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!

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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.

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This was the day that I am attempting the try out cycling in Malaysia, across the border and most significantly ALONE, destination – Desaru situated at the East Coast of Malasyia. Some of you may think that I’m crazy or out of my mind, because as a first timer, shouldn’t I try some places nearer? Yeah, I thought this too… What was on mind? I thought if it’s going to be really tough, perhaps I should just head to Kota Tinggi and return if I can’t take the challenge. But it was all good by the time I reached Kota Tinggi, so I carried on. Following are the details of my solo ride to Desaru, images taken can be found on > Here (click on inages for 1600×1200 resolution)

Registered users can watch slideshow @ Here

Time: 3am, I woke up and started to prepare for the trip and I didn’t catch more than 3 hrs of sleep, I normally sleeps around 3am. Dang! Lack of sleep… But that’s not gonna push my thoughts off this trip. Started for the preparation, my gears, checked the bike’s tyres and parts thoroughly, ensured my spare tube is 100% good. Printed out the maps and passport is with me.

At 4.30am, put on my gears onto my bike and getting ready. By 4.45am, was set to go off to start this exciting journey. How was I feeling??? Thrilled! hehe…

To get to Woodlands Checkpoint, I rode the usual rode that most cyclists would, that is through Jalan Kayu, Seletar Dam, Yishun then Woodlands by riding through Gambas Ave towards Woodlands checkpoint. It was a cooling smooth and relaxing ride to Woodlands as I do not wish to tire myself out from this ride. At 6.05am, I made it to the hawker center, and looked for a coffeeshop for breakfast. Wanted to eat breakfast in Johor Bahru, but worried that I might lost my way within the area so I think I better eat in Singapore. Lol!

From my cycling computer, when I reached Woodlands.

Trip Distance – 26.28
Trip Time – 1.05.10
Avg Speed – 24.52
Max Speed – 39.81

Ate a light breakfast, and slowly waiting for the sun rise as I’m not risking myself riding in the still dark Johor Bahru right?

7am, the sun rise started, looked for a money changer and made a change of SGD$20 to Ringgit and headed towards BKE expressway where the motorcyclists rode through the checkpoint and by the time I made through customs, it was already 7.30am. I took some sun rise images the moment I got across the border.

7.30am, it marked the beginning of the unforgettable cycling journey of my life yet. Rode up the flyover and looked for the route no. 3 started on the map… found the route and ride towards Kota Tinggi which I’d set to be my first pit break point. :) There was a petrol kiok where I took the signboard that shows towards Kota Tinggi and used the toilet before the 38km ride. Yeah, 38km no pitting in between… just all the way… and reset my cycling computer’s trip distance.

Within one and a half hours, at 9.05am, I reached Kota Tinggi at Jalan Kermajuan by using Route No.3.

Trip Distance – 34.18 (Was reset at Johor Bahru, so this is the actual distance from Johor)
Trip Time – 2.40.26
Avg Speed – 23.07
Max Speed – 61.56

Had a good rest and bought 2 cans of 100 plus from the store that I was pitting. They were showing pirated High School Musical 3 on their TV… Lol! I was feeling ok and should be able to travel further down to Desaru as the estimated distance from Kota Tinggi to Desaru was almost 60+KM.

Continued my journey at 10.00am and at about 11am, I was hungry and found a nice village where I can get some food. But the village did not have anything much to my likings, so I proceeded to one of the stores where they sell Roti Prata as I found there were many locals eating there, so I deemed the food to be above average or popular among the local villagers. As I stepped into the eating place, the locals presented me with weird looking faces.. wondering why this cyclist was all by himself I guess…. Took my time, enjoyed the piece of prata with egg very much, curry was testy and guess what, there were onions in the prata which only cost like a few ringgits, bought a pack of ciggies there so didn’t bother how much was my meal.

Check the rest of the nice images I took along the journey towards Desaru…
Click Here To View Them (Opens In A New Tab/Window)

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