First Published in Options, The Edge Malaysia, Oct 10, 2016
An insider’s account
of an annual Malaysian cycle-fest.
It wasn’t just raining, rain was slashing in horizontally
into the ferry in furious gusts. Outside, was the tossing brown sea, and beyond
that, a homogenous grey. On deck, I
clomped around in cleated cycling shoes, with hundreds of other similarly
drenched cyclists and several million dollars’ worth of bicycles. We were on the last leg of our almost 500-km
cycle ride, but we weren’t going anywhere: the ferry was docked at port to wait
out the storm’s fury.
The journey began two days earlier at Kuala Selangor, where
residents awoke to the sight of some 550 cyclists heading up north on the
coastal road. This was the 19th episode of the Pedalholics Cycling
Club’s (PCC) Interstate, an annual cycle-fest that sells out within days, if
not hours, of opening for registration, attracting cyclists from all over Malaysia
as well as neighbouring countries. Decked in bright jerseys, helmets, cycling
shorts and cleated shoes locked into pedals of high-tech carbon-fibre, aluminum
or titanium-frame bicycles with skinny tyres, we must have looked like a
cycling circus.
