Abrasions the size of Texas. (This is a Ride the Lobster qualifying ride report)

Day 1 (26/1/2008)

Temperature: 24 - 32 degrees celcius
Humidity: 84%
Distance ridden: 84km
Subjective rating: 66km extreme temperature, 1 km light rain
Total time taken: 11 1/2 hours



Day 2 (27/1/2008)

Temperature: 25 - 32 degrees celcius
Humidity: 87%
Distance ridden: 89km
Subjective rating: 76km extreme temperature
Total time taken: 12 hours



Something must be wrong when I start to post near a 100 photos of seemingly nondescript photos. You're right. I'm doing this for the Ride the Lobster qualifying report. Being painfully camera shy, any photos you see of me (they have to be there for credibility, darn!) are either silhouettes or taken such that my face isn't really seen. But it's me! Really.

Day 1



I started by taking a train to Kembangan. You see I stay in the WEST and Singapore's so small, all of us have to ride the EASTERN Park Connector for the qualifiers. I reach there at 9am.



How I knew where to go. These devious buggers, as I would soon learn, disappears sneakily along the way.



Ridiculous-looking contraption, but ironically the thing that saved me from utter testicular destruction the second day. The sponge, that is. Not the unicycle. It is a 24" by the way, with hookworm tires.



Starting point, at 9am-ish. I headed off from Siglap Park Connector towards East Coast Park. The sun was strangely hot in the morning but I attribute that to this being the east and happenstance the direction in which the sun rises.



Nice view, only possible taken from...



An overhead bridge which...



Fines people for riding on it. I couldn't resist. The things I do for unicycling.. Incidentally the original fine amount was $1000.



Another silly thing you'll find in Singapore. Being to lousy to afford jet skis, you can achieve almost the same thing by cable-skiing! Nothing says fun like being dragged along a cable going around in CIRCLES IN A FRICKING POND. That explains why the ski cable is facing up.



Endless road, number 1, east coast.



Doesn't look so daunting on a harmless signpost. This is some where nearing the end of East Coast park, I think.



But OMG this is not encouraging.



Endless road number whatever. This is the beginning stretch of road of the Changi Beach park connector that is to stretch for about 7 kilometers plus.



On the left is Changi Airport. A plane. I'm not thinking straight at this point. In fact, I'm not thinking at all.



Very encouraging, yes, still. Did I mention at this point that I wasn't wearing cycling tights? It was 7 kilometers of TORTURE.



In one of my rests in the rest stops along then ever-ending Changi Beach Park connector, I realized my unicycle is in a very bad state.



It's so rusty it might fall apart. *hint sponsors for a new uni hint*



And that just won't do if I was to *ahem* represent Singapore, would I?



Rare cannot-see-my-face shot of me number 1.



Someone scrawled this on the wall. I took this simply to amuse Jiahui, who too took part in the qualifiers, seeing how she used to work for EA. I think it stands for 'Ever Acquiring'.



So that I know the 7 kilometers plus is nearing an end.



It ended! And the nice smell of... ship fumes celebrate my exit from that dratted stretch of road. This is taken just right after the SAF Ferry Terminal, or the Singapore Armed Forces Ferry Terminal which cannot be captured on camera or risk dire consequences. But this nice splash of waves is harmless.



Some jetty that brings you to Pulau Ubin, offshore island.



Rare cannot-see-my-face-shot of me number 2, wheelwalking.



In the words of Jiahui, humps are annoying. Somewhere along the roads of dunno where (I think it's Loyang), and uphill.



Sign indicating that I'm lost. The road doesn't look like a park connector.. (It isn't.)



1pm, and finally civilisation in the form of a shopping mall! I stopped here for lunch and left an hour later, starting at 2pm.



ITE, some technical education institute, where ITE stands for Institute of Technical Education?



It's pronounce tam-penis. It is worth noting that while unicycling, the sneaky sporadic arrows that point to the next connector disappear as and when they please, causing much speculation where to turn next. I got lost alot here.



Which thankfully is sheltered.



Another signboard, but between the signboards I got lost. Again.



This looks pretty cool, but it isn't sheltered. Simei Park Connector.



Another mall, local to Simei.



EXPO, the giant exhibition hall.



Resting at one of the benches at Bedok Park Connector at around 4ish, I think I realized that my shoes were in a really bad shape.



Look! I can see my socks from the SIDE.



Another connector, another step closer towards the goal.



One of them buildings that cannot be photographed.



At around don't-know-what-time, I ended up here which led back to East Coast instead of Kembangan MRT station indicating that I was very, very lost.

So in the end I did not got the traditional route, that the rest sorta took but rather an improvised one with the distance almost being the same, give or take. Take the above report and multiply it by 2, which sums up Day 1's ride. Very boring.

Day 2



Deciding to start somewhere a little closer to home, and instead of taking a train all the way to Kembangan to ride the Eastern Park Connector, I decided to ride there instead, and will not have to suffer riding the stupid connector route twice. Starting off at 7.30am on an empty stomach, I unicycled towards the next station in search of breakfast. Incidentally, Lakeside is in the western recesses of Singapore, Kembangan in the east.

MAP OF SINGAPORE'S MRT STATIONS



I didn't realize there were park connectors in the west too!



Just that they're not as long.



Nice scenic route especially in the early mornings. This route is in between Lakeside and Chinese Garden, the next station eastwards.



At about 8am, I headed towards the town centre for some breakfast and decided to eat wanton noodles. They look pretty decent.



Did that noodle just wink wantonly at me???? The brown drink is a cup of Iced Milo, something akin to Iced Chocolate. Iced Milo is a traditional drink that Singapore Unicyclists like to drink. Well if that isn't a tradition yet, it ought to be. The wantons refer to the dumplings, actually.



Leaving at 8.30am, I headed for the next station and up and down some minor slopes et al, and passed by this shiny Buddhist statue of a goddess.



Near Dover MRT station, I saw this poster for some joint program between the local management university and some university in Chicago. Notice the subliminal advertisement here??



OMG MacDonalds you are t3h evil!!!



Directly outside Dover MRT station, this building is Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore's first vocational institute.



Disused train tracks at Buona Vista.



I think this picture is chronologically out of place, but yea, building for one of those wonder ointments Asians like to use alot.


Queenstown MRT station.



Alexandra Road, after which is a slew of car showcases. Singapore is peculiar like that, they like to cluster specific industries together. Redhill is the place to purchase cars, Orchard Road for massive consumerism etc.



After Redhill, the MRT tracks go underground, leaving me rather confused as to which way to go as this while I've been mostly following the MRT tracks to lead me towards the east. Here's a picture of one of the playgrounds located somewhere in between, with me being rather lost.



Ok this is one of those malls that have an underground train station attached to it, which is the Tiong Bahru station.



Once again, in the quest to go east, and being lost AGAIN, this reeks ominously of uphill climbs.



Why yes it is! This is an arduous climb that seems to go on...



...And on...



And finally some downslope, after much burning legs and burning sun. There's little to no tree cover here. Even though there seems to be a lot of trees in the pictures, they offer little respite.



Something of note to myself. Though I live around Boon Lay interchange, I never knew it was renamed to Boon Lay Temp(orary) Interchange. Ok this adds no value to the report.



After much random routes, I found myself at Chinatown, a clustering of well, typically Chinese groups. But that's rather redundant, because these old clusters have eroded and everyone's almost everywhere nowadays. No longer do Indians reside exclusively in Little India, or Chinese Chinatown etc. But I'm somewhat familiar with Chinatown and am not so lost now.



Singapore river, once Singapore's dirtiest river, now cool water feature straddled with multiple pubs and clubs to pander to tourists' tastes.



Funan the IT mall. We're headed closer and closer towards town, and this is the place to purchase electronics. One of the two specialized places, that is. This is in City Hall.



St Andrews Cathedral, Singapoer's oldest Catholic church. Also in City Hall.



Singapore's city skyline of sorts, also in City Hall. There's quite some things to see in City Hall, strangely.



Glass roof of the Esplanade, a theatre specially built and subject to much criticism over it's ugly roof. Opinions are divided. But everyone agrees it looks like a durian.



One of Singapore's latest project, Singapore's answer to London's Eye. All still in City Hall.



The Cenotaph. City Hall. Though what a Cenotaph is I have no idea.



Singapore's largest library at er, 14 stories tall? Not in City Hall any longer, but Bugis.



Arab Street, one of the old zoning places for er, Arabs and Muslims. Behind is the historical monument, Sultan Mosque. Nearest station being Lavender.



Sultan Mosque up close.


Finally! I see the train tracks again! I heave a sigh of relief. The station thereafter is Kallang.



Making a slight detour but still parallel to the train tracks, I went to Geylang, Singapore's er, notorious place for entertainment of the physical kind. It's not legal, of course, but things happen in back alleys. Yes it's a red-light district.



But my main aim in going to Geylang was this! Rochor beancurd, probably the best in anywhere else. I tried this a long time ago and all else bean curd never tasted sweet again.



A picture of divinity. Time was 12.20pm. Nearest train station is Paya Lebar MRT station.

After that I went for lunch and made it to Kembangan at 3. Mostly because of the lunch.



This is in the direct opposite direction of where I headed in day 1.



Once again, VERY encouraging. Urgh. So this is the beginning of the Eastern Park Connector again, but in the opposite direction.



OMG rare I-can-almost-see-my-face picture of myself.



Bedok Park Connector. It's very misleading because it fails to state that it contained...



THIS. Up and down slopes and uneven bumps!



After the hell that was the connector and many overhead bridges later, I reached the park. I don't know what're in those bags. Probably half dead unicyclists.



Park connector sign.



I ended up tending to take alot of these pictures, huh?



Totally irrelevant picture of Tampines regional library.



OK SunPark. I realized previously I missed this because it was a way off from the main road.



A one-foot pirouette.



How photos of myself are best taken - without my face in it.



They turned one of the lakes at I-don't-know-where into a prawn fishing pond!



Random bird. Soon to mark the beginning of a route that will cause me to be VERY LOST.



Cycling about 2.5 to 3km into the park, I saw this sign and knew something was wrong. It led to a dead end. I was in Pasir Ris Park and there were no connectors at all. I had to backtrack out. Meaning an additional 5km ride.



The familiarity of the tarmac of the park connector brings a tear to my eyes. Oh and some mosque in the background too.



At about 6pm, OH NOES it's the dreaded Changi Beach Connector of DOOM again!!! All 7.9km of it.



I gave up taking pictures at this point.

In the end, I reached Kembangan MRT station from the opposite side, via Siglap Park Connector at around 8pm. I also realized that deciding to call out friends for lunch midway while doing a long distance ride was quite a bad idea. They tend to make the lunches longer and indeed I spent a significant amount of time lunching, about 2 hours or so, from 1pm to about 3pm.

I took a train home, feeling sore and pretty much nothing else. No victory whoops, no vestigial virgins celebration vindictive victory. Just fatigue.