Pulau Ubin Offroad Welfare Ride

Date: 30 Jan 2010

The weather was great as I met up with 9 other adventure enthusiasts not knowing what would await for my very first off-road cycle with SMUX Biking Team. We reached the Ubin Jetty at about 11am and wasted no time in renting our bikes from the bike shop, which costs us about 10 dollars for an entire day.

Our ever awesome, Training IC, Kelvin with the safety brief before we embarked on our journey.

After meeting Kelvin, who recce-ed the place before we reached, I was starting to look forward to my ride, thinking how tough could it possibly be. Clearing the first few slopes was still relatively easy, until we started to go down slope. WOW, not as easy as what I had imagined. Nevertheless, it was still exciting and thrilling.
Reaching the first peak after about 20 minutes, I started to feel shag even though we had just started cycling not long ago. Thus, we took a short break and started on SMUX’s favourite past-time, CAM-whoring:)

Camwhoring at our first rest point!

After that 20 minutes of rest, we proceeded on to a tougher challenge, as Wei Yuan claimed that what we had just went through was only an introduction, and we had to go in deeper so as to experience what off-road biking is about. Thus we started on the next part of our journey and it was then where the real fun began. We started to encounter slopes that were 60 to 70 degrees steep, and I must say that on several occasions, some of us had to dismount from the bike and push it upslope as it was almost impossible to ride up the track. Along the way, the bikes that we rented started to had some problems such as the rear wheel coming off for mine and other minor ones, however, with experienced off-road specialists like Junyi, Kelvin and Wei Yuan, I could always be rest assured that any technical help that I need could be solved by them.

Occasions when it was too steep and riders had to dismount and push their bikes up.

Due to our in expertise at off-road, it was inevitable that we suffered from several falls. I feel that it was just part and parcel that we suffer from cuts and falls when we cycle off-road. Nevertheless, it was still enjoyable despite the falls and worthy of a second round for me. PULAU UBIN OFF-ROAD ROUND 2, I WILL BE BACK : )