A Knight’s Tale: Bukit Mertajam Cross-Country – no leeches on this trail! (10 Jan 2010)

Sunday, 5.30am, the alarm on my handphone went off. Shut it off, dragged myself out of bed, drank some water to get my system going…zzzzzz!

Oooooooi! Wake up! You’ve got a ride today which you need to rendezvous with Hock Huat at 6.30am at the car park after the Penang Bridge. You only have less than an hour to get yourself ready, eat some breakfast, feed the cat, clear the cat’s poop and do your own poop! Can you make it???

Fortunately, I had already packed everything in the car the night before; bike, gear and all. So I managed doing the other stuff, minus clearing the cat’s poop – that can wait, was mission accomplished.

I was out the door by 6.20am – giving me 10 minutes to meet up with Hock Huat (and Seng Chiang) at the designated place.

The night before, I had sms everyone to see if they wanted to join the ride; most declined for some reason or the other. However, one always is the all too familiar excuse – have to be back before noon. While another one mentioned the person wanted to take it easy because of her pregnancy… say what????? Who’s the daddy??? Never knew that…. Or was it a cover-up for secret trainings????

Mainland rides typically will finish quite late, including lunch and the drive home by early afternoon. We’ll see if we can debunk the myth, today. 

6.30am, arrived at car park – 6 other cars were already there including Hock Huat’s.  Another 2 more arrived shortly later. 

6.45am, headed towards the trail meeting place, Hai Dang Ma Temple, off Jalan Kulim (K12) near Machang Bubok. The temple is located just off the road where the starting point of BM’s 2008 cross-country trail was.

7.30am, arrived at the temple’s car park. Quickly unloaded and prepared for the ride. Other cars, pick-ups quickly filled up the grounds, including another Naza Rondo… but silver colour with orange and black stripes. Turned out it was driven by a lady – another GI Jane but didn’t catch her name.

Altogether, there were 30 riders for today’s trail including 3 ladies and a Dutch expat.  From the KOTRT side, apart from myself, Hock Huat, Seng Chiang and Francis turned up for this ride. 

While waiting for the others, both Seng Chiang and Hock Huat took turns being paparazzis. They were happily snapping all over the temple grounds.  

Before we headed off, there was also some briefing by the trail leader, SK. 

8.00am, off we went to the trail head. It was about a 1.5km road-ride to get there. One thing nice, there were several trail leaders, so there was an overlap of coverage to make sure no one got lost, especially at junctions.Furthermore, the chaps from LP mountain bike group, used orange paper to mark the trails. My favourite colour!!! 

At this juncture trail conditions were mostly off-road, oil palm estate with rideable inclines unlike those absolute lunatic ones on the island.  

9.00am, approximately, at one corner of the estate we regrouped on a flat patch of land before descending into a nice singletrack descend – told the chaps, some parts reminded me of Gertak Sanggul and Titi Kerawang.

 
Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

10.30am, we exited the trail and came out at the abandoned Light Industrial Buildings (off Jalan Sungai Lembu, Route P129). We gathered there waiting for a few chaps who got separated from the main group. Apparently, one of them had a flat.

Continuing on our ride, the next part of the ride had a lot more hills to climb including one which lay right in front of us by the abandoned buildings. It was one looooooooooooooooong singletrack climb up a 20% or more slope. It kept going up and up and up and up… fortunately, the trail leaders knew where to take breaks. So we managed to suck in some valuable O².

From here on, the trail weaved around plantation dirt roads and singletracks. Sometimes it was a steep climb, while others went gliding down and there were others where you just had to portage the bike. 

Nevertheless, there was always a regrouping point so that no one got left out.  

Towards the last part, we rode through some thick undergrowth – at this point I realized, about 9 people had pulled out, leaving 21 of us riding to the finish. There was some portaging but nothing too crazy – just carrying over some fallen trees and lots of singletracks!

11.35am, we exited the trail and got back to the cars just before 11.45am.

Based on Hock Huat’s GPS, we did about 16km of trail riding. Despite all the waiting and regrouping we managed to finish before noon. So it was a pleasant time to call it quits and head off for some lunch. 

12 noon, we left but I went separately from Hock Huat and Seng Chiang. They joined the rest of the LP gang for lunch. I headed home and thought of picking up some food on the island. 

However, 15 minutes later, I felt my stomach growling and just pulled over to one of the malay warongs along the way. It was somewhere near Bukit Minyak and I got there in good time; they had just brought the dishes, freshly cooked. Yummy!! 

As I was about to serve myself, the ladies saw that I had my bike in the car – and started asking a lot of questions, like, Where’s the trail? How long did take? Where did the trail go to?  

Unfortunately, since I didn’t exactly know the landmarks, I couldn’t answer their questions. All I managed to tell that it was near Machang Bubok, we started near a Chinese temple and we passed near a chicken farm. 

We definitely need to ride more on the mainland. 

Another funny thing happened there as well. They had a couple of cats lying lazily under the tables and one of the warong proprietors asked whether I wanted them or not. I politely declined, saying one feline at home is good enough. Anymore and you’ll have cat fights with lots of howling and meowing. Plus, the amount of food and poop you had to clean up.

12.45, left the warong and reached my house by 1pm.

It was one enjoyable ride – don’t mind doing it another time.

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