New place, new faces

I’m still disturbed by Nicole’s behaviour towards us; she’s still quite defensive when we tried to touch her. I’ll be bringing her to the vet tomorrow anyway, Jessie will meet me there.

Alright, today’s the ride to Kulai. Got up at 5.15am, supposed to meet John and Felix 6.45am at Lavendar mrt but I was late! Reached at 7am and they were not in sight. I quickly called John and they were already along Upp Bukit Timah road, on the way to Kranji mrt to meet up with the rest. With all my might, I dashed and met up with them along the way. I was exhausted but had to carry on. When we got to Kranji, it was about 8.10am (supposed to meet at 7.45am). There were a total of 9 of us. I only know Peter, Jeam, John and Felix, the rest were strangers to me except for one guy whom I’ve met a few times in Cyclecraft but have not spoken before. Later I got to know his name is James… as well… what a coincidence. Well, it’s a common name.

We head towards the immigration, not much traffic, it was smooth. We stopped for breakfast at a coffeeshop in an area called Sentosa. Boy, I was hungry, ordered an iced milo and kuay teow soup, great! About 9.30am we set off for the actual ride, but not to Kulai, instead to a place call Kong Kong as suggested by Peter. He claimed there’s good seafood there. At first all of us were cycling quite close together, slowly, Peter, Jeam and Felix zoomed off but stopped at certain intervals to gather again. I was quite slow as I’ve not done any serious cycling for quite a while. I suffered especially riding upslope. It was quite cloudy, not much sun, so I still had the energy to push myself. After about ¾ of the way, I got really bored, no nice scenery, no good company, my legs almost wanted to quit. John was surprised but he just asked me to carry on riding. 3 hours later, we finally approached our destination, the seafood restaurant. I was gleaming with joy as fatigue had overtaken me. As always, Peter would order beer, food came later. The dishes weren’t too bad, at least all felt satisfied. We slacked for about 2 hours, did some rubbish talk before setting off around 3.30pm.

The way back to Johore was a dreadful 40km as indicated on the stumps along the side of the road. No matter what, it was still a much shorter distance than how we came. ¼ way, my rear tyre punctured, luckily Peter was with me and a petrol station was just ahead. He did a fast job of helping me to change it. The rest were way ahead and we had to catch up with them, not to mention I also had to catch up with Peter! About halfway mark, saw the gang waiting for us under the shade. I was elated to see them, so the ride continued. Johore isn’t that far now, the motivation to quicken was there. Just a few kilometers before, Jeam’s rear tyre punctured. Lucky for us, a petrol station was nearby so we pushed our bikes there. We were about to start on it when a pump attendant came to us and offered his help. The whole process took some time but not a bad job done I must say. He tried to have a conversation with me in Malay as he saw I was able to speak some. Goodness, I barely managed to scrape through talking to him and avoided whenever I had the chance. With further ado, we hastened to link up with the remaining guys at Sentosa. I heaved a sigh of relief upon seeing them. All were starving after the strenuous and arduous ride; we headed straight for the market (which looks just like our hawker centre). Golly! Lots of glorious food! Found a table and got some drinks. As funds were limited, we ordered some fried oyster omelette and fried carrot cake to share amongst us. Without us realizing, Felix went to change some ringgit. Yay! We had an additional RM40+ to get more food! So we ordered char kway teow and 2 big pieces of barbeque stingray. We only paid RM26.50 for the stingray, cheap! It was darn good food! With the remaining RM 2.80, we settled with 2 bowls of chendol. We practically wiped out every single RM we had. Sumptuous food, heavy stomach, it’s time to head home, time was about 8pm. Through the immigration, causeway, I was glad to be back in Singapore again. Just wanna get home, take a cold shower, scrub myself clean and go to bed. My headache was acting up too. By the time I got home was already 10.30pm. Come to think of it, I somehow felt “cheated”. Supposed to be a half day, short distance ride turned out to be a full day affair with me clocking a good 170km to 180km for the day. Feeling totally drained mentally and physically, I can hear my bed calling out to me…