Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Ramadhan al-mubarak rides

As usual, ride must go on.. with some minor adjustment during this fasting month. Been 2 weeks fasting and 2 city centre rides on Friday in a row. Last nite, me, Shark, Zali, Pak Abas and 2 other roadie went downtown for mild ride. Mild due to my request since I took Shogun for a test ride. Shogun was running on 44T chainring and 15T cog, quite a huge ratio. Lucky enough, uncut handlebar helps to leverage "rock the bike" cranking up short steep hills.
Tunnel under Jalan Ampang/Jalan Tun Razak intersection

First Friday of Ramadhan, we (Shark and Jazlany) went for a ride. Started of from Sri Gombak flowing to Sentul then to Hentian Duta. Turning of to Masjid Wilayah and climbing up Hartamas heading to Pusat Sains and take a turn of to Damansara Height. Slowly climbing up Damansara Height and fast descent to Pusat Bandar Damansara and proceed to Parlimen via Jalan Duta. From there, Tasik Perdana and exit at Dayabumi and pay a visit to memorable Pasar Seni (me and wife's RV before we get married, back then cellphone wasn't born yet). Added to that sweat, we loop to Bukit Bintang before taking a break at Dataran Merdeka. We met a bunch of cyclist from AU3, Keramat who invited us for a drink at Selangor Mansion. Over Teh Tarik, we discussed on combining for a larger group for the following Friday nite ride.
A view by the riverbank near Central Market

Jazlany admiring graffiti near Central Market

Sahur break with Kelolo


The following weekdays, me and Shark started discussing on how to entice others to join us for Friday nite ride. An invitation in one of local cycling forum didn't catch any response from forum's member. It doesn't really matter bcoz to me, rides must go on, no matter what number of cyclist we have. To our surprise, our proposed RV swamped by nearly 30 cyclists around the vicinity, Shark was saying "this is like Critical Mass". I can say that all of them cycled from home.

Great! Now we have a large number, how do we handle this?

Typically, any number below 10 is easy enuff to handle. 30 cyclists can be a different ball game. Though everyone is aware that they have to take care themselves out there, being sort of "organizer", we have a responsibility to ensure the route is safe enuff, doable, and spread out some sweepers within the crowd to avoid ppl loosing direction.

RV at Tasik Titiwangsa

So the game plan was, Shark taking the lead, me sweeping in between to ensure ppl taking the right route, and Pak Abas as final sweeper. Alhamdulillah, everything went smooth and safe. The route was the same we did the previous week minus Bukit Bintang due to high traffic area.

In front of Masjid Wilayah

Mejar Anuar at Dataran Merdeka

Golden boys group

Youngsters group

2 comments:

Tok Li said...

You guys look so familiar... !

Unknown said...

Some of us live in Gombak and probably been to your restaurant before :)