Outram MRT, did someone sabotage by taking down the clues???

DUKE-NUS Medical with 3 flag poles….

Finally, the 5th hotel towards Kallang before we head back to East Coast, due to time constrain, we can only claim 2 houses which are the ones are Haji Lane and Golden Mile Food Center. By the time we were traveling on Nicoll Highway towards Kallang, I remembered clearly that it was already 4.51am. We reached Kallang’s hotel checkpoint exactly at 4.57am, played the words game and rest for about 5 minutes then we took a slow ride back to East Coast Park’s finishing point with an average speed of 15km/hour.

Haji Lane Shop Number 35

The stall 133 located on the 2nd storey of Golden Mile Food Center

The required answer for the Stall 133, green digits are 786

COMPLETING THE NUS BIKE QUEST: Cycledelic 2010

We completed the quest with a total accumulated points of 705, Perly mentioned that it should be more points as the NUS guy miscalculated our points for the 1st time was 655, I think our total score might even be 800+… Well, a question arose was why did a Leisure team tried so hard for the quest? Simple, it was because we were short of 1 cyclist to join the Competitive category otherwise we would have won the Cash Prizes and the true glory named Champions! The fact is we are still the unnamed Champions as we scored even more points than the Competitive winning team, and yes we are very proud of this great achievement because we are also first timers taking part in the NUS bike quest.

Below is the short video I’ve taken after the quest where most participants were resting while waiting for the prize giving presentation before taking the group photos, video didn’t include us as we were receiving a special commentary by Andre and accepting the extra shirts, courtesy of the NUS Bike Quest 2010 organizers. Thanks people and the end! :D

NUS Bike Quest 2011? Yes!!! We will join next year’s bike quest again! It was really an enjoyable experience to go through the games & challenges! :D

More event pictures can be found on Facebook, click on the following image to view more now!

• 25th April 2009 Sat Ride with Podders (1)
• May Day Ride with Flowerpod Podders 2009 (6)
• Gallery (2)
• Togoparts & OCBC Cycle Singapore Charity Mass Ride (0)
• 11th Oct Saturday 2030hrs Meetup and City Ride (2)

Upon reaching Mac Donalds, we didnt really take a break except buying some drinks at the 7-11 and a quick smoke break… Yeah, we have some heavy smokers on this cycling group, so if you are non smoker, you’ve been warned here… lol…

We continued the journey towards Fort Road, passing Mountbatten and cut through Stadium Drive so we can ride on Nicoll Highway and cycle to our first pit break point at Keppel Bay. Nice night scenery there.

How beautiful? Well, words alone cannot describe this piece of night scenery at Keppel. A picture is always worth a thousand words right? Here’s an image I grabbed from the Flickr.

This is a nice picture doing justice with nice colors coming from the auto-changing bridge lights, I’ve got better links to share with everyone. From these links, you can see a 360 degrees view of Keppel Bay as though you are there!

Wait no further people, click on the images now… IE users may get the yellow notification under the address bar informing you to install the “DevalVR 3D Browser plugin” Ignore that and wait for the page to load fully. It may take a while to load depending on your broadband speed…

360 Degrees View of Marina Keppel Bay 1

360 Degrees View of Marina Keppel Bay 2

360 Degrees View of Marina Keppel Bay 3

360 Degrees View of Marina Keppel Bay 4

Source of the 360 Degrees View of Marina Keppel Bay: http://moonshine.homedns.org:2655/pano/
View more 360 Degrees View images of other locations from there if you like them. :D

4 of us spent estimated good 30 mins of rest at Keppel Bay before continuing the route to West Coast Highway and riding towards West Coast Park Mac Donalds as our next pit break destination. This time we rode all the way to the designated point with no intervals.

After refreshing/relieving ourselves at West Coast Mac, the continuing journey will be tougher. (Estimated 28 to 30km) Next destination was Kranji Reservoir.

Cycling along West Coast highway can be dangerous sometimes because there are often big trucks or trailers driving towards Jurong Island & Tuas area.

Areas we passed by are: Jalan Buroh, Jalan Boon Lay and the nice riding long road -- Lim Chu Kang road. Where is Lim Chu Kang road located? (click to view)

Along LCK, the moment we passed the chicken farms… yeah, the chicken shit smell was uber power…. =.=”’ thats the only thing I dislike about LCK, else its a really fantastic place to ride on but you must be cautious at all times, open up your ears to listen for roaring engine revs from speeding cars racing on this road. Beware…

Alright…. Its Video Time! :D

Jayme must be !$%#%%$^* at me now, why must post that malu picture of her online… Oh no, I’m not trying to get you embarrassed ok… I meant well to educate everyone, please drink more h2o during the before riding at night…

We reached the Kranji Reservoir park soon and visited the public toilet there for quick relief then we rode to the next pit break point at the 24/7 mini-mart along the Kranji industrial estate at Kranji Road. We took a long break there as Jayme’s muscles were still pulling. We should be riding the ever challenging Mandai Road for newbies on road especially when they’d never experienced much up-hills in Singapore plain terrains but due to Jayme’s pulling muscles, we switched our route to accommodate to the situation. The route we took was:

1. Exit Kranji
2. Woodlands Road
3. Upper Bukit Timah
4. Dunearn Road (took a break at bus stop, lots of dawn roadies to watch)
5. Newton Circus

We reached city and decided to take breakfast at Crawford hawker center. After breakfast, when we were started riding in less than 10 meters, the weather turned foul and begun to rain heavily. The lucky four took shelter at the housing estate area just around the corner. hehe… another long break soothing the nasty pulled muscles on Jayme. :p

It took quite a while for the rain to simmer and we took a turn at Jalan Sultan, riding through Java Road before the good old Concourse, back to the usual Nicoll highway, Fort Road then back to East Coast Park. Total clocked distance ridden by Vickie and me was approximately 90km by the time we reached Fort Road. We took the underpass after Mac so we can start the journey back home and call it a “night” but the irritating rain came back forcing us to take another break under the HDB void deck at Marine Parade housing estates.

After the rain stopped, Perly rode towards Bedok South for his home in Pasir Ris, Jayme, Vickie and I rode on Still Road, sent Jayme back along Jalan Eunos and head to our start point Hougang. Nothing particular happened along the way except that owning shag face on Vickie… we didnt sleep a wink since 9pm when we started riding…

Congratulations to Vickie for being able to complete a Century Ride -- 100km! Well done man, its not an easy task for a girl who had never done this before, perhaps your old bike did really “trained” you well…

Perly clocked 120km, Jayme should clocked an estimated 90-100km as well.

Watch out for the ride next week, see ya soon! The END.

• 25th April 2009 Sat Ride with Podders (1)
• NUS Bike Quest: Cycledelic 2010 (0)
• My first century ride – a tale of blood, sweat n drama =p (0)
• Letter – "Here’s how to make cycling safe for all" (1)
• Halloween round island ride – 31/10/08 (2)

Cycling Route Distance
Should be comfortably between 30-40km to and from East Coast to Changi Village and back
Or more since we have season riders for the first ride… maybe can do a simple round island…. biggrin.gif

Attendance

Description of the ride..

It was a nice and cooling weather, started off from Hougang for me, supposed to meet Vicky (xIaoviiCk) but was informed by her earlier that she’ll be meeting her friend Johnathan so I set off alone to meet Jayme (iamtired) at Jln Eunos before heading off to East Coast to meet perly.

Less than 1KM from my place, my rear tube went bonkers, luckily the nearest LBS Kian Seng Heng is not closed yet at 9.15pm so I pushed my bike to them for immediate fast replacement so I did not have to utilize my own spare tube. After changing my tube, I tried my best to speed to meeting location at Jln Eunos averaging at 35-45km/hr… Less than 15 Mins I reached and continued the journey to East Coast after a short introduction of myself to Jayme.

We took a breezy ride straight down from Still Road and perly was waiting for us at Mac Donalds patiently so the three of us had a good time chatting with Jayme while waiting for the rest to arrive.

At about 11.30pm, Vicky and Johnathan called me and as usual, we briefly introduced to each other before heading down to our pre-planned location – Changi Village. Johnathan was having a bad rear tire as well but it didn’t seemed to be punctured situation so my portable hand pump came into usefulness. :D

After refilling air for his rear tire, the five of us started our 17-18km route from East Coast towards Changi Village riding at a comfy speed of 15-20km/hr. Along the way, we were having some nice intermediate chit chatting and took a short pit break at just outside Safra East Coast Resort, top up our water bottles and replenished ourselves with H2O. It wa 7.7Km from Mac to the resort water point and we estimated approximate 10km ride to reach Changi Village.

We continued the route with the same previous casual slow ride, non pressurized and easy riding condition as we were riding on PCN paths most of time. It didn’t take us too long to reach the Changi Village hawker center and guess what? Haha… there were some very beautiful and sexy “Ah Guas” (Transvestites) “doing business” at the public carpark area. We rode past them before taking our long pit break at the coffeeshop which was jam packed with soccer fans.. Match on this happening was: Manchester United vs Tottenham Hotspur. It was just the beginning of half-time when Man U was behind Tottenham at a shocking score of 0-2. Not long after we were having our round of drinks, Man U got their first goal with a penalty scored by C. Ronaldo at 57 Minutes. The 2 coffeeshops’ soccer fans cheered like thunder and we joined in the cheering fun and shouted the first “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL” with them… ROFL!

Astonishingly, when we happily chatting about how lucky we were to ride on night with such an exciting match going-on, W. Rooney pumped in the 2nd goal in just less than 10 minutes after the first goal… Again, the goal cheering was super fun! Haha… That was NOT ALL… just a minute away from the 2nd goal, the super hero C. Ronaldo scored the 3nd goal of the night!!! Can you imagine how hyper the massive crowd was having when all these flying goals started to roll in one by one by the offensive Man-U players! It was totally AWESOME!!! Well, it appeared that Mr. fast acting W. Rooney didn’t want C. Ronlado to steal away all the limelight, he contributed his 2nd goal at 71 minutes!!!(3rd goal 68 minutes)

It must a terrible night for the Tottenham players as they were leading 0-2 at first half but at 71 minutes the score was at their huge disadvantage of 4-2. We were comtemplating that 4-2 should be final score and that would really be finalized. Lol… Soccer ball is round, we didn’t see D. Berbatov was the final goal scorer as he made the 5th goal for the night that truly finalized the score at 5-2. What a glorious victory by Man-U, good job!!!

Shortly after very exciting soccer match, most of the crowd from the coffeeshop started leaving and I took sometime out to take a look Vicky’s bike which was making constant unpleasant noises when cycling. I came to realized it was her lengthened chain was causing all the noises and advised her to replaced it to shut the noise up… Vick & Johnathan took a trial ride on Jayme’s Wheeler… In fact, I tried the Wheeler too! It came to our surprise that the Wheeler was in extremely good condition except the rear brakes but other than that, it is definitely one of those good bikes that should not take you long to fall in love with it…. Lol! Ok, I’m exaggerating… hehe…

We had rested enough and calling it a “night” since Vicky & Johnathan’s bikes weren’t too appropriate to travel further so we rode down towards Pasir Ris via the “Loyang TPG” temple and headed towards Downtown East where we parted with perly. We gradually traveled towards Elias, IKEA/GIANT, cut across the Chartered route, Old Tampines Rd and all the way till we say goodbye with Jayme (towards Jln Eunos via Defu Lane, Ubi, Jln Eunos) and Johnathan towards Kovan. Jayme and I turned in separate ways at Hougang Ave 7 and was given the honor to send back her… (less than 800 meters from my place)

Yeah, that we called it a night, I’m pretty looking forward for the next ride on May Day 2009 Friday night. :)

• NUS Bike Quest: Cycledelic 2010 (0)
• May Day Ride with Flowerpod Podders 2009 (6)
• Gallery (2)
• Carrefour LED Brake Lights Review (0)
• My first century ride – a tale of blood, sweat n drama =p (0)

Transport planners in the Netherlands know how to safely fit bicycle use into tight spaces. The country is one the most densely settled in the world, with compact cities and many older areas with narrow streets. They also have much higher car ownership than Singapore. It would be hard to argue that the Netherlands’ cities have more space for bicycle facilities than we do in Singapore.

If you want to know the Dutch “secret” for a great bicycling environment then an excellent start would be the visually stunning, Cycling in the Netherlands (pdf), put out by the Dutch equivalent of the LTA.

One of its key points is that “bicycle policy works“!

… a consistent approach by Dutch policy makers to the bicycle has had a demonstrable effect. Municipalities which have had a focused bicycle policy for some time have a higher bicycle share than other cities. Traffic safety has also benefited from the bicycle policy. (p.19)

There is safety in numbers for bicycle users as this figure from page 13 shows. The more bicycle use there is in a city, the safer it is per km.

Page 64 of Cycling in the Netherlands also kindly lists further English-language resources on Dutch bicycle policy:

CROW, Sign up for the bike: Design manual for a bicycle-friendly infrastructure, 1996. This manual can still be supplied. See www.crow.nl. An English translation of the revised Ontwerpwijze Fietsverkeer (Cycle Traffic Design Method) may appear in 2007.

The SWOV organisation for traffic safety research also has an extensive website in English, containing considerable information about bicycle use and bicycle safety: www.swov.nl

The research unit of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, AVV, has a
large number of reports on traffic in the Netherlands in the English section of its website, including ‘passenger transport’ and various publications relevant to bicycle policy: www.rws-avv.nl

The Fietsberaad, or bicycle consultancy, recently issued an English-language publication outlining bicycle policy in a number of cycling cities: Continous and integral: The cycling policies of Groningen and other European cycling cities (Fietsberaad-publication no. 7, April 2006). This publication contains a number of accounts on the traffic policy of several cities characterised by a relatively high degree of bicycle use, extending over a prolonged period. Each account gives a specific picture of the ‘course of development’ of bicycle use in a municipality and the relationship between bicycle use and local policy. It covers five cities in the Netherlands known as ‘cycling cities’: Groningen, Amsterdam, Enschede, Zwolle and Veenendaal. This is augmented by a selection of five cities from other neighbouring countries also featuring a reasonable level of bicycle use: Münster and Freiburg in Germany, Copenhagen and Odense in Denmark and Ghent in Belgium. The publication can be downloaded from www.fietsberaad.nl, via ‘rapporten’.

To these sources I would add the Interface for Cycling Expertise (I-ce), which is devoted to sharing Dutch bicycle planning expertise worldwide.

[Update: I wrote a follow-up to this post over at the Reinventing Urban Transport blog.]

Thanks to Cor-Henk for the link to the Cycling in the Netherlands document.

Credits: http://cyclinginsingapore.blogspot.com

• 25th April 2009 Sat Ride with Podders (1)
• 11th Oct Saturday 2030hrs Meetup and City Ride (2)
• NUS Bike Quest: Cycledelic 2010 (0)
• May Day Ride with Flowerpod Podders 2009 (6)
• Togoparts & OCBC Cycle Singapore Charity Mass Ride (0)

1st, our meeting point was set at Kaki Bukit traffic junction towards Ubi, heading towards East Coast direction. That is the best meeting point for the both of us due to the location that both of us stay.

Upon meeting up, we ride a few streets down to the absolutely famous “Gold Rolex King” Hokkien Mee food stall along Jalan Eunos.

Following on, we headed to city riding through Joo Chiat Road, we made our way through Kallang and our next destination was MUSTAFA… So what were we doing at Mustafa? Oh, we went there to buy the Motorola ear piece for the walkie talkies I brought along for this city ride… it looked something exactly like this:

As the rain was getting heavier, we decided to go for Swee Choon Dim Sum, not really taking a break but more of trying to find a hiding place to prevent ourselves from getting drench in the rain if it gets heavier. We ordered some dim sum at Swee Choon, it will be quite embarrassing for not ordering any food and occupying their seats, here’s what we got! Their famous signature dishes -- Fried Mee Suah Cake and Steam Egg Chicken… nice!

After we cleared the delicious dim sim, the next destination went further down towards Keppel PSA… yeah, you are very smart indeed! Yes, thats correct… we were going to Sentosa Island.

Admission charges for cycling is $3… And we caused a minor traffic jam at the gantry, the cashier at the gantry lacked of a dollar change so she had to run to the next one to get me my change…

Sentosa Island’s biggest challenges are its steep uphills and downhills and they are always up and down… We couldn’t make it on some uphills so we did the “push push” technique… lol…

We went straight for the beaches and nearly got lost as Alex and I went different directions, luckily we still have our newly bought walkie talkie sets with ear pieces to communicate.

We finally met each other again just outside Cafe Del Mar, and after taking a short break, we went roaming along the beach pubs and headed towards Palawan Beach and that’s where we witnessed a very happening beach side event they held, superb lightings and sound system!

Ok, done with Sentosa… should we be going home??? Nope… next place >>> Chinatown… which is pretty nearby. So whats good at Chinatown at about 2 -- 3am? Ah… Here’s the good deal… Tiong Shian Porridge Center… Here’s the stall image…

Alex ordered a fish porridge which was a big mistake, take note >>> ANY porridge is good there except for fish porridges… Approximately, we rested an hour, the porridges sold there are super hot when served, so we took our time and have a good break before going back east…

Next stop, we made it all the way back to Geylang and I had Teo Chew porridge there but the food wasn’t exceptionally nice, never going back there again…

That is all for this city ride of ours… We’ll be back next week… :D

• NUS Bike Quest: Cycledelic 2010 (0)
• Gallery (2)
• Togoparts & OCBC Cycle Singapore Charity Mass Ride (0)
• Resources on Dutch Bicycle Planning (0)
• 25th April 2009 Sat Ride with Podders (1)