Cycling At 50 Plus: February 2012

The Route Shah Alam - Port Dickson 125 km One Way

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This should be not a hard one. It is within reach of an average cyclist, with or without stamina issues. To those who are first timers in extended ride, start planning to do this stretch as it will boost your confidence in tackling future tours, to the experienced it is a good way to remove the kinks in your system. The total distance from my house in Shah Alam to Port Dickson is 125 kilometers, but it's not the distance that matters. To a cyclist empowering his muscles to move forward, it is profile, profile and profile; as the mantra goes, flat is good hill is bad. What makes this stretch attractive is that until the town of Sepang, for a distance of about 90 kilometers, the road is flat, so flat that even a fixie can handle it. Only after crossing the border into Negeri Sembilan will you find a series of hills to climb, quite an effort to overcome especially after being lulled by the flat ride but nothing dramatic to be a serious challenge if you have the correct gearings. So it is a good mix of long flat with short hills, an ideal combination which would please both the enthusiast and the beginner.

Thursday 8th. December

There are more than one way to get to Banting, the navigation marker, from Shah Alam. The usual way is via the Kesas Highway, which is quite safe as there is a dedicated motor cyclist lane or as I did, through the secondary road passing through Jalan Kebun. Secondary roads are normally called so because they are less busy but also may be narrower. On the morning of my departure, traffic was quite sparse but when they came they came as heavy lorries. I felt very unsafe when overtaken by them as there were only inches to spare.

Reaching the settlement of Jenjarom around 10.00 am after an hour of cycling, rain began to fall and I took shelter in a food stall. It was quite a long wait and I took the opportunity to have my first meal of the day. It was banana pancake with black coffee. The pancake tasted strange and I barely finished it. There were a number of other customers milling around and they were curious about my intended trip, asking questions about my bike and journey, like they were in awe of what I was doing. Oh come on guys, it is only a bike ride, not like I am going to slay a dragon. There were also a few mountain bike cyclists but surprisingly we did not connect, as though we were of unrelated tribes. It could be they were hard on speeches because normally from cyclist to cyclist, we could never have the last words.

The morning rain was monsoonal and it was a two hour wait, passing my time reading the old newspaper. Around 12 noon the rain eased and I restarted my journey. The rain may have eased but he road was water logged and I sloshed through the puddles which were collecting along the edges of the road. Occasionally I got splashed by an overtaking vehicles and sometimes heavy lorries left a blinding spray in their wake. The end result was I was completely soaked by the time I reach Kuala Langat when it began to rain again. This time I stopped at a Mamak stall and while waiting had roti canai and black coffee for lunch.

The rain lightened and soon I was cycling again. When the drizzle got too heavy I stopped by the road side shelters. I passed the town of Banting after a short climb over the bridge spanning the Langat river. At Morib there were still light rain falling. The sky was overcast but I had no complain of this weather, I very much prefer being wet to scorching rides under the tropical sun. In a short time around 2.00 pm, I reached Batu Laut where I saw young sailors bringing in their sailing dinghies from the sea. I stopped for a chat with them as I am very much interested in sailing. Once I had a sail boat of my own in Kelantan, a Laser which was a 16 footer I purchased on line from the UK. I had a good time swapping sailing tales with these people.

By 4.00 pm I reached Bagan Lalang. To get to the settlement, you had to take a detour off the main road for a distance of 6 km. There were a few accommodation available and I made two enquiries but was turned off by the price quoted which to me was surprisingly high for such low quality hotels. I asked for a cheaper hotel and was shown a chalet for RM65.00. I had late lunch of soup and rice with iced which I wolfed down hastily as coming into the last stretch I was beginning to feel the bonk because due to the cool weather I forgot to hydrate myself regularly. There was not much to see here, the man at the counter told me that the day before, 2 cyclists had taken up the rooms on their way north. An international standard chalets over water was the main attraction, asides from that I would not want to get off my route and come here again.

Friday 9th. December

I woke up at 7.00 am after a sound sleep and by 7.30 I was ready to go out again on the road. First item in he morning was to have breakfast of roti canai and coffee at a stall nearby. Morning traffic was negligible and I enjoyed having the road almost all to my self. I cycled past the towns of Sungei Pelek where the road took a turn northerly easterly and as a result I had the morning sun in the face all the way. At Sepang I had the view of overhead aircrafts in their final to Kuala Lumpur International Airports and they were very low, may be not more than 1000 feet high. I stopped on the road side to enjoy the show as I still cannot get over the boyish delight of being close to flying aircrafts. I remember in Kota Bharu, back then in the 1980's, we gathered in the evening at the edge of the run way just to see planes landing and taking off at the Pengkalan Chepa airports. We were so close that sometimes we could wave to the pilots taxing their machines.

Immediately after Sepang the road turned southerly again and now the terrain took a sudden transformation. Where it had been flat since Shah Alam it was now rolling and there were a few climbs and downhills. Some of the climbs were quite stiff but my newly installed triple crank took out all their stings. On one of my free wheeling the downhill I came across a loaded cyclist panting his way up but I knew that his touring bike had more than enough gear ratios to tackle slopes like this. As cyclist to cyclist we thumbed each other up and I was always glad to meet another fellow cyclist on the road.

By 10.30 am I reached Lukut and took my bike up the hill to the old Lukut Fort, a historical sight. On the way up I saw a jungle hen with her chicken in tow and they surprisingly did not flee even when I was just 10 feet away, but the moment I dismounted they disappeared into the secondary bushes. It reminded me of the National Geography in African Safari where the cameras on the jeeps could get very close the animals. Perhaps it is their instincts that for the past thousands of years, only humans on feet are dangerous predators, if you are on wheel, they are still unable to decipher the danger. I tried to cycle to the top but the path was of loose stones and my thin tyres could not cope and I kept sliding backwards. To reach the top I had to push my bikes. I stopped to take a rest at the hut on top of the hill and absorbed the beautiful scenery surrounding the hill.

Port Dickson was just half an hour ride from Lukut. I cycled into the town and started looking for a place to stay. There was none and I had to cycle back on the main road and 6 km away at 1.00 pm I checked in at PD Motel at Saujana beach It cost RM50.00 with shared toilet and without air conditioning. After a hard day's ride we cyclists are always more than happy to find a bed and shower, never mind the extras that I would expect when not cycling.

I took my lunch at the restaurant downstairs and for the rest of the day I hanged around beach across the road. I did not feel very good but I knew that the second day is always the worst point in touring. The body is new to the situation and tries to register as much protest as possible by conspiring with the muscles to exhibit newly found pain and weariness. If you ignore the signs, like a spoilt child denied the attention, they will soon go away quietly.

I saw the sun set over the Straits but it was not particularly spectacular because to the west is the giant island of Sumatra and the land mass tends to disturb the atmosphere and together with a lot of low clouds on the horizon the glow and brilliance of the setting sun were not there.

I had an early dinner of a strange combination which was tomyam soup and durian and sooner than later, turned to bed trying to get an early sleep, but the room was hot and stuffy. There was not much to do and I chose to lie down in the lounge reading old copies of Reader's Digest, one of the worst magazine ever published even if it was an item that had once fascinated me in my younger days. True enough they were so boring that I quickly turned drowsy and in spite if the heat dozed of on the sofa.

Saturday 10th. December

It was still dark at 6.30 am when I left the motel to return home. Safety lights were turned on to make my presence on the road visible to other road users. The town was still asleep and the roads still quiet. By 7.30am it had fully awakened and by then I was already at Lukut for a short stop for breakfast of roti canai and iced milo. Next it was into the climb of Bukit Pelanduk and by 8.30 am I reached the town of Sepang and stopped for a five minute rest at a bus stop. Then came the flat rides again and after 2 hours of non stop pedaling in the cool morning sun I reached Morib at 10.30 am. For unknown reasons I became sleepy and had a short nap on the beach preceded by 2 glasses of fresh orange juice. One hour later I woke up feeling refreshened and continued the journey until by 12.30 pm at Banting I started feeling hungry and stopped at an Indian restaurant for a meal of briyani rice. The meal made me felt heavy and to lighten I stopped at Teluk Panglima Garang for something bubbly and invigorating. By 2.30 pm with the afternoon sun burning overhead I reached home.

Well the coming back was just a reverse version of the going out and was therefore less exciting, so there was not much to report. Anyway I hope by now I have touched your inner desire to start a plan of weekend cycling and the next thing to do is pack and just go.