Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Melaka Trip Day Four
@11:03 PM
151209@11:03 PM
Yong Peng to Kota Tinggi
Distance: 130km, Time: 7:00 hrs
This is the day of hellish days. It’s perhaps one of the worst days on bike that I have experienced.
I woke up from the hellish hotel, having spent a terrible and fitful night, aware of the difficult road ahead for me to Kota Tinggi, which I estimated on paper to be about 140km. Just when I was preparing to head off by pumping up my bicycle’s tire pressure, the distinctive hissing sound from the rear wheel informed me that the tire has punctured. That is number one.
I pumped it up, headed across the street to Shell petrol station to use the air pump machine. This was when I realised that the speedometer was not working as it ought to. The spinning of the wheels was not translated into recorded speed on the cyclocomputer, and I suspected that the emitter on the fork had run out of battery. Not 5km out of Yong Peng, I felt the rear wheel wobble, and the metal rim touched down on the asphalt road. I changed the tire, experiencing firsthand the heat of the intense morning sun due to the lack of shade, made worse by the heat radiating off the reddish clay soil by the road side. The passing trucks and cars from Yong Peng seemed to mock me in my helplessness. That is number two.
I reached Ayer Hitam without further incident, and proceeded to pump up the tire once again with the assistance of the equipment in omnipresent petrol stations. At a pharmacist (of all places) I found the correct battery model required to replace the one in the emitter, allowing the speedometer to work properly again. Later in Singapore, I learnt that this problem was not due to the battery, but due to the great distance between the emitter and the receiver, which caused problems for the speed transmissions. While I was leaving Ayer Hitam, I chanced upon a road sign that caused the beginnings of panic.
This picture doesn’t show it, but 1km back, the sign included “Kota Tinggi - 168km”. This sign was wrong, but I didn’t know it at that time; the signboard showed the distance as it was back when route 91 was not built, so it is the cumulative distance from Ayer Hitam to Kluang, to Mersing and to Kota Tinggi. However, I thought otherwise, that at the rate I was moving, I will take at least nine hours to cycle to Kota Tinggi. The panic really set in when, half an hour later, I punctured yet again.
This is number three. At this stage, I have only one spare tube left, meaning that I could afford only one more puncture. A detailed study of both the tire and the rim was concluded by the suspicion that the rim tape was at fault. Somehow, the tape covering all the rim holes was shifting about, exposing the holes, allowing them to puncture the inner tubes; the theory was later confirmed during lunch with a call back to a bike mechanic in Singapore. I still thought I had 8 hours of cycling left to reach Kota Tinggi, and fortunately, I rolled cautiously into the town of Kluang without any more punctures. The doubts were beginning to creep in: it was 1pm at Kluang, 8 hours left to cycle, and this mechanical problem threatening to derail the entire trip.
And manifested it did, 10km out of Kluang, at a comfortingly scenic location. This is the last and final puncture I can afford; any more punctures after this point meant that I will have to hitch a ride back to Singapore on the back of a vehicle, using whatever means I have. The one and only good news I had was that the distance to Kota Tinggi was not as long as I thought: it was only 80km away from Kluang, which roughly translated to 4 hours of cycling out of 7 daylight hours.
It was a gamble with the devil. Two choices were being debated in my head: firstly, to head back 10km to Kluang and hopefully find some way to repair the problem, with a view towards heading straight back to Singapore. Secondly, I could simply chance the danger, and go to Kota Tinggi just like this.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. I chose the latter, to continue despite all the problems. This meant that I had to find some creative way around the mechanical problem that had been plaguing me all day. At my disposal were a bunch of tape and tissues and only one spare tube.
First, I took everything off the rim, including the faulty rim tape itself. Here, you can see that I stuffed all the rim holes (used for installing the spokes) with tissue paper. In the chance that the tape moved again, the tissue paper will prevent the puncture by ensuring the tube does not poke into the empty space underneath.
Secondly, I put 3 layers of black tape on top of the rim. This acts as protection and a second layer of defence if the rim tape fails.
Lastly, I put the rim tape back on. The inner tube goes on top, covered by the tire itself.
It is hard to emulate the psychological stress I was under at this point in time. I had been put through everything possible short of an actual breakage somewhere, and the only thing left was for rain to fall, or the last tube to burst. Coupled with the accumulated physical stress over the past three days, I had impressed into the mind a mental image of me threading a knife’s edge between safety and disaster.
Some days back, this stretch of plantations had been burned to make way for new seeds. The smoke still lingered in the air, creating a smoky and irritable haze on the entire stretch of road overlooking the devastation.
40km from Kota Tinggi, it rained. In my haste to escape yet another impending disaster, luckily, I found this row of shops near a block of housing estates, where I found my first bike shop in Malaysia! It didn’t matter that they did not have the essential items to help me; they were the first sign of comfort the entire day. I had them slap on yet another rim tape just in case, but unfortunately, they under-inflated the tire.
The last 40 hilly kilometers to Kota Tinggi was a haphazard mix of dreaded anticipation (of another puncture), pain, fatigue and, strangely enough, amusement and contentment. Despite the terror, I guess I actually look forward to walking this knife’s edge, and you can say that I actively put myself into situations where there may be such an edge to walk along. The adrenaline pumping through the veins makes you feel alive as never before, and the fear gives life true direction, a powerful desire to fight on for survival. It is on the knife’s edge that life becomes simple, where the shades of grey are dispelled and all before you is cast into clear distinctions of life and death.
The Kota Tinggi hotel is awesome, the best of the lot at merely 27RM. Highly recommended.
