Road Trip - Cycling across 4 states in 3 days

I’d never had reason to visit Batu Pahat, Johore, and now, I’d cycled here. It was Day 2 of the 2015 PCC (Pedalholics Cycling Club) Interstate, the annual cycling epic. This year, there were almost 500 participants, from various parts of the country, as well as neighbouring countries.  Some 18% of the participants were women, an increasing trend, according to the organisers.

Day 2 was the longest, 171km from Port Dickson to Batu Pahat over the less-travelled backroads of southern Malaysia. I’d travelled these roads many years before, remembering the sweet smell of rubber trees in bloom, the dappled shade of overhead foliage on empty rolling roads, somnolent villages where you could stop for a cup of strong black local coffee in a coffee shop under a whirring fan.  Chickens scratched in the front yards of houses, inquisitive dogs would bark at passing cars and villagers in rolled up singlets and shorts would ride their trusty old bicycles, oblivious to traffic.

What I found this time was bustling towns, cluttered with vehicles, children cheering us on, new, broad roads and plenty of traffic, people in a rush to get somewhere in their gleaming cars.  Instead of a hinterland withering away due to urban migration, I found a busy, vibrant ecosystem of small towns, industrious and economically robust.  Here and there were glimpses of the relaxed, rural lifestyle that I had once known, and romanticized, for do we not always view the past with rose-tinted lenses?

For the most part, there wasn’t time to watch the scenery amble by, because of watching the road for ruts, potholes, pacing the rider in front, or just being part of the larger organism of the peloton, a grouping of cyclists working for the common good, like a school of fish.  Being in the right peloton meant all the difference between cycling with people you were comfortable with, being a cog of a greater whole, or of being an outcast component, simply hanging on for dear life to a group cycling faster than your natural inclination, or of being frustrated by a too-slow group.  Yet even these were preferable to cycling on your own, grinding along in solitary distress for long distances.

Cycling might seem to be a solitary pursuit, but cyclists in a hurry on long rides seek the reassurance of the hive, the social order that naturally imposes itself, in performing a feat which might individually be too difficult to achieve.  And that was why cyclists naturally clumped together in small pelotons, moving with a single mind, a whirring, clattering mass of shiny metal, carbon-fiber, titanium and aluminium frames, bright coloured jerseys and helmets, cleaving through the air, the front riders bearing the brunt of air resistance, to be replaced at intervals by the riders immediately behind them and so on, the work of being in front being distributed down each peloton.  Every now and then a rider would launch a solo breakaway, pedaling furiously into the blue horizon, only to join another, faster peloton ahead, or to be eventually absorbed back into the peloton he had outcycled, the inevitable triumph of the many over the one.

The Interstate was not a leisurely ride, nor was it a grand tour, stopping wherever the inclination and the scenery might take you.  Although it was not a competition either, the simple fact of having a high-performance machine under you, and the company of similarly adrenaline-doped cyclists, was simply to ride as hard as you could for as long as you could, but that would bring imminent self-destruction at the end of the day. In reality, calibrating your energy expenditure and knowing your capability was crucial in ending the day with a smile instead of a whimper and body cramps.

Ironically, Day 1, covering 160km from Kl to Port Dickson, was the most difficult, for the combination of the heat shimmering off the ground, and a headwind that never seemed to cease, took its brutal toll.  Cyclists broke into small pelotons, which in the hills after Broga town, naturally shattered into individual units crawling painfully up the slope, only to plunge downhill after the crest, hunched over to offer as little wind resistance as possible, mobile human rockets tethered to the earth by two tiny contact points of tyre rubber.

These bouts of intense energy expenditure were paused at regular stops, depending on the peloton’s strategy. Support cars were part of the ecosystem, as essential as pit crews to a racing team.  Support cars not only carried cold drinks and food, but also spare parts and not an inconsiderable amount of moral support.  At predetermined stops, cyclists fell on support cars like frenzied bees around honey, gulping down cold drinks from ice boxes, fruit, sandwiches, snacks.  Cycling in Malaysia inevitably meant having to deal with the heat and overheating body systems, and many support cars this year were equipped with garden variety spray pumps filled with ice water. 

Other parts of the ecosystem were the ride marshalls in their VWs, photographers and minders at major junctions to point out the way.  A system of ‘tulips’, as used in Treasure hunts, were used by cyclists to navigate the way.

In the evenings, the camaraderie of the open road would spill over at mealtimes, the sort of bond that can only be forged by shared suffering, and a common purpose.  We had the luxury of airconditioned rooms and big dinners, where thousands of calories emptied during the day would be replenished in a single, gluttonous feed, to be followed by a briefing for the following day.

Day 3, Batu Pahat to Malacca, some 140 plus km, saw flatter terrain, for on Day 2 there had been rolling hills which you could attack with gusto, pedaling furiously to gain momentum to carry you up the slopes, counting off the click-click of rapid upshifts to coincide with the length of the slope until it crested and momentum carried you downhill, gaining as much speed as possible for the next uphill.  If you bonked, you could crawl upward like an inebriated beetle, spinning along at double digit revolutions to single digit speeds.

We rolled majestically into Muar town, over the broad muddy swath of the Muar River, into the tumult of narrow, traffic choked streets, unclipping cleats at traffic lights to stop, swig a drink and power on when the lights turned green.  For the most part, drivers were polite and considerate, slowing down for us, sometimes honking in support, but there were also impatient or unskilled drivers who overtook dangerously, for in any encounter, a cyclist’s flesh and bone will always yield to vehicle metal or tarmac road.

We stopped for lunch at Jasin, which I remembered from years ago and now didn’t recognize, before the final ride into Malacca, along a sinuously undulating road.  There was the sense of relief but paradoxically also, the desire for more of the same, for the open road, the camaraderie, the sense of adventure, and seeing a side of the country that could not be experienced from inside a motorized vehicle.

After all, it was Malaysia’s National day, and what better way than to see the country, in comradeship, on two wheels?