I have a full-time job now. It is lots of fun, but it does cut into my cycling time. I can’t get to all the weekday evening rides.
My job also cuts into my bike-fitting time. Sometimes I have to forgo a Saturday morning ride to do a bike fit.
So it was very nice to meet up with the Flipsiders yesterday morning at Bukit Jelutong. Mark had planned an extension to our usual Kundang route. Perhaps an additional 20 or 30 kilometers on top of the usual 60 km.
The first stop, as usual, was for food and drink.
Photograph courtesy of Marco Lai
After teh tarik and roti canai or nasi lemak, we continued along Jalan Kuala Selangor past the Sungai Buloh Prison and onward to Ijok.
On the other side of Ijok we turned right onto one of the longest arrow-straight roads I have ever been on. 8 kilometers in all.
Photograph courtesy of Mark Lim
This is a rarely-used road, so we took the chance to lark around.
Photograph courtesy of Marco Lai
Our next stop was for photographs at a popular tourist spot. The location of what is reputed to be one of the biggest firefly colonies on the world.
Photograph courtesy of Mark Lim
We didn’t ride quite as far as Kuantan. It was fun pretending minus Danny who was behind the camera.
The anti-clockwise loop from Ijok brought us back to the LATAR Expressway. From there we were on familiar roads. That is until we got to the interchange with the Guthrie Corridor Expressway.
The LATAR Expressway is 32 km long, and it runs between Ijok and Templer’s Park. We have ridden the 21 km from the Guthrie Corridor Expressway interchange to Ijok and back many times. We had never done the 11 km from that interchange to the other end of the LATAR at Templer’s Park.
By that point in the ride we were on track to cover about 110 km. Marco and I couldn’t convince Cedric, Chris, Danny and Mark to ride an extra 22 km. They headed back to Bukit Jelutong, and Marco and I rode toward Templer’s Park.
There wasn’t a u-turn at the Templer’s Park end of the Expressway like there is at the Ijok end. So we had to get across four lanes of traffic to head back to the Guthrie interchange. Fortunately there were roadworks in progress, so traffic was forced to slow down enough for us to turn around without getting run over.
The rest of the ride was uneventful, except for the puncture I had about 10 km from Bukit Jelutong. A piece of wire was the culprit. The edge of a drain at the El Mina R&R stop was a convenient place to perch as I replaced the inner tube.
Photograph courtesy of Marco Lai
Marco and I rode about 130 km. Certainly more than planned. It is a route worth doing again though.
Old Roots, New Routes 