Cruisin'
Ride reviews
Roughing it out in Sabak Bernam
Do you have what it takes to ride your folding bike offroad for 80km across Sabak Bernam's rugged oil palm plantations? Well, some foldies proved that small bikes aren't just meant for show..
Putting a plan into action..
It's been nearly half a year since we've had a good offroad ride.
I contacted TT Siang, one of the country's renowned bikepacker and offroad folding bike cycling guru and told him about "connecting" the dots between our previous ride from Rawang - Sekinchan.
The plan was to ride to Teluk Intan from Sabak Bernam.
Siang had suggested an offroad track -- cutting through an oil palm plantation and covering a distance of 32km one-way.
We've corresponded to email and had informed a small group to carry out the recce ride.
So, basically, we were headed into the unknown.
A wiser group
Through the years, we've managed to stream the members of our offroad folding bike group into a small team of cyclists.
We've parted ways with the primadonnas and troublemakers.
Once burned by a few so-called friends, Siang had decided that it was best to keep the group small as it is manageable in many aspects.
I have offered my services to organize the group while Siang had spent some sleepless nights planning the route.
Re-connecting with an old friend
It's been more than a year since I rode with Chris Wong, one of the original members of our Rawang - Sekinchan offroad expedition.
He said he was good to go this time and we're just glad he came along because he's a livewire.
My usual gang: Roger Teoh, Patric Yee and Mohd Radzi Mohd Noor were among those who also joined in the ride.
We had Wey and Ming, our old cycling kakis from the 10.10.10 ride, Siang's other half Angela, Raman, their trekking buddy whom I met for the first time and Walter, a German dude residing here in Malaysia.
The head count was 12 riders and I'm just happy with the number.
The ride plan
We drove to Sabak Bernam after work to spend a night there so that we won't have to rush off early in the morning.
The instructions was to pack lunch in town and bring it along.
Since we were riding mostly offroad, I brought our Dahon Jetstream which was fitted with a set of Maxxis DTH dirt tires.
As soon as we were gathered, we rode out towards a village some 3km outside Sabak Bernam to begin the journey into the oil palm estate.
Crossing the Bernam river
We proceeded into a village and experienced our first flat tire.
This time, it was Raman who had a puncture on his mountain bike's rear tire.
All of us took turns to fix the bike and it wasn't until Chris Wong had intervened to remedy the problem so that Raman could continue with his journey..