heh. i’ve done something that i’m proud of today, and another which made me awfully guilty. firstly, i’ve actually managed to cycle from east coast park to NTU! and back!.. but it took a rather long time due to some map planning.. roughly 12 hours actually.
in the process, however, i injured my friend and now he’s unable to walk at least for a few days. -_-
initially, it was supposed to be a group of 5 for overnight cycling: yizhuang, andre, shiqing, i and a friend of yizhuan. however, this friend of his had some event going on at NTU. but insisted that she wanted to join us on our way back to east coast. as such, we had no choice but to rent 3 single bike, and 1 tandem bike (for 2 persons). took turns to ride the fucked up tandem bike and looked sure as hell like idiots.
it was only when we just east coast park when the friend msg yz that she may not be able to make it due to some event. to be honest i was a little peeved. i mean, as much as you’d like to do something how could you impose such trouble on other people? like making them rent a tandem bike (which is harder to ride than a single bike) and then pilot them cuz you realise you are busy with your event.
but nvm, that aside. on the way we travelled via geylang, bugis, suntec city, clarke quay, orchard, bkt timah, clementi and boon lay. the first part of the journey was long… took us 7 hours to complete, as we (or rather, yizhuan, shiqing and andre LOL) had to refer to maps to make sure that we didn’t get lost.
the first accident came when we were riding rather fast but abruptly reached a dead end of some sorts. i suddenly slowed down without giving advance notice to yizhuan who was behind me. he crashed onto me, smashing his handphone screen in the process. but he was generous enough to reject my offer of paying for it.. sigh. the bike wheel, however, was shifted out of place. and as such, the back brake could not work as it kept getting stuck on the wheel. took us about half an hour to figure that out, after blackening our bodies with the gear oil.
reached NTU at about 5 am. only to realise that yizhuan’s friend has fallen asleep. sent her a paper note slotted under the dorm door and left shortly after.
“whee..!”
by then, we were so tired that we even tried boarding the MRT train with our bikes but got stopped by the station control (wtf were we thinking?!) in the end we decided to follow the mrt tracks and not go back by the original route due to presence of ferocious dogs which caused a number of minor falls.
during that time, i was half asleep while riding and there were several “near-misses”, like slipping onto the road, or into the drain. i guess yizhuan was also pretty shagged, because when we reached commonwealth, he sort of lost concentration, and to make things worse, i destroyed his bicycle brake. as a result, he crashed onto a fence and his leg started bleeding profusely. after several rejections we managed to find a more humane cab driver who agreed to send him back to east coast with the bike stored at the car boot, the remaining 3 of us continued…
then another unfortunate incident happened. shiqing was just commenting, “one man down. if andre is gone, i can’t imagine how both of us are going to make it back to east coast”. that is because andre and yizhuan are the map direction experts.
which was little wonder why we panicked for a while when sq’s prophecy eerily came true. andre’s bicycle tyre became punctured shortly after. he had to take a cab back to east coast as well!!! but not before he instructed us clearly on which route to take.
in the end, it was just me and shiqing.
we took a slight change in route as compared to the first part. instead of going by bukit timah road, we decided to turn into queensway instead. by then we were freaking thirsty, and hungry, but couldn’t stop because we had to reach back east coast by 10 am; if not we would get charged extra. luckily, not much obstacles happened after that, and we managed to arrive just in time. by then, i was super freaking hungry and thirsty.. never felt so good drinking milo ice in a long time.
the whole journey took 12 hours. (10 pm – 10 am) not sure the distance but i think it’s quite far! for a weak person like me, and a novice in cycling, it’s quite impressive.. haha. oh, and when there were just 2 of us left, we didn’t get lost! that’s something to be proud of as well haha!
overall, the overnight cycling is indeed memorable, though i’m not sure if i want to do it again. east coast to ang mo kio is fine, but to NTU and back is quite jialat. *shrug* maybe will get used to it..
hopefully yz recovers fast.. man i feel like a fucker right now.
got lost again.
