....And I chose to cycle.... ever since I gave up on high-powered motorised two wheels and settled in for a low-adrenalin eco-friendly two wheels universally called the "bicycle". In my country of many dialects, the humble machine is also known as SPEDA or GEREK.
The change to the non-motorised two wheels came about in 2001, after a nasty accident - on my high-powered 1200 cc BMW of course. It was an encounter with the four legged kind, and there were 5 too many. I could probably have avoided the confrontation if it was a lone goat. But being a tightly-knit family of 5, they came out of the bushes together. I avoided all except 1, hit the poor creature, lost control of the mean machine and kissed an on- coming 4 wheeler from the national car manufacturer. I flew like a superman (or was it like a frog) and landed face down. Broke my left wrist, misaligned my left collar bone and injured my arterior cruche (I'll check the spelling later) that hurt my right leg for 2 months.
Health later became an issue as the right leg and knee hampered my physical activities. Was advised by a sports doctor to take up cycling, to strengthen my thigh muscles. The thigh muscles will help hold the knee as I progressed or rather aged graciously into the future.
That's the historical part. Fast forwarding to the future, cycling now become a passion. Converted many friends (in their roaring fifties) into cycling. Now that you can estimate my era, the non-convertible friends of mine told me that cycling are for kids! Oh how I pity these adults.
I set goals for this love. At my kiddy age of 55 last year, I did a charity ride dabbed "ROAD TO 55" and cycled coast-to-coast, the entire Peninsular Malaysia. The 1960 km journey took 21 days, most times sleeping in mosques or suraus. The journey is in my webpage www.jalanan.net and includes my TransBorneo ride completed in March this year. That's the kiddy stuff my adult friends are referring to.
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