One of the good things about commuting by bicycle is that one gets to observe a lot more of the surroundings. There are days when I cannot avoid taking public transportation and after enjoying the freedom that comes with biking, I do not really enjoy riding the bus or train. On the train, it is a silent fight for the most comfortable place to stand. The problem is made worse when you have to keep your back pack (or whatever else you carry) from banging on others while trying to balance yourself. Anyway, this is not intended to be a rant on the public transport – just that I don’t seem to enjoy it much.

Coming back to the story at hand, I seem to observe a lot more of the people when I am out on the cycle. I see young couples in their Sunny’s, old couples in Camry’s, ah Beng’s in Mercedes and mortgage heavy yuppies in BMW’s. I get honked at and I flip one back at them. There are these patient bus and cab drivers and extremely impatient construction trucks and private buses. And amid all the chaos, it is refreshing to catch sight of another fellow cyclist. I have been bumping into a cycle commuter on average about once every couple of days. And this morning, I saw this lady in a fully loaded bike complete with panniers and waiting at the lights. I guess the word is getting around that it is feasible and in fact enjoyable to go around the city in a bike.

For those who want to know what a fully loaded bike is, click on for some beautiful bikes.

One of the recent weekends was fairly eventful. Adi invited me to try to play some golf at the driving range. If you have played golf you can imagine that to a beginner, it looks like a pretty simple sport. A tiny ball needs to be whacked for a long distance using a reasonably sophisticated club. I figured what is the big deal – lets give it a try.But as I took the club and did a couple of practice swings, I realized that the ‘swing’ is more of a body contortion and keeping the club steady while going through the motions is not as simple as it seems.

Anyhow, I got into the position, swung a couple of practice swings and was ready for the balls. Now the problem became tricky. I realized that while the swing is not smooth, the ball suddenly seemed extremely tiny. Being able to connect the face of the club to the ball turned out to be non trivial. After a few swings and misses, I managed to hit the ball.

The trouble with this is that once you hit the ball, the urge to go the distance in the driving range is pretty uncontrollable. The trouble is that you see the next guy happily slamming the ball about 150m and you think, I can do that too. To the inexperienced golfer, this means that all the strength one can muster goes directly into the swing. This is probably good if you hit the ball I suppose but when you miss the ball and your body is out of balance, you end up performing some sort of jig. In my case, My Jig was preceded by a audible clunk on my left shoulder. I suppose that was me tearing some internal body part and the consequence was that I could not carry out any more swings.

Guess golf is not really a natural game for me.

To compensate, I got adi to ride with me in the evening. It was getting dark and we decided to go down to punggol beach – a leisurely 20 km ride. On the way back, we decided to take the usual de-tour along the farmland. This is a road that leads to some restaurant and we need to take the same road back. Halfway down a slope, I heard a bark followed by a few more and I realized we were in doggie territory. Dogs have a thing for cyclists. They chase them down for no reason at all. This time, it seemed like a pack of 4 that were pretty good sprinters. Myself and adi picked up our speed and pedaled like maniacs and I suppose one of these mutts almost got to us. But they gave up the chase once we got near the restaurant.

Gasping for air and clutching the legs, I was thinking what the heck we are going to do on the way back. Damn it is an up-slope to boot. Luckily, there was this lady in the car who we asked to escort us (dogs usually are afraid of cars – they know what hurts). The lady agreed and started off. I was thinking the safest place was in front of the car where the dogs would not dare cross our path. We had to accelerate hard and with the dogs barking and chasing, I managed to climb the hill. But I suddenly realized adi was no where in sight, yikes. I decided to turn around to go look for him when I saw him pushing the bike up the hill. He was pretty sapped out and decided to push the bike after the dogs gave up the chase.

A funny thought came to my mind just then “When you are chased by dogs, you need not outrun them, you just need to outrun your fellow cyclist.”. He hee – More motivation for speed training eh.