Today was a great day outdoors at good old Pulau Ubin! Yup, the place the canoeing team circle around every year for the Round Ubin Kayak Race, and the place that brings back some memories of OBS.

I went against common sense again by turning up for an afternoon of sun and torture despite my incessant running nose / cough. Not going to waste a public holiday over the flu man... Anyway the truth is I've never actually cycled on Ubin before, so this was sure going to be an experience.

The supposed team of 4 once again was further reduced to a team of 3, with huilin sticking to her senses by keeping of exercise when sick. We met up at Changi Village at about 9am plus, where I ate breakfast till like 10 plus, and went to board the ferry / bumboat. The queue was long! Ubin is like such a happening place it seems, ahha. It took about 10 mins to get us to the boat. $2.50 a person, and $2 for the bike (jiansheng brought his. Mine has been stolen and not replaced, hur hur).






Woo hoo, we were on Ubin, an escape from the urbanised Singapore main island! Couldn't wait to grab a bike and discover the place again!




It was like literally your village / kampong set up. With plenty of bike shops! Our fears that the crowd would lead to insufficient rental bikes were completely unfounded! The wonders of supply and demand / market forces. Ha ha.



Well, in the end I got myself a Giant Boulder, which I felt like a pretty good bike. I paid a relativel steep $15 though, compare to Zhihao's $10 wheeler for the whole day. But heck, I'm the giuy who spends on nice bikes remember? Ha ha. Judging from the frame it's an 2007 model, and upon inquisition later the Aunty said the market price is around $400-500. KIV next time. Wahaha. The seat was a little too fat though, and the handle bars too high, but overall it was still a good ride. The outermost chainring produced a slight creak, but besides that it was great.



Poor old OBS kids being tortured by WALKING with HEAVY LOADS while carefree fellas like us zoom past on bikes. The main roads were, yah, roads, with some vans ploughing their way around at times.



We headed to the Mountain Bike trails, which proved to be way too technical for us. We're like such noobs, unable to navigate the terrain on the bike. Eventually pushing our way on foot and giving up. Ha ha. Even the '1 diamond' difficulty was too much. I'm like an mtb idiot it seems, haha. Some pro people were later seen zooming / jumping around the place on their bikes. Some girls too. Yikes.



The good old quarries were still around



Well, in the end we went to explore other parts of the island, which consisted mostly of shaded gravel paths. There were nice up hills and down hills, which gave lots of variation and fun =) In the end, we picked up some nice passion for looking for trails that led off the main gravel track. Zhihao would spot a trail, then we would stop and go down / up it. And pretty much we just went whatever trail we saw and ended back at some place we were familiar with. It was a pretty shiok feeling just running over roots, sand, gravel, grass, half-buried bricks, upslope, down slope, flat, shaded area, unshaded area etc etc all on our mountain bikes. Just grit your teeth and charge up a hill, or stand and let the bike run over the terrain down hill. It was just great. I've never really been able to experience bashing the bike around like that before. Moving at a fast pace in a narrow enclosure / path, with the bike vibrating, and jumping around. Charging around corners and having to choose how the bike slid along the path. Heh, attacking jiansheng and zhihao on the slopes =)

The Sun was out in full force though, which well, was preferable to the rain. Haha. We pretty much made the most of the place and our day, cycling till our legs cramped.



Oh my, hope my body is still working tomorrow. Hur hur.